Wednesday, May 21, 2025

New Biography: Einstein not a Lone Genius

A new biography was just published:
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was the most influential scientist of the twentieth century, and his influence shows little sign of abating. His work comprises of much of today's understanding of the structure of the microphysical and cosmic universes. Einstein was a man of the modern world, ... His life is interconnected with so many of the important political and intellectual movements of his era - Zionism, pacifism, Nazism, nuclear weapons, philosophy, civil rights, McCarthyism, the League of Nations, and more- that his views shaped the world he lived in while his persona acquired a formidable patina deposited by generations of apocryphal mythmaking, both during and after his lifetime.
Einstein scholar Galina Weinstein has already reviewed it:
This paper examines "Free Creations of the Human Mind: The Worlds of Albert Einstein" by Diana Kormos Buchwald and Michael D. Gordin. The authors seek to dispel the long-standing myths of Einstein as the "lone genius" of Bern and the "stubborn sage" of Princeton, drawing on newly uncovered archival materials to illuminate his intellectual networks and collaborative engagements. ...

Buchwald and Gordin argue that popular narratives often reduce Einstein to two distinct figures: the young Einstein of Bern, the revolutionary scientist who transformed physics through sheer intellectual brilliance. ...

Buchwald and Gordin strive to demythologize the image of Einstein as a ”lone genius” by highlighting his interactions with friends, colleagues, and assistants during his formative years in Bern and later at Princeton. That is a fair point. However, my concern is that this attempt at demythologization may inadvertently reinforce the myth it aims to dismantle.

She knows a lot about Einstein, and is a big fan, so she has a number of quibbles. She mostly seeks to give him more credit.

She does not like saying that Einstein lost the Bohr quantum debates, and writes:

It is crucial to emphasize that although Bohr’s Copenhagen interpretation, along with other interpretations of quantum mechanics that accept entanglement and its inherently probabilistic nature — such as the Many-Worlds interpretation, Quantum Bayesianism, and Relational Quantum Mechanics — has largely dominated the philosophical discourse on quantum theory, Einstein’s special and general relativity profoundly transformed — and continue to transform — our understanding of space, time, and the fundamental structure of the universe.

Far from being a relic of classical physics, Einstein stands as a foundational architect of modern theoretical physics, his insights permeating even the most advanced frontiers of quantum theory and field dynamics. The birth of Quantum Field Theory (QFT) is a testament to this legacy.

No, this is absurd. Einstein was proved wrong about quantum mechanics. And not just because of a Nobel Prize a couple of years ago. The consensus in the 1930s was that he was wrong. Not only that, but he was wrong about most of what he said after about 1920. And Many-Worlds is not inherently probabilistic.

There is a lot here, but I want to address the idea that he transformed our understanding of space and time. He did not.

She is unhappy about this:

The book’s narrative emphasizes that ”eminent theorists of his day, including Hendrik Lorentz and Henri Poincaré, failed to push as far or as rigorously as the Swiss patent clerk,” signaling that Einstein’s work was deeply scaffolded by their contributions [4]. This perspective aligns with a historiographical interpretation that positions Einstein’s work on special relativity as a synthesis and extension of foundational contributions by Lorentz and Poincaré, rather than as an isolated intellectual leap. His genius resided in reassembling these established principles into a coherent and transformative theoretical architecture, rather than generating entirely novel concepts ex nihilo.
She acknowledges that Einstein used without attribution crucial ideas published by Poincare five years earlier, but argues that there is no proof that anyone complained about it at the time.

The truth is that Einstein's work was neither a synthesis and extension, nor an isolated intellectual leap. His work did not advance what had already been published in any way.

She goes on to some nonsense about Michelson-Morley and the aether. Here are the facts. Almost everyone, including Einstein, says that the Michelson-Morley experiment was crucial for the development of special relativity. Modern textbooks often introduce relativity that way. They also explain how the experiment was interpreted in favor of relativity, as opposed to earlier aether-drift models. Lorentz was quite explicit about this in his seminal 1895 paper, as so were others.

Einstein's famous 1905 paper was not directly based on experiment, as he postulated what Lorentz and Poincare had deduced from Michelson-Morley and Maxwell's equations. Again, everyone agrees to this, and that is how Lorentz described Einstein's paper.

She tries to spin this in Einstein's favor:

In later correspondence, Einstein expressed uncertainty about when he first learned of Michelson’s findings, suggesting they did not consciously shape his thinking [19]. He maintained that his path to special relativity was driven by heuristic principles, not ether-drift experiments. Thus, despite its symbolic association with relativity, Einstein’s testimony suggests his conceptual leap was rooted in theoretical reasoning rather than direct experimental influence.
There was no conceptual leap. Einstein just postulated what Lorentz and Poincare previously did, so he had no need to look at the aether-drift experiments.

She goes on to claim that Einstein only pretended to believe in the aether out of deference to Lorentz! In reality, what Einstein said about the aether in 1905 was nearly identical to what Lorentz said in 1895. They had no disagreement about it.

My biggest disagreement is her argument that the great relativity conceptual leap was "rooted in theoretical reasoning rather than direct experimental influence." I wrote a whole book on how this idea ruined Physics. Theoretical physicists today think that they can also make these leaps without experiments, because that is how Einstein did it. Physics has gotten detached from reality.

Our understanding of space and time was transformed by Lorentz, Poincare, and Minkowski, and not by Einstein. Einstein did not even believe or accept what the others did. I have documented this in my book, and on this blog.

She goes on:

Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect — a recognition that, while significant, fell conspicuously short of honoring his magnum opus, the theory of relativity. Instead, the accolade was granted for what could be considered an opusculum amidst the vast landscape of his scientific achievements. Despite the transformative implications of special and general relativity, the Nobel Committee withheld acknowledgment, citing a lack of conclusive experimental verification and lingering skepticism within the scientific community. From 1905 to 1915, special relativity was met with resistance, as many physicists believed that Lorentz’s ether-based theory could equally well explain experiments like Michelson-Morley and Bucherer’s mass-velocity measurements. The Committee’s 1910 report recommended delaying any award for relativity until further empirical validation could be secured, reflecting the broader scientific conservatism of the time. ...

These attacks, coupled with entrenched biases within the Nobel establishment, stymied Einstein’s path to recognition for relativity [17].

She goes on to blame antisemitism and other biases.

This is absurd. Lorentz did get a Nobel Prize in 1902 for his electromagnetism. The citation did not mention relativity, but relativity was a central part of his theory. After 1905, his relativity was known as Lorentz-Einstein Theory, as no one thought that there was any difference. The Nobel committee was not going to give a prize for a theory that was identical to one that already won a prize.

"Einstein’s path to recognition for relativity" was limited by the fact that Einstein did not create special relativity, and everybody knew it. The terms "Lorentz transformation" and "Minkowski space" became accepted because everyone knew that these were not Einstein's ideas. You can go down the list of special relativity concepts, and Einstein did not originate any of them.

She cites original documents, so she gives the impression that she knows what she is saying, but she gives a completely false picture of Einstein.

She has written a bunch of books and papers on Einstein, such as this:

Unfortunately, there are no surviving notebooks and manuscripts, no notes and papers or other primary sources from this critical period to provide any information about the crucial steps that led Einstein to his great discovery. In May 1905, Henri Poincaré sent three letters to Hendrik Lorentz at the same time that Einstein wrote his famous May 1905 letter to Conrad Habicht, promising him four works, of which the fourth one, Relativity, was a rough draft at that point. In the May 1905 letters to Lorentz, Poincaré presented the basic equations of his 1905 “Dynamics of the Electron”, meaning that, at this point, Poincaré and Einstein both had drafts of papers relating to the principle of relativity. The book discusses Einstein’s and Poincaré’s creativity and the process by which their ideas developed.
She gives the impression that the Poincare and Einstein 1905 papers were similar, except that Einstein had a "great discovery".

No, Einstein's was just a regurgitation of previously published ideas, mainly the Poincare synchronization, Lorentz transformations, and Lorentz's theorem of the corresponding states (that the transformed electromagnetic variables satisfy Maxwell's equations). Poincare's paper was much superior, and had spacetime, Lorentz group, 4-vectors, covariance of Maxwell's equations, and Lorentz invariant gravity. Einstein had none of that.

She also gets into Einstein's Zionism, Communism, and other political views, such as how he wanted to bomb Germany but not Russia. I am less interested in this subject, although it may partially explain why some scholars are so fanatical about defending him, to the point of distorting all the facts.

My concern is people who cite the discovery of relativity as one of the great intellectual achievements of all time, and something that all scientists should emulate, and then tell some crazy story about how Einstein figured it all out from pure thought, with no help from experiments.

I have previously critized her idolization of Einstein here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

It is funny that she had to rush out a long review to defend Einstein and trash this book. The book is not negative about Einstein. Apparently she got triggered by comments on how he built on the work of his predecessors. That is not a criticism. All scientists build on the work of others.

But that is heresy for Einstein, as an army of scholars will leap to his defense, and tell the craziest stories to prop up the Einstein myth. If she wants to take on some real anti-Einstein works, then she should try these videos from a year ago: Einstein Plagiarized Poincaré Word for Word Part 1 Synchronizing Clocks & Relative Simultaneity, Einstein Ripped Off Poincaré's Principle of Relativity and Light Postulate. These have detailed arguments that Einstein plagiarized earlier works.

Update: Weinstein has another new paper nitpicking another Einstein biography, this time on his secular mysticism. Defending him is a full-time job.

12 comments:

  1. Freeman Dyson offered a powerful and often overlooked defense of Einstein’s position in the famous debates with Niels Bohr over the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Contrary to the common view that Einstein was simply wrong and Bohr decisively won, Dyson reconstructed Einstein’s arguments — particularly the Box Thought Experiment — within the more modern framework of quantum field theory (QFT). By doing so, Dyson showed that Einstein’s concerns about quantum indeterminacy and the lack of a complete description of reality were not only valid but remain relevant in light of how measurement and information are treated in QFT.

    In a 2001 lecture, Dyson explicitly stated that he did not accept the prevailing view that Bohr triumphed over Einstein. He argued that Bohr’s replies were rooted in vague appeals to measurement and complementarity, while Einstein was asking deeper questions about whether the quantum formalism truly reflects physical reality. Dyson’s QFT-based reformulations of Einstein’s arguments revealed that the supposed violations of the uncertainty principle, which Bohr dismissed, actually exposed the shaky foundations of the measurement problem when one takes field theory seriously.

    Moreover, Dyson went further by proposing new thought experiments — including a slit-based interference scenario — that challenge the orthodox Copenhagen interpretation. In these cases, interference patterns persist even when which-path information exists in principle but isn’t extracted, contradicting the idea that the mere possibility of measurement collapses the wavefunction. This supports Einstein’s belief that wavefunction collapse is not a real physical event, but rather an update in our knowledge — an epistemic shift, not an ontological one.

    Thus, Dyson’s work doesn’t just rehabilitate Einstein — it strengthens his case. It shows that Einstein’s philosophical concerns about the incompleteness of quantum mechanics were forward-looking and remain unresolved. Far from being outdated or stubborn, Einstein anticipated many of the issues that still plague quantum foundations today. Dyson’s reconstruction offers a compelling counter-narrative to the myth that Bohr decisively defeated Einstein in one of physics’ most famous debates.

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  2. I did not see that Dyson 2001 lecture, so I will take your word for Dyson expressing the opinion that Einstein had some legitimate philosophical concerns. Bohr did defeat Einstein in the sense that Copenhagen QM is what became generally accepted by physicists and textbooks. I am more interested in the science than the philosophy.

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    1. The debate wasn’t settled in Bohr’s favor. It was ended prematurely by sociological pressure in the physics community. Dyson reopened it with mathematical maturity.

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  3. Roger,
    If you are going to use the 'consensus' of experts to determine what is true, you are going to be horrified to find that historically speaking, this is not even remotely so. Just take a few steps back and look at what was believed true just a few decades, or even a couple of centuries ago by leading 'experts', and compare it to what leading experts think now. This is called context and perspective and allows one to overcome the obscene conceit that just because you are in the present, doesn't mean you know everything. The hubris of so many scientists that everyone before them was wrong...until their genius came along is beyond the pale.
    I don't give a damn how many people believe in whatever they believe, outside of numerical curiosity and a sheer wariness of who might get pissed off.

    Science and truth are not determined by popular consensus, that's what politics and fashion is for.

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  4. Yes, the consensus of experts can be wrong about what is true, but the consensus of experts is correct about who won a debate. The purpose of the Bohr-Einstein debates was to persuade the experts, and the experts sided with Bohr.

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    1. ``Yes, the consensus of experts can be wrong about what is true,''

      Frankly, Roger, I don't care. Even if the objective value of this quote is very high.

      iqWaves!
      --Ajit

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  5. It has been 90 years, and no physics has come from Einstein's side of the debate. Let me know when anything comes of it.

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    1. And, *you* let *me* know, Roger, if *any* good physics has ever come out of ``geometry'' etc. !

      Especially, the ``geometry'' of *forces* that are *known* to be *non-inertial* in nature i.e. reality. [*Cf.* my Research Notes and Blog Posts. Which you did. Already. I know!]

      iqWaves!
      --Ajit
      PS: LOL! I wonder about the point to which your ``logical'' and ``mathematical'' capacity at non-acknowledgement leads you. I LOL! Honestly! [And not just because it's a week-end and all.]

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    2. Yes, a lot of good physics has come out of geometry. Geometry is used to explain relativity, all four fundamental forces, and electron spin.

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    3. 1. Geometry did not *lead* to relativity. *That* is the point. Once you have a result, you can always mathematically rearrange it whatever way you wish. Including making it seem as if the hierarchy was some other way than it actually is.

      2. The first real breakthrough in the theory of the spin was made in a *non-relativistic* context, not relativistic, and it was by Pauli, not by Dirac. (Today's text-books have a tendency to directly go to Dirac. They have no option but to mention Pauli's matrices, and so, they do mention his name, say once. But the point is that most of them don't even mention Pauli's *equation.*)

      Yes, relativity does provide an abstract view on a specific theory of physics, viz. ED, and yes, this abstraction did help Dirac in his algebraic manipulations (in reaching his equation). But looking at Dirac's papers of that period, if you pause to think about the chance Dirac would have if he didn't already have Pauli's matrices to ``play'' with (to use his own word), the criticality of Pauli's work becomes apparent immediately. If people today don't appreciate this point, an important reason is that the British publicity machine was at work here. (Those were the pre-WW II times, when UK was the superpower. The West always denies it, but such power equations are always at work. Even in science. Even in physics.)

      So, it's hard to see how, in reaching the right explanation for the spin, the most critical factor was relativity. Also see Lévy-Leblond's work in this context (*NR* equation for spin derived using algebraic manipulations similar to Dirac's).

      3. The case for the relevance of relativity for fundamental particle theories other than QED is much, much weaker than any one even observes (let alone appreciates).

      The point is this: To demand that QED must be relativistic is basically to demand that the potentials for the QED interactions must be compatible with those in the classical ED. Nothing more than that. This constraint works in building QED because the electron indeed is *electrically* charged.

      But observe what Einstein (or his worshipers) in effect demanded (or demand): *Every* force of the nature, known and *unknown* (i.e., even any force that would be discovered in the year 2525) must, in *nature*, be compatible with that physics which was known at the end of the 19th century. Why should nature obey Einstein's guess (or his worshipers' diktat)? Isn't it re-writing reality? Shouldn't people be citing this aspect of the demand as frequently as that claim which said that everything to be discovered in physics had already been discovered (at the end of the 19th century)?

      All in all, the above is the reason why one can't be as sure (as with QED) when it comes to theories proposed for the *other* fundamental forces (i.e. other types of particles which exchange such forces). One can't even be sure about theories for the other *known* forces. These theories might have been ``tested''. But are the ranges / regimes of testing good enough, if the soundness of the theory itself worth re-examination? Someone should examine this aspect too (the demand that all forces must be compatible with ED forces as far as transformations across coordinate frames is concerned) and explain it all in simple enough terms, rather than just go on chanting: ``Einstein!'', ``Einstein!''. Or, ``relativity!'', ``relativity!''. [And, given the objective hierarchy, ditto for ``geometry!'', ``geometry!'' too.]

      iqWaves!
      --Ajit

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    4. Yes, geometry led to relativity. You could argue that physics just needed to be compatible with electromagnetism, but we had a good theory of electromagnetism in 1865. But relativity brought a new way of thinking that tremendously influenced XX century Physics.

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