I disagree as to your opinions, which seem to just disagree for the sake of disagreement. The elements of Special Relativity were around. I stand by the assertion that someone else would have developed that theory within a few short years had Einstein not. And I stand by the assertion that General Relativity, had Einstein not existed, would have taken several decades before anyone would have fully put it together.
For anything Einstein is given credit for after about 1918, it was just the momentum of his popularity. Anytime another name is on anything, it is that other name that did most of the work, and because it was based on Einstein's earlier work, his name went on it also. And this is absolutely normal and expected in academia. Nearly all physicists do their life's work before they are 30, usually by the time they are 23. Einstein was nearly 40 when he published his Theory of General Relativity, and that is extremely out of the ordinary. You are seeing things, perpetuating the myth, when you place Einstein, the man, central to any breakthroughs after about 1918.
> Einstein was nearly 40 ... extremely out of the ordinary.
Over all Nobel Prizes, it happened around 1/3 of the time. In Physics since 2000, it happened 80% of the time [1]. Care to rethink this claim?
Have you read the original papers? I have. Do you understand the math, and can do calculations related to relativity? I can.
Again the claim General Relativity was not being solved by others? I just demonstrated Hilbert was right on Einstein’s heels, with a paper published right after Einstein, with the same results.
Why stick to that gun when I just cited the evidence, that you can check yourself? The original papers are both online for you to read.
Einstein and Hilbert even worked quite a bit together on it. Of course Hilbert was interested and working on it too.
By several decades do you mean a few months? Is this time dilation?
The specific fallacies you have chosen to employ to attempt support your frail argument are interesting. I have read Special Relativity in translation, it is short enough and there is little math. My German is not even pedestrian, so no, I have not read Einstein's original article on General Relativity.
No, I meant what I said. Special Relativity would have appeared within a few years of Einstein's publication had it not occurred, but for General Relativity derived elsewhere would have taken decades at least. Hilbert didn't have it and wasn't on anyone's heels.
>General Relativity derived elsewhere would have taken decades at least
Is this based on the quality of evidence you used when you claimed people over 40 don't do much science? That turned out to be wildly incorrect.
What do you base the "decades" claim on? There was no new math needing invented, no new empirical evidence needed, no new physics needed, and many people were close at the time, and certainly more and more physicists were heading down the same paths.
BTW, Einstein's most cited paper, by far, is from 1935, written when he was 56. I suspect that's some evidence he did good work after general relativity.
So in one breath you're saying GR would have appeared quickly if Einstein had not described it, and in the other you're saying he was the legend of his myth and productive his entire career.
It is simply my opinion that GR was so amazing, insightful, and non-obvious that it would have taken a similar miracle as Einstein himself for someone else to have intuited it and worked it out, but given enough time, eventually it would have appeared.
BTW, Einstein's most cited paper, by far, is from 1935, written when he was 56. I suspect that's some evidence he did good work after general relativity.
OR it is evidence that he had decent research assistants.
For anything Einstein is given credit for after about 1918, it was just the momentum of his popularity. Anytime another name is on anything, it is that other name that did most of the work, and because it was based on Einstein's earlier work, his name went on it also. And this is absolutely normal and expected in academia. Nearly all physicists do their life's work before they are 30, usually by the time they are 23. Einstein was nearly 40 when he published his Theory of General Relativity, and that is extremely out of the ordinary. You are seeing things, perpetuating the myth, when you place Einstein, the man, central to any breakthroughs after about 1918.