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Re: Doppler question



As far as I remember, there was a whole article on this issue (historical
independence of Einstein's invention of special relativity and
Michelson-Morly's experiment) by Eric Mendoza in AJP in the past. Many
people saw the asymmetry of relative movements in electromagnetism, few
worried about that and suggested some fundamental innovations, but only
Einstein thought that it cannot be that nature violates relativism of
motion. Therefore, the new theory, which happened to be one of the most
fundamental we know, got its name,
'The theory of relativity", and not other, one could suggest. Born, in his
"Einstein's theory of Relativity," presented a very nice overview of that
time which might be instructive in providing an insight into the great
minds stream of thought.

Igal
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Now that Tim has mentioned it, I recall an article by Holton from AJP that
makes the same claim. It was collected in the AAPT reader on relativity,
but the original article dates from 1958, I think.

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Bruce Callen

Gerald Holton has a chapter is his book "Thematic Origins of Scientific
Thought" on this issue. He looks at quite a lot of evidence and builds a
convincing, albeit circumstantial, case that Einstein didn't know of
Michelson-Morley. I haven't read the article for several years so I
don't remember many of the fine points. A good read, though.

-Tim
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