If it's not true, then it's a well-cooked story...

 If it's not true, then it's a well-cooked story...

 

Well, you have all heard the question, "Did Einstein steal the Maxwell-Lorentz theory?" So, it's not a question that could lead to conspiracy theories or anything like that, anyway. Einstein did indeed use the Maxwell-Lorentz formulas, he named them within his treatise, but he didn't include a citation.

 

It is quite possible that both Lorentz and as well as Poincare, who also worked out these mathematical formulas, may have never understood their physical meaning, i.e. how these formulas interpreted the physical world.

 

In any case, Einstein himself, in order to finally arrive at the theory of relativity, went through a certain amount of reflection and thoughts. It should not escape us that he started with the concept of the mechanical ether, which he abandoned by accepting the constancy of the speed of light.

 

It was on this change of views that he tried to avoid getting involved with the Maxwell-Lorentz formulas by devising a theory of emission, but he continued with these formulas - at least in the part where they were applicable - and abandoned his original notions of the wave nature of light.

 

This was perhaps the time when Einstein could unify the two conceptions of light (wave and particle), since, of course, he had relativised the concept of time.

 

The irony of the story is that this synthesis of the two theories was something that was achieved more than 20 years later, with quantum field theory, but it never met with the satisfaction of Einstein himself.

 

So tell me, if this story was not true, could it not well be considered a well-cooked story?

In the photos you can see:

Albert Einstein

Henri Poincaré 

Hendrik Lorentz

James Clerk Maxwell