Einstein was no lone genius • Hacker News Board

Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#61

Post by no1ne » Thu, Nov 26, 2015, 6:52 PM UTC

acqq wrote: post #60

no1ne wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also worth mentioning is that feminists said Mileva Maric, his wife was the real credit behind his work and PBS even aired a documentary (which just shows how even documentaries are biased), until the back-lash from the scientific community dismantled this fantasized myth.

Maric story is irrelevant in relation to Noether, I don't know why it's brought up, because: Emmy Noether really did this, it was really a big thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether's_theorem Certainly not a myth.

Just stating another thing worth mentioning.. that is all :)

Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#62

Post by khattam » Thu, Nov 26, 2015, 7:01 PM UTC

I don't know much about physics but I always thought that he was popular ONLY because he was a "Jewish German".

Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#63

Post by visakanv » Fri, Nov 27, 2015, 8:04 PM UTC

lsh wrote: post #57

visakanv wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! It takes the Universe billions of years to produce a cow. It takes that cow less than a year to produce many more cows.

Just one cow actually. If you're lucky you might get twins or three cows in two and a bit years but not many cows. Almost always just one. Sorry to be a pedant ;)

Whoops, I was thinking of puppies when I wrote cow. Need to get more sleep!

Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#64

Post by sriku » Sat, Nov 28, 2015, 2:00 PM UTC

LukeShu wrote: post #42

sriku wrote: post #26

What Einstein and others contributed towards GR in a decade is now generally taught in one semester of grad school physics. Ruling out the possibility that grad students are today >20x intelligent than Einstein, and considering that Einstein needed no more experimental results than already available to everyone in 1905, the emphasis ought not to be as simplistic as "lone genius", but on his perseverance and nose for…

I don't disagree with your thesis, but: understanding a solution to a problem, and coming up with the solution are two vastly different things.

While that's true, it's beside the point. In this case, it's all about finding and formulating the problem. The solution is the easier bit.

Consider this - how many of us have crossed off "m" on both sides of m d^r/dt^2 = -GMm/r^2 without actually noticing the problem with that? We're equating "mass" as associated with inertia and "mass" as associated with producing the gravitational effect. This is the central point from which pretty much all of GR emerges.