Schantz on Origins of Special Relativity

Hans G. Schantz posts a discussion of sources for Einstein and relativity:

Perhaps the evidence is only circumstantial that Einstein plagiarized relativity, but should we extend the benefit of the doubt to one who has clearly hidden the evidence?

By failing to note his influencers and predecessors, like Poincaré and Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853–1928), Einstein created lasting disputes about the extent to which his thinking was original and how much it was derivative. ... The point is, they should not have had to do this. Einstein exhibited a shockingly cavalier attitude toward citing references throughout his career.

There is some question about whether Einstein saw Lorentz's 1904 paper and Poincare's 1905 paper on relativity. But it is pretty clear that he read their earlier papers.

In particular, in 1905 Einstein got the constant speed of light and the Lorentz transformations from Lorentz, and he got clock synchronization of the relativity principle from Poincare. He only got the crucial idea of four-dimensional Minkowski space from Minkowski several years later. It is not clear that he ever accepted the geometrical interpretation that is common in textbooks today.