I’m sorry, but only the mind that wrote the St. Matthew Passion could be considered the most intelligent. That is so self-evident, I can’t see what you guys are arguing about.
OK, but I am not sure why it needed to be mentioned in reply to what I have written.
This is not true.
See the first 1905 Special Relativity paper:
(from The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies) (emphasis and numerals added by me)
It may be that Lorenz hypothesized (1) and that Poincare hypothesized (2), but I do not think there is any evidence that they were on the verge of combining them in a new theory which provided radical new views on simultaneity and the passage of time, and which did away, once and for all, of the bedeviling specter of the Lumineferous Ether.
OK, but I am not sure why it needed to be mentioned in reply to what I have written.
OK, but I am not sure why it needed to be mentioned in reply to what I have written.
These do not count as Quantum mechanical, but as part of the supporting edifice which preceded QM.
See the last paragraph of my post #72.
(from post #73):
(from post #73):
2nd request.
I don’t see the justification for separating “quantum theory” from “quantum mechanics”. Mechanics is just a description for how things behave, and the rudimentary knowledge of quantum phenomena in 1905 was indeed a description of how things behave. The full theory did not yet exist, but then, it didn’t yet exist in 1925, either, since Heisenberg’s model was non-relativistic.
The Second Stone, I certainly agree that the development of GR was a much bigger step than the development of SR, but I couldn’t even begin to quantify that in terms of decades. For one thing, the biggest difficulty in the development of GR was the realization that relativity even could lead to a theory of gravity, and that’s the sort of realization that’s inherently unpredictable.
Yeah, that was my thought. I took two undergrad astronomy classes that did this stuff with only the very simplest math, which is the way for a layman to do it. Absolutely fascinating stuff. I think that GR is a glimpse into the mind of God. A good understanding of atomic clocks would require some theory of GR, but Einstein finishing his theory in 1915 is for me the best evidence for time travel in that some time traveler from the future came and explained it to him and he worked it out using pretty much just the precession of Mercury as his data.
Quantum theory describes how things ARE.
Quantum mechanics describes how things must behave, assuming that energy consists of integer multiples (“quanta”) of a very small amount, now known as Planck’s constant for the man who discovered and named them. It took 25 years to get from Planck’s seminal 1900 insight to the point where they could start really nailing down the behavior part.
Einstein’s 1905 photoelectric contribution also consisted of clarifying how things ARE: the electromagnetic force consists of particles, now known as “photons”, which have a value of one quanta. And similarly it took 20 years to start really nailing down the behavior part.
And BTW the filed was not called called quantum “mechanics” until so named by the Heisenberg-Born-Jordan team of 6&ff/25.
(from post #72):
I meant to say Poincare recognized that the speed of light might be a constant of nature.
Maybe because it was relevant to what you I had written. I dunno
I’m not making this up you know.
Lorentz among others recognized that the null results of the M-M experiment could be explained by the invariance of Maxwell’s equations under a change in velocity and it was he who came up with the complete form of the transformation that renders that possible. The Lorentz transformation forms the mathematical basis of special relativity. He was also one of the first to recognize length contraction and time dilation.
Poincare’s work was mainly a refinement of the work of Lorentz (and others). He was the one who recognized from Lorentz’s work the relativity between moving and non-moving frames and coined the term “principle of relativity”, he was the one who first recognized that the speed of light is invariant under the Lorentz transformation , he was the one that first recognized the implications of time dilation on simultaneity. In some ways Poincare’s work was more advanced than Einstein’s in that he had already got as far as recognizing the Lorentz group before Einstein’s 1905 paper on special relativity was published.
Given all that the question might be where exactly does Einstein fit in? What Einstein did was to give the theory an axiomatic form as opposed to the slightly ad-hoc nature of the (experimentally indistinguishable to special relativity) Lorentz ether theory. He also promoted the principle of relativity to the most inviolable element of the theory and finally knocked ether on the head (though Poincare recognized that the principle of relativity left the ether essentially indiscernible he did not go as far as to do away with it).
The reason I say then that it is clear that others were on the verge of discovering special relativity is because all the most elements were there before Einstein made his contribution. It surely would not have been long before someone found one of the many elegant ways to axiomize special relativity and it surely would not have been long until someone took Occam’s razor to the ether.
Bose-Einstein statistics was essentially a result of QM derived before all the machinery was there to derive it in a precise manner.
Einstein’s biggest handicap to being considered one of the most significant figures in late twentieth century theoretical physics is that he died in 1955.
The other contenders are grateful for this handicap, and need it.
I am not going to explain every use of that phrase, and I regret being snappish, but in your first sentence you say: “Basically Minkowski, who also happened to be one of Einstein’s teachers (emphasis added)…”
Indicating that I was unaware of a fact I had actually cited in a section you quoted and were replying to: (post #72) “Without looking it up Minkowski is famous for: (1) being one of Einstein’s college math teachers.”
I trust your integrity, but not your judgment, which you impertinently place over and above that of the consensus of the community of theoretical physicists of 1905. As soon as he read the SR paper Planck referred to AE as “A new Copernicus” - did you know that? Not only that but Planck, who held the top job in all German theoretical physics at the time (which is saying a lot) got AE a virtual sinecure at the same school years before General Relativity was completed. And I am not sure about Poincare, but Lorenz certainly held AE in the highest regard, and not some interloper who merely did some elegant tidying up, nothing more than housekeeping really, of the work of others whose light he usurped.
Depreciation of Albert Einstein’s great work become sort of a cottage industry of the last few decades. Many of the spokesmen for this industry probably are people of questionable integrity who seek to make waves in the news media, and often succeed due to graceful literary ability and stage presence.
Fine, you express it your way, and I will express it my way: B-E stats was a result of Quantum Theory derived before Quantum Mechanics was there to derive it in a precise manner.
I am trying to get something out of you about Hawking, not Einstein. Let me put it this way: What theoretical advances comparable in importance to Einstein’s 1905 output has Hawking made? Speaking of the era since AE’s death have there been any advances by anyone, confirmed by observation, other than Electroweak?
The omits the discovery of quarks and probably other important work, now confirmed. So how about any since EW was confirmed by WZ bosuns on the early 1980s? There is not yet a shred of evidence for String Theory, is there?
yup!
according to legend, Gauss had to relearn to read. Seems he taught himself to read upside down by listening to his father read the family bible when Gauss was three years old. When he got older he had to relearn to read because he now was big enough to hold his own books…
And then he got in to the math thing. 
Bull and Shit.
certainly bright and well qualified for the academic positions he holds/held. But mediocre compared to his peers.
He’s popular mainly because of his handicap. If he wasn’t in a wheel chair that makes him popular with the press, you would be saying “Stephen…who?”
Nelson Pike, Asymptotically Fat never said that Hawking was comparable to Einstein. He said he was one of the greatest physicists of the latter part of the 20th century, and since Einstein wasn’t alive then, no comparison to Einstein is needed. If you really want to challenge the claim, a better comparison is Feynman (depending on how you define “latter part”).
Now, if we’re just asking who the greatest physicist was of the entire twentieth century, then there’s no question, and anyone who claimed anyone other than Einstein ought to be challenged. But that’s not what AF said.
I hardly think pointing out the sizeable contributions made by others to special relativity or the similarity of Einstein’s ideas on the subject to others is denigrating him. What I’ve expressed is hardly out of step with the mainstream of the history of science. Though undoubtedly Einstein was aware of most of Lorentz’s and Poincare’s work in the area he was not aware of their very latest thoughts on the subject which , which even though they did not go as far as disposing with the ether, bore the most striking resemblance to what he laid out in his 1905 paper. My point being is that this was thew way that the cookie was crumbling in physics at the time and that is very obvious Of course this was only brought up because you suggested that no-one else could’ve come up with special relativity at that time.
That’s not to say Albert Einstein did not deserve the recognition he got in the scientific community (though it must be said in 1905 he published two other very important papers not related to special relativity, so the recognition he received was not just down to his work on relativity). I would just temper this with that public perception is not so keenly aware of the contributions others made in that particular arena and there’s also a bit of a blurred perception among the public about the special and general theories of relativity. General relativity really was a bolt from the blue and almost entirely the work of Einstein.
As I said before I haven’t compared them and don’t feel the need to either.
This is my point about Hawking being damned with faint praise. Your views are not really ones that match up with the evidence of his career.
Firstly the position he held (until he resigned as required) was hardly a run-of-the-mill position, but a position held by Newton, Babbage and Dirac (to name just the illustrious holders) and it’s not a position offered to run-of-the-mill physicists.
To give you an idea of his stature in gravitational physics: if you look in the reference section any of the standard “bibles” of general relativity, you can guarantee he will be at most only a few cites short of being the most cited author. This is because he was right at the forefront of the revolution in general relativity in the sixties and seventies and slightly later was right on the forefront of the attempts to marry general relativity with quantum physics both in the semicalssical and quantum gravity regimes.
Clearly his large public profile which is not something he has shied away from, writing popular science books and his wheelchair makes him particularly iconic and it may be difficult to disentangle his actual work from that. However don’t be mistaken he genuinely is (or was, as though he is still a highly respected figure, most of his most important work is at least two decades behind him) right at the top of the ladder in his area.
What I suggested was that Lorenz and Poincare were not on the verge of discovering SR, not that they were unable to. Why they did not take the final few steps before AE probably deserves book-length treatment.
Actually David Hilbert was neck and neck with AE for the last few weeks or months before AE put the finishing touches on GR. Some fault AE for profiting from DH’s work without sufficient attribution. Perhaps they have a point, or part of a point. Regardless, it is equally important the bear in mind that DH was profiting from years of prior work by AE; this strikes me as a subnlect which deserves book-length treatment. Perhaps there is an analogy there with AE’s 1905 situation. Also, my impression is that DH was closer to solving GR in 1916 than Lorenz and Poincare were to solving SR in 1905, but that is yet another subject which deserves book-length treatment.