WAS  EINSTEIN  AN  "EINSTEIN?"

                        By V.S. Herrell, B.S.,  M.E.,  Ch.D.

                                                Part  2


The subject of the equivalence of mass and energy was contained in a
third paper published by Einstein in 1905.  This concept is expressed by
the famous equation E=mc2.  Einstein's biographers categorize this as
"his most famous and most spectacular conclusion."  Even though this idea
is an obvious conclusion of Einstein's earlier relativity paper, it was
not included in that paper but was published as an afterthought later in
the year.  Still, the idea of energy-mass equivalence was not original
with Einstein.

That there was an equivalence between mass and energy had been shown in
the laboratory in the 1890's by both J.J. Thomson of Cambridge and by W.
Kaufmann in Gottingen.  In 1900, Poincare had shown that there was a mass
relationship for all forms of energy, not just electromagnetic energy.
Yet, the most probable source of Einstein's plagiarism was was Friedrich
Hasenohrl, one of the most brilliant, yet unappreciated physicists of the
era.  Hasenohrl was the teacher of many of the German scientists who
would later become famous for a variety of topics.  He had worked on the
idea of the equivalence of mass and energy for many years and had
published a paper on the topic in 1904 in the very same journal which
Einstein would publish his plagiarized version in 1905.  For his
brilliant work in this area, Hasenohrl had received in 1904 a prize from
the prestigious Vienna Academy of Sciences.

Furthermore, the mathematical relationship of mass and energy was a
simple deduction from the already well-known equations of Scottish
physicist James Maxwell.  Scientists long understood that the
mathematical relationship expressed by the equation E=mc2 was the logical
result of Maxwell's work; they just did not believe it.  Thus, the
experiments of Thomson, Kaufmann and finally, and most importantly,
Hasenohrl, confirmed Maxwell's work.  It is ludicrous to beleive that
Einstein developed this postulate, particularly in light of the fact that
Einstein did not have the laboratory necessary to conduct the appropriate
experiments.

In this same plagiarized article of Einstein's, he suggested to the
scientific community, "Perhaps it will prove possible to test this theory
using bodies whose energy content is variable to a high degree (e.g.,
salts of radium)."  This remark demonstrates how little Einstein
understood about science, for this was truly an outlandish remark.  By
saying this, Einstein showed that he really did not understand basic
scientific principles and that he was writing about a topic that he did
not know.  In fact, in response to this article, J. Precht remarked that
such an experiment "lies beyond the realm of possible experience."

The last subject dealt with in Einstein's 1905 papers was the foundation
of the photon theory of light.  Einstein wrote about the photoelectric
effect.  The photoelectric effect is the release of electrons from
certain metals or semiconductors by the action of light.  This area of
research is particularly important to the Einstein myth, because it was
for this topic that he unjustly received his 1921 Nobel prize.

But again, it was not Einstein, but Wilhelm Wien and Max Planck
(1858-1947) who deserve the credit.  The main point of Einstein's paper,
and the point for which he is given credit, is that light is emitted and
absorbed in discrete packets called quanta.  This was the explanation for
the photoelectric effect.  The photoelectric effect had been explained by
Heinrich Hertz in 1888.  Hertz and others, including Philippe Lenard,
worked on understanding this phenomenon.  Lenard was the first to show
that the energy of the electrons released in the photoelectric effect was
not governed by the intensity of the light but by the frequency of the
light.  This was an important breakthrough.

Wien and Planck were colleagues, and they were the fathers of modern-day
quantum theory.  By 1900, Max Planck, based upon his and Wien's work, had
shown that radiated energy was absorbed and emitted in finite units he
called quanta.  The only difference between his work of 1900 and
Einstein's work of 1905 was that Einstein limited himself to talking
about one particular type of energy - light energy.  But the principles
and equations governing the process in general had been deduced by Planck
in 1900.  Einstein himself admitted that the obvious conclusion of
Planck's work was that light also existed in discrete packets of energy.
Thus, nothing in this paper of Einstein's was original.

After the 1905 papers of Einstein were published, the scientific
community took little notice and Einstein continued his job at the patent
office until 1909, when it was arranged for him to take a position at a
school.  It was not until a 1919 newspaper headline that he gained any
notoriety.  With Einstein's academic appointment in 1909, he was placed
in a position where he could begin to use other peoples work as his own
more easily.  He engaged many of his students to look for ways to prove
the theories he had supposedly developed, or ways to apply those
theories; and then he could present the research as his own, or at least
take partial credit.  In this vein, in 1912, he began to try to express
his gravitational research in terms of a new, recently developed
calculus, which was conducive to understanding relativity.  This was the
beginning of his general theory of relativity, which he would publish in
1915.  But the mathematical work was not done by Einstein - he was
incapable of it.  Instead, it was performed by the mathematician Marcel
Grossmann, who used the mathematical principles developed by Georg
Friedrich Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866).  Riemann was the first to develop
a sound non-Euclidean geometry, which is the basis of the mathematics
used to formulate general relativity.

Einstein published an initial paper in 1913 based upon the work which
Grossmann did, adapting the math of Riemann to relativity.  But this
paper was filled with errors, and the conclusions were incorrect.  It
appears Grossmann was not smart enough to figure it out for Einstein.  So
Einstein was forced to look elsewhere to plagiarize his  general
theory.  Einstein published his correct general theory of relativity in
1915, and said prior to its publication that he, "completely succeeded in
convincing Hilbert and Klein."  He is referring to David Hilbert, perhaps
the most briliiant mathematician of the 20th century, and Felix Klein,
another mathematician who had been instrumental in the development of the
area of calculus that Grossmann had used to develop the general theory of
relativity for Einstein.

Einstein's statement regarding the two men would lead the reader to
believe that Einstein had changed Hilbert's and Klein's opinions
regarding general relativity, and that he had influenced them in their
thinking.  However, the exact opposite is true.  Einstein stole the
majority of his general relativity work from these two men, the rest
being taken from Grossmann.  Hilbert submitted for publication, a week
before Einstein completed his work, a paper which contained the correct
field equations of general relativity.  What this means is that Hilbert
wrote basically the exact same  paper, with the same conclusions, before
Einstein did.  Einstein would have had an opportunity to know of
Hilbert's work all along, because there were friends of his working for
Hilbert and because Einstein had seen Hilbert's paper in advance of
publishing his own.  Both of Hilbert's papers were, before being printed,
delivered in the form of a lecture.

Einstein presented his paper on November 25, 1915 in Berlin and Hilbert
had presented his paper on November 20 in Gottingen.  On November 18,
Hilbert received a letter from Einstein thanking him for sending a draft
of the treatise Hilbert was to deliver on the 20th.  So, in fact, Hilbert
had sent a copy of his work at least two weeks in advance to Einstein
before either of the two men delivered their lectures, but Einstein did
not send Hilbert an advance copy of his.  Therefore, this serves as proof
that Einstein quickly plagiarized the work and then presented it, hoping
to beat Hilbert to the punch.  Also, at the same time, Einstein publicly
began to belittle Hilbert, even though in the previous summer he had
praised him in an effort to get Hilbert to share his work with him.
Hilbert made the mistake of sending Einstein this draft copy, but still
he delivered his work first.

Not only did Hilbert publish his work first, but it was of much higher
quality than Einstein's.  It is now known that there are many problems
with assumptions made in Einstein's general theory paper.  We know today
that Hilbert was much closer to the truth.  Hilbert's paper is the
forerunner of the work of Erwin Schrodinger, whose thinking is the basis
of all modern quantum mechanics.

That the men discussed so far were the actual originators of the ideas
claimed by Einstein was known by the scientific community all along.  In
1940, a group of German physicists meeting in Austria declared that
"before Einstein, scientists like Lorentz, Hasenohrl, Poincare, etc., had
created the foundation of the theory of relativity."

End of Part 2.


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