New book--"Einstein's Mistakes: The Human Failings of a Genius"

A new book, Einstein's Mistakes: The Human Failings of a Genius by Hans C Ohanian, will premire in September 2008 discussing the mistakes of the famous equation.

Promotional copy:

"Many of [Einstein's] ground-breaking discoveries were blighted by mistakes, ranging from serious misconceptions in physics to blatant errors in mathematics".

Ohanian has provided an eight-page taster of his work...in which he presents a "critical examination" of how Einstein went about proving his most famous equation E = MC2. All of these proofs, claims Ohanian, "suffer from mistakes". This is not the first time that Einstein's proofs have come under scrutiny, with various detractors and supporters arguing since at least 1908 — three years after the equation was first derived.

And...

Why did Einstein's name become so closely linked with E = mc2? To a large extent this can be attributed to the influence he exerted by his repeated attempts to find a proof. These attempts, though defective, served to promote this equation and instigated other physicists to search for better proofs. However, as Mehra remarked in a letter to Wigner in a different context, to some extent it must be attributed to "the sociology of science, the question of the cat and the cream. Einstein was the big cat of relativity, and the whole saucer of its cream belonged to him by right and by legend, or so most people assume!"

Abstract:

Although Einstein's name is closely linked with the celebrated relation E = mc2 between mass and energy, a critical examination of the more than half dozen "proofs" of this relation that Einstein produced over a span of forty years reveals that all these proofs suffer from mistakes. Einstein introduced unjustified assumptions, committed fatal errors in logic, or adopted low-speed, restrictive approximations. He never succeeded in producing a valid general proof applicable to a realistic system with arbitrarily large internal and external (that is, translational) speeds. The first such general proof was produced by Max Laue in 1911 (for "closed" systems with a time-independent energy-momentum tensor) and it was generalized by Felix Klein in 1918 (for arbitrary time-dependent "closed" systems).

"Einstein's E = mc2 mistakes"

E=mc2...Einstein's idea?

Has anyone ever heard of Olinto De Pretto ? History of science scholarship by Umberto Bartocci [Professor of Mathematics at the University of Perugia, Italy] has revealed that the famous equation [E=mc2] attributed to Einstein was published two years prior to Einstein's publication in 1905 in an Italian journal ["Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti" (The Veneto Institute of Science, Letters and Proceedings) on February 27th, 1904 by Olinto De Pretto entitled "Ipotesi dell’etere nella vita dell’universo" (Hypothesis of the Essence of the Universe). Is this the making of an urban myth or the truth? It is difficult to determine for even though the Italian journals are available, they haven't been translated and I certainly don't read Italian. Furthermore, the elements of this material is potential for a miniseries on the "Discover" channel: Olinto De Pretto..."In 1921, a year before Einstein received the Nobel Prize, De Pretto was shot dead, murdered by a woman over a business dispute." Einstein was fluent in Italian and could have see the publication. True or not, it is interesting to read the cadre who wish to debunk Einstein for whatever their group or personal agendas may be. Does it really make much difference whether Einstein culled previous information to condense that data into more meaningful statements? It may well be true that there is over emphasis placed on one individual to arrive at the published conclusions in 1905 and better historically to acknowledge the contributions [including his wife Mileva] of predecessor's input. Umberto Bartocci has written a book about all of this.

Read More