Who Did the Math for General Relativity First, Einstein or Hilbert?
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Re: Who Did the Math for General Relativity First, Einstein or Hilbert?
#2Hilbert was first to think it, Einstein was first to publish it
Re: Who Did the Math for General Relativity First, Einstein or Hilbert?
#3Hilbert was first to think it, Einstein was first to publish it
Actually, seems Hilbert pushed Einstein to think and publish it first
Re: Who Did the Math for General Relativity First, Einstein or Hilbert?
#4A bit of a nit but the section on 'Timeline of relativity theory' should probably start with Galileo - this is still reflected in terminology like 'Galilean principle of relativity', 'Galilean transformation', 'Galilean invariance' etc
Re: Who Did the Math for General Relativity First, Einstein or Hilbert?
#5I find it uncanny how a "who got it first?" become a salient question today whereas as the time it was obvious both were excited at collaborating to make a theory that works well.
Really makes you wonder what would research would like without the race for publication.
What I was taught about this "rivalry" is that Einstein struggled with some parts of the theory and Hilbert proposed some complicated mathematical tools that Einstein at first felt should not be necessary but ended up using after a few months of frustration.
Re: Who Did the Math for General Relativity First, Einstein or Hilbert?
#6Does it matter?
I think this misses the forest for the trees.
Yeah, we can focus on the first to discover something, but awards and acknowledgments are often on first to publish, e.g. Make it public.
After all, what does your grand descovery matter if you're the only one that knows about it and someone working in parallel finds it also and publishes first? And how does the scientific community verify the veracity of discovering first if you didnt publish first?
Hilbert might have know about it first, but what does it matter to the world writ large if he didnt publish? Einstein published, and thus the world knows and he is thus recognized for that.
Re: Who Did the Math for General Relativity First, Einstein or Hilbert?
#7I find it uncanny how a "who got it first?" become a salient question today whereas as the time it was obvious both were excited at collaborating to make a theory that works well. Really makes you wonder what would research would like without the race for publication. What I was taught about this "rivalry" is that Einstein struggled with some parts of the theory and Hilbert proposed some complicated mathematical tool…
I have gotten the impression that Einstein learned the math that he needed to, when he needed to learn it, and that he had hoped to avoid learning the sort of math that Hilbert was already somewhat comfortable with.
Re: Who Did the Math for General Relativity First, Einstein or Hilbert?
#8This reminds me of Wallace pushing Darwin to publish first.
Re: Who Did the Math for General Relativity First, Einstein or Hilbert?
#9I find it uncanny how a "who got it first?" become a salient question today whereas as the time it was obvious both were excited at collaborating to make a theory that works well. Really makes you wonder what would research would like without the race for publication. What I was taught about this "rivalry" is that Einstein struggled with some parts of the theory and Hilbert proposed some complicated mathematical tool…
I have gotten the impression that Einstein learned the math that he needed to, when he needed to learn it, and that he had hoped to avoid learning the sort of math that Hilbert was already somewhat comfortable with.
Absolutely.
Einstein is a bit famous for punching well above his weight compared to his own mathematical background. Most of his great work involves beautiful arguments that requiring only maths that a good-but-not-genius high school student could understand.
The GR paper is a bit disappointing in comparison, because after setting out as much as he can of the physics, he just dives into big equations one after another. That probably roughly follows his own trajectory: first he had some intuition for how space-time curvature could cause some gravity-like effects. But to nail it down he just had to buckle-up and learn the mathematics of non-euclidean geometry.
The nice thing about the paper is that it was one of the first applications of such mathematics to physics, so Einstein takes the time to explain it (which also blows out the equation count).
Re: Who Did the Math for General Relativity First, Einstein or Hilbert?
#10Einstein was a pacifist and agreed with Spinoza's philosophy. I speculate Einstein just wanted things published the earliest in any case and for the next problems to be focused on.