The most famous theories that Einstein gets credit for weren’t originally his ideas.

[Elie]

Special Relativity
Einstein's first paper on relativity was published in 1905. Length Contraction was first written about by Fitzgerald in 1889.
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac...itzGerald.html

Read this description of length contraction. It will give you an idea of its significance.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu...ativ/tdil.html
Basically, the length of a moving object in its direction of motion is shorter than it would be if it were at rest.

There's a difference between the theory Einstein published and the length contraction by George Fitzgerald. With Fitzgerald's theory there's an ether and with Einstein’s theory there is no ether. The link I gave describes both Fitzgerald’s theory and Einstein’s theory. They have the same description even though there’s an ether in Fitzgerald’s theory and not in Einstein’s.
Earlier than 1905, Poincare pointed out that you can apply Occam's razor to Fitzgerald's length contraction theory and as a result you will have the same theory but without the ether. That length contraction theory is the same as the length contraction that Einstein wrote about later on.

Time Dilation theory was first developed by some guy named Larmor in 1897 and another guy named Poincare.
This will explain the theory:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu...ativ/tdil.html
Basically, a moving clock runs slower than a clock at rest.
Applying Occam’s razor to Larmor’s theory you get the same theory that appeared in Einstein’s later 1905 paper.


The Lorentz Transformations were first derived by Joseph Larmor. Here’s the Lorentz Transformation
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu...iv/ltrans.html
Again you can apply Occam's razor and you have the same Lorentz transformations that Einstein would later write about.

Some people give Einstein credit for the Special Theory of relativity because of his 'derivation' of the Lorentz Transformations, but his derivation wasn’t any good.



E=m (c^2)
Einstein was not the first to publish this theory.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/1999/nov/11/rorycarroll


General relativity

The Einstein field equations are the theory of general relativity and Einstein wasn't the first to get them published. David Hilbert was the first
http://www.nobelprize.org/educationa...history-1.html

[-Huey-]

Liar...................

[Da Machine]

Quit lying.

[UTEP]

fibber.....

[Barn]

Einstein received the Nobel Prize primarily for the explanation of the photoelectric effect and basically proving that quantum theory was a serious idea and expanding on it quite a bit.

So even if everything you said was true he'd still be an ATG Physicist.

You seem to have taken the fact he may not have been the first to consider the idea and then stating that this means all the work he done on an idea is rendered non-important just because he wasn't the orignial conjurer of the idea, which is not how Physics works.

[Miburo]

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." That's science. Now gtfo.

[Elie]

Einstein received the Nobel Prize primarily for the explanation of the photoelectric effect and basically proving that quantum theory was a serious idea and expanding on it quite a bit.

So even if everything you said was true he'd still be an ATG Physicist.

You seem to have taken the fact he may not have been the first to consider the idea and then stating that this means all the work he done on an idea is rendered non-important just because he wasn't the orignial conjurer of the idea, which is not how Physics works.

Yeah, you're right

[Wilhelm]

This could be said about almost any scientist credited for a big "discovery". Schrodinger, Pauling, Feynman etc. You're judging it wrong. It's not about coming up with something 100% new, it's about seeing connections and the significance of previously unrelated things. Also, what made Einstein a star (not what got him the Nobel, but what made him the most famous scientist in the world) was his prediction of the effects of general relativity on light during a solar eclipse in 1919. That took some really guts.

[Cuauhtémoc1520]

That's the way science works. It's like a gigantic puzzle where many people work on it over and over until there's a break through. Einstein was so great because he deciphered much of what many people before him couldn't.