Form: Question

ANYONE KNOW IF THE ARGUMENT THAT EINSTEIN WAS A NOT THE IDEATOR HAS ANY MERIT?

(I have a legit reason for asking.)

See this narrative.

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“The curious fact about Mr. Einstein is that his early teachers were probably correct: they did not view him as particularly bright. When Einstein (on his second attempt) managed to finally enter the Swiss Polytechnic school in Zurich, the young 17 year old quickly realized he was in way over his head. He was extremely quick to glom on to Mileva Maric, a brilliant Serbian student, who was the only woman studying physics at the Swiss Polytechnic (“ETH”) the entire time Einstein was there. Maric was four years Einstein’s senior. She was a Serb, an Eastern Orthodox Christian, short of stature, had a limp and was extremely bookish. In addition to taking the exact same course-work in college that Einstein took, and living together with him, sharing textbooks, etc., Maric studied on her own for one semester in Germany under Phillipe Lenard, the Nobel Prize winning physicist who discovered the photo-electric effect (which was explained in one of the 1905 papers attributed to Einstein).

She was also absolutely hated by Einstein’s mother, Pauline. Still, despite his mother’s fierce objections, Einstein stubbornly went ahead and married her. It was during this marriage that Einstein is credited with producing the 1905 papers which made him famous. All this is detailed in the Love Letters. Further, I suggest you read TIME magazine, April 30, 1990, and the essay by Dennis Overbye “Einstein in Love.” This essay refers, without giving attribution, to the work of Dr. Evan Harris Walker and the linguist, Senta Troemmel-Ploetz. If you can find their work anywhere, it is truly an eye-opener.

Prior to their marriage, Mileva Maric gave birth out of wedlock to Lieserl, the only biological daughter of Albert Einstein. Nobody really knows what happened to this child; there is a mention in one of the letters to her having scarlet fever and it is believed that the child was put up for adoption in Serbia. Albert never breathed a word about her publicly during his life-time (which, personally, I find rather strange).

Mileva faced the obvious invidious prejudice of being a woman. Remember, in 1900 women couldn’t even vote! Although her grades were comparable to Einstein, Mileva ultimately did not pass her final examinations. It must be noted, however, that at the time she was taking these exams she was late in her pregnancy with Albert’s second child (his son, Hans Albert) and also faced the prejudice of her teachers for being both a Slav and a woman. She was, indeed, the only student in Albert’s class not to graduate, although she did receive a research position with Professor Weber, which later fell through. Of the students who did actually graduate, Einstein had the lowest grade point average.

But did Albert Einstein—the same man his teachers thought lazy, the same man who after graduating from the ETH could not find a job in physics and was ultimately forced to work for ten years as a lowly patent clerk — really formulate all by himself the great works in 1905 for which he is credited? Or did his wife, who struggled against the obvious prejudice of being a woman studying science during a highly “male chauvanistic” era, and the added prejudice of being a Slav in Switzerland, collaborate with Einstein?

The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein prove to any open-minded person, that Maric did indeed collaborate on the authorship of Einstein’s famous papers in 1905. Einstein even uses the word “collaboration”. Just a random sample quote from Albert to Mileva (published also in the Love Letters):

“How happy and proud I will be when the two of us together will have brought our work on the relative motion to a victorious conclusion!” Our work??? This is just one isolated quotation. Should you read the entire Love Letters you will find that Albert shares all his physics ideas with her and is extremely interested in her opinion. There are literally dozens of examples. See the copyrighted manuscript by Evan Harris Walker “Ms. Einstein”. There is also a book by Ann Gabor called, “Mrs. Einstein” which essentially parrots Dr. Walker’s work but fails to give him any attribution.

Senta Troemmel Ploetz, in her excellent paper, “Mileva Maric-Einstein: The Woman who did Einstein’s Mathematics” quotes from a Serbian biography of Maric, that Einstein himself once told his friends that his wife did his math for him. When one realizes the highly mathematical aspect of the 1905 Special Relativity paper, which relies heavily on derivations of the Lorentz transformations, then one can see the importance of having a first-rate mathematician’s help. The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein even have a photo-static copy of one of Albert’s college notebooks, in which Mileva has gone through and corrected Albert’s math! Yet the myth of the isolated Einstein working alone, who all by himself, without help from anyone, wrote four brilliant papers on physics in 1905, endures. No two physicists ever had a closer relationship: Mileva and Albert ate together, went to school together, shared ideas together, shared textbooks together, slept together, raised children together, and yet the “Einstein Establishment” refuses to acknowledge her as a collaborator in any way whatsoever.

Naturally, the original manuscript for the Special Relativity paper is missing. It was lost during Einstein’s lifetime. Yet, Abram Joffe, a summa cum laude Russian physicist is quoted as having seen the original 1905 manuscript and said it was signed, “Einstein-Marity” (Marity being the Hungarianized version of Maric’; at that time Serbia was under the dominion of Austro-Hungarian empire). Joffe died in 1961. See op cited TIME (April 30, 1990).

Moreover, when Albert admitted adultery and divorced Mileva in 1919, he promised that in the event he should win the Nobel Prize all the money – not part of the money but all the money – would go to Mileva. According to the Einstein biography, “Subtle is the Lord” by Abram Pais, Einstein kept his promise. When he received the Nobel Prize money in 1922 (he was awarded the prize for the year 1921; the award was announced and he received the money in 1922) Albert did indeed give Mileva all the money from the Nobel Prize. Why all the money?

Then I must also mention Olinto De Pretto. Albert Einstein was quite fluent in Italian. According to the already cited Pais biography, when Einstein graduated from high school in Aarau he was required to take exams in both the German language and the Italian language. Out of a maximum score of 6, Einstein received a score of 5 in German (his native tongue) and also a score of 5 in Italian! Of course, Einstein had lived in Italy during his youth, and Einstein’s father is buried in Milan. Further, during the very same “anno mirabilis” of 1905, when Einstein published his famous four physics papers in the Annalen der Physik, he also published in the very same Annalen der Physik two reviews of articles written in Italian by Italian physicists. Again, these were reviews of articles written in Italian and were published in the Annalen der Physik in 1905, which shows that Einstein was reading rather deeply the Italian literature in physics at the time. Moreover, Michele Besso, the only person credited in the famous E=mc^2 paper of 1905, was originally from the Veneto region of Italy; his native tongue was Italian. Also, in order for Einstein to gain Swiss citizenship (a requirement for him to work in the Berne patent office since that was a government job) it could only help him if he could show proficiency in Italian, which, along with German and French, is one of the three official languages of Switzerland. Finally, there are still extant postcards written by Einstein in Italian as well as living Italians who spoke to Einstein in his later years who attest to his fluency. There is no doubt that Einstein spoke Italian well.

Why do I emphasize Einstein’s fluency in Italian? Because another native of the Veneto region, an industrialist named Olinto De Pretto, had published an article in which De Pretto gave, in its final form, the equation E=mc^2. This article was published in 1903 and published again in 1904; preceding Einstein’s 1905 “E=mc^2” paper by at least a year-and-a-half. Dr. Umberto Bartocci, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Perugia, in his book, “Albert Einstein e Olinto De Pretto: la vera storia della formula piu’ famosa del mondo” (Albert Einstein and Olinto De Pretto, the true history of the most famous formula in the world) has published De Pretto’s article in full. In the article, De Pretto actually comments on how amazing his discovery is. That is a kilogram of any material there is within an extraordinary explosion of energy. De Pretto articulated the formula quite well and realized its significance. This formula, of course, would later be the theoretical basis for the atomic bomb. Throughout all of the famous papers on 1905, Einstein gives no sources or citations. The only credit given to anyone is a brief mention of his friend Michele Besso. Why the lack of citation of any source material?

Dr. Bartocci has made a link between Michele Besso and Olinto De Pretto; however, nobody can absolutely prove that Einstein saw De Pretto’s article. Yet based on the Besso link with the De Pretto article, and also that Einstein was well aware of other groundbreaking work by Italian physicists (having read deeply the Italian physics literature), it would seem difficult to deny that Einstein was aware of the De Pretto article. Indeed, when Einstein did publish his famous article in 1905 wherein he gave a variation of the famed “E=mc^2” formula, he titled this “discovery” in the form of a question. Perhaps he was not quite sure of its significance or perhaps he wanted the title in the form of a question in order to later attribute it to someone else should the formula prove incorrect.

What is absolutely indisputable is that the formula was published, not once but twice, in the Italian physics literature. Its authorship should rightly be credited to the industrialist, Olinto De Pretto.

Recently published letters written by Einstein (see The Collected Papers of A. Einstein) reveal him to be far less than a saintly figure in his personal life. His first wife, Mileva Maric, for whom he had originally professed such great love, he treated cruelly toward the end of the marriage, even calling her “uncommonly ugly”. He admitted in a deposition during divorce proceedings (28 December 1918) that he had carried on an adulterous relationship with one of his cousins, whom he later married. During this second marriage, Einstein had numerous affairs, even – apparently — including an affair with a Russian spy! And again, Einstein never breathed a word about having fathered a daughter with Maric.

The “Einstein myth” has become so ingrained in popular thought that many of the current generations will be loath to part with it. It does make a terrific story: a student whom his teachers thought would not amount to anything, a sloppy dresser who abhored wearing socks or even neatly combing his hair, should later be revealed to be the greatest scientist of all time. A solitary genius who without any significant help from anybody, re-arranged the universe. Like most fine stories that sound too good to be true, the “Einstein myth” is really too good to be true. The Nobel Prize winning chemist Linus Pauling once said (on a completely unrelated topic) that it takes a generation before people will accept a truly new idea. Current generations, weaned on the “Einstein myth” will not bear to part with it. Women and men of newer generations, not weaned on the myth, willing to investigate the evidence for themselves, and not wedded to any ideology or point of view, will approach the issue of Einstein’s authorship of the Special Theory of Relativity and the formula “E=mc^2″ with fresh eyes. I ask only that the reader keep an open mind.”