Marcel Grossmann and his contribution to the general theory of relativity

https://ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org/html/1312.4068

by joebig • 2 years ago

75 33 2 years ago

ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org

joebig• 2 years ago

One of Grossman's bound, beautifully handwritten notes, many which were once used by Einstein to get through university exams: https://www.e-manuscripta.ch/zut/content/titleinfo/146744

soperj• 2 years ago

I'm not sure how he writes pages and pages like that, without even crossing out a word because of a mistake? I feel like he must have re-written some of these notes afterwards, but even then, how do you never make a mistake?

throwbadubadu• 2 years ago

My notes looked like crap almost always, but I knew some girls in university where notes looked good while writing and then exactly did this rewriting for perfectionism (and besides that, this written reiteration is likely quite good to ingrain it, like spaced learning).

abdullahkhalids• 2 years ago

Any such notes are most likely rewritten form of rougher notes written elsewhere. Then again, it's not difficult to write without making a mistake.

Think about musicians who improvise for quite a long time, playing hundreds of bars, while never playing a wrong note.

markus_zhang• 2 years ago

I think most likely the notes were the result of re-processing information written down earlier -- if the original content was taken from a class. Nevertheless, that is very impressive -- almost a product of art. I wish I could get one copy.

rqtwteye• 2 years ago

My parents can write like that (or could when they were not in their 90s yet). School back then put a lot of emphasis on good handwriting.

I on the other hand have handwriting that's barely legible after decades of typing on keyboards.

3abiton• 2 years ago

After I read Moonlighting with Einstein (about mnemonics), I wondered how throughout the ages, technologies shaped the way we think and structure thoughts. This closely relate to it. I assume a 100 years ago, academic had far larger memory capacity than the average peer in today's world. We kinda traded memory for higher CPU frequency (or maybe just decreased our memory, maybe our software is digressing). But this could explain why the chain of thought was so clear to never make a mistake? I wonder if there is a research on this fascinating topic.

pillusmany• 2 years ago

A bit of survivorship bias in your question.

You are comparing the absolute best from 100 years ago with the average peer from today.

There were also far far fewer "researchers" back then.

boringuser24• 2 years ago

If you want to talk about contributions to the general theory of relativity, why not talk about the people that Einstein is alleged to have plagiarized, Henri Poincaré, David Hilbert and Hendrik Antoon Lorentz?

pvg• 2 years ago

Because the author wanted to talk about Grossman? It's odd to criticize a piece for covering its chosen topic.

boringuser24• 2 years ago

Right, it's not so much a critique of the author's work that I've presented as much as a meta-commentary on the article in the context that we're posting on a forum that aggregates content for public consumption.

The author is fine, he can publish whatever he pleases. I can't stop him, as you've pointed out.

From a meta-commentary perspective, it is actually quite interesting that Einstein's alleged plagiarism covers many diverse sources.

codethief• 2 years ago

What exactly do you think Einstein plagiarized?

boringuser24• 2 years ago

I don't think anything, im referring to allegations.

BenoitP5• 2 years ago

Relativity was ripe for discovery. And a lot of other scientists came very close:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_priority_dispute

But that's just how science work, and no ill will would have been employed by any participant; just as their fanclub want to pit them against one another.

optimalsolver• 2 years ago

Relevant username.

BenoitP5• 2 years ago

Plagiarized is too strong of a word. Poincaré too based his work on Lorentz's. And both with Einstein he sort of derived E = m c * 2, independently and earlier. But Einstein's publication was more complete.

Science is not totally ordered, the same invention can occur at two different places from the same shoulders of the same giant. Science is just partially ordered.

boringuser24• 2 years ago

The problem is when the "ordering" of science is horizontal.

I.e. Einstein reading their works and copying their conclusions.

This is highly likely to have happened, regardless of the "completeness" of one work or another.

The thing I like about this is that it levels celebrity (something man-made) with rationality.

Why not reduce Einstein's celebrity? It reflects reality more accurately to do so.

pnin• 2 years ago

Neither Poincare nor Lorentz are relevant to the genesis of General Relativity. The only relevant priority dispute is whether Einstein or Hilbert wrote down the correct field equations first. This was after a long correspondence between the two, in which Einstein explained his ideas -- there is no dispute that Einstein "invented" General Relativity. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity_priority_di...

BenoitP5• 2 years ago

Neither Poincare nor Lorentz are relevant to the genesis of General Relativity

Well, that's just plain wrong. From the horse's mouth:

As we know, this is connected with the relativity of the concepts of "simultaneity" and "shape of moving bodies." To fill this gap, I introduced the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light, which I borrowed from H. A. Lorentz's theory of the stationary luminiferous ether, and which, like the principle of relativity, contains a physical assumption that seemed to be justified only by the relevant experiments

Marcel Grossmann and his contribution to the general theory of relativity

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