Who have you heard of? Albert Einstein or David Hilbert?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always known of the German-born physicist and humanitarian Albert Einstein but, until a few days ago, I’d never heard of the German mathematician David Hilbert. I came across Hilbert in the book I am currently reading: “Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey To Quantum Gravity” by the Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli.

In his explanation of the origins of the theory of relativity, Rovelli presents the exposition of the theory as a race that could have gone either way: “The sprint to the finish between the two giants was a nail-biting affair, eventually decided by a matter of just a few days”.

Now, in the case of many scientific discoveries, there are rival claims to being first and/or questions about how far the discoverer used the work of others. In the case of the theory of relativity, you can see the discussion here.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 4th, 2017 at 10:13 am and is filed under Science & technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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