New paper:
Lorentz, Poincare, Einstein, and the Genesis of the Theory of Special Relativity
Hector Giacomini
This work offers a historical reading of the genesis of special relativity by placing the contributions of Lorentz, Poincare, and Einstein within their scientific and editorial context. It highlights the importance of the German periodical Beiblatter zu den Annalen der Physik as a key channel for the dissemination of international scientific research. The perspective advanced here is that the true revolution did not lie in special relativity itself, but in Maxwell's electrodynamics. Special relativity thus appears as the necessary expression of a framework already transformed by the universality of the speed of light.
This is a fair review of early relativity publications. I learned a few things. Especially some of the
circumstantial evidence that Einstein had access to other relativity papers that he refused to cite.
Einstein's explanation of originality does not make any sense:
Einstein defined his own contribution as having transformed Lorentz’s “local time” into the physical time of a moving inertial frame, thereby elevating a mathematical construction to the status of an empirical quantity. ...
It should be recalled that if Lorentz’s time variable t′ in his 1904 paper were merely an auxiliary mathematical device without physical meaning, it would be impossible to explain the negative results of the Michelson–Morley experiments. Lorentz, moreover, explicitly stated in that work that clocks based on electromagnetic mechanisms in the moving system must run slower.
There were numerous inexplicable failures to acknowledge Poincare's work, by Einstein and others.
However there were exceptions, so it is clear that Einstein, Minkowski, and others knew about
his work.
Einstein claimed to not know about Lorentz's crucial 1904 paper and Poincare's
short 1905 paper, but circumstantial evidence implies he knew about both
before submitting his own 1905 relativity paper. They were available in a library that Einstein used regularly,
and they had generated a lot of attention.
Even if Einstein somehow missed these papers in June 1905, he certainly knew about them when he wrote review papers later.
There can be no excuse for Einstein and others not crediting these papers.
In summary: for Poincaré, relativity is grounded in Maxwell’s theory; for Einstein, it is framed as a general kinematic structure, but in practice still bound to Maxwell’s electrodynamics since the limiting speed is taken from it. The two formulations are therefore logically equivalent, differing only in which statement is postulated and which is derived. ...
One may argue that the true revolution was not special relativity itself, but rather the electrodynamics of Ampère, Faraday, and Maxwell. It was this framework that largely shaped twentieth-century physics. ...
Einstein consistently thought in terms of electrodynamics.
Yes, I agree that the theories are logically equivalent, and that
Maxwell should be considered
an early founder of special relativity.
Some credit Einstein with elevating special relativity from electrodynamics to a spacetime
theory, because he wrote a section on kinematics. However it is really Poincare who did that.
The above paper says Poincare's relativity is grounded in Maxwell theory, but Poincare's
1905 papers explicitly say that it is a spacetime theory, and apply it to
gravity without any electromagnetism involved.
In the Lorentz-Einstein theory, it is never clear whether the relativistic effects
are purely electromagnetic.
By 1905, many German physicists were already referring to a “Lorentz–Einstein theory,” which probably prompted Einstein to restate explicitly his intellectual independence. ...
These examples show that, by the late 1900s, the expression “Lorentz–Einstein” circulated across private correspondence (Planck), major physics journals (Bucherer, Levi-Civita), and popular scientific works (Cohn). Far from being marginal, it indicates that relativity was then widely perceived in Germany as a joint construction, or at least as a theory of shared intellectual parentage between Lorentz and Einstein. By contrast, Poincaré — though a central figure in the same debates — was already largely excluded from this emerging tradition.
By "late 1900s" he must mean 1905-10. The Lorentz-Einstein theory could have been considered
just an interpretation of the Maxwell theory.
The above paper does not explain why Poincare was excluded. The record is clear that everyone
knew who he was and what he did. He was extremely highly respected.
Maybe even the most respected and widely-read scholar in Europe.
If someone thought that his work was substandard or inferior or derivative or wrong,
he could have said so. No one did.
The paper notes that there is a paper trail showing how Lorentz and Poincare came to their conclusions
about relativity, but Einstein's route is more mysterious. He cites no previous works.
Some claim that Einstein was inspired in isolation. This paper makes it clear that Einstein
had access to good libraries and read the top journals. He was plugged into current research.
If Einstein had some plausible story, that would be worth considering. But he did not.
The obvious conclusion is that he got all those ideas from Lorentz and Poincare.
