Birdman Bryant on Einstein

Correspondence on "Einstein Was a Fraud"

To whom it may concern:

I have recently come upon an article which asserts in a credible way that Einstein plagiarized most of his work. Altho the article is not properly documented, the author obviously knows his subject. (I have communicated with the author and requested documentation, but he has not yet provided it, and I am uncertain of his willingness to do so.) Another unfortunate feature of the article is its obvious bias against Jews -- a bias which might or might not be justified, but which is clearly inappropriate here.

If the assertions in this article are true, it is obviously of vital importance for the history of science, as it would change Einstein's status from a 20th century scientific icon to a probably-incompetent plagairist. Therefore, I request that you, as someone with both interest and knowledge of the history of Relativity Theory, give me an informed judgment on the correctness of this article. I have posted it on my webpage at

http://www.thebirdman.org/Index/Others/Others-EinsteinWasAFraud.htm

Thank you for your interest. -John Bryant

Thanks for your inquiry to the Niels Bohr Library. I have looked at the article in question. It is completely without value. Of course it is true that Einstein built on the work of his predecessors, and in his work, as in the work of all scientists, one can easily trace ideas that were already present in one or another form. Even the greatest scientific work consists largely of combining, rethinking and clarifying concepts that are in the air. Einstein actually went considerably beyond this. The paper has too many errors to be worth detailed analysis. Let me just mention the first extremely ignorant error in it. This is the statement that Maxwell already showed the constancy of the speed of light. Einstein's great contribution (well, one of his many great contributions) was the fantastic hypothesis that the speed of light is constant in all reference frames--something Maxwell literally could not conceive, something that all other physicists of his time and down to Einstein's found almost unthinkable, and yet something which every experiment has shown to be completely true.

If you don't know what I mean by constant in all reference frames--(something the author of the paper clearly does not know)--then you should not be worrying about any of this until you have read one of the many good books explaining, with simple high-school algebra, what Einstein discovered.

To sum up, there is very good reason why all serious physicists (aside from some half-mad anti-Semitic ones during the Nazi years) have admired and praised Einstein for his work. You are not doing anybody a service by putting on your site a copy of this anti-Semitic screed, which is not even original but only one more version of old nonense, propagated by Nazis in the 1930s and long since refuted.

: Spencer Weart : sweart@aip.org
: Director, Center for History of Physics
: American Institute of Physics
: One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740 USA
: Phone (301) 209-3174 : Fax (301) 209-0882
: Check our Website... http://www.aip.org/history/

To: Pastor VS Herrell From: John Bryant Re: Einstein article CC: various

Yesterday I sent an email message to about 10 experts in the history of science and/or relativity theory asking them to read the article Einstein Was a Fraud. I have received just 2 responses, both negative, tho one respondee seemed not to have read the article. The other response is given below. I am going to publish it along with the article, and I welcome your response, if you care to make one (If you do not, I will note the fact). I now have less confidence that the article is correct, so I urge you to put your article in proper scholarly form, to seek properly qualified individuals who will support you (or correct your errors), and above all to remove the anti-Jewish remarks which, whether true or not, are inappropriate in the present context. -jb