Einstein: His Life and Universe

enabled him to

interpret

the mathematical formalism as a new theory of space and time, whereas for Poincare it was a generalized version of Lorentz’s electron theory.” Miller has also explored this topic in “Scientific Creativity: A Comparative Study of Henri Poincare and Albert Einstein,”

Creativity Research Journal

5 (1992): 385.

67

. Arthur Miller e-mail to the author, Aug. 1, 2005.

68

. Hoffmann 1972, 78. Prince Louis de Broglie, the quantum theorist who theorized that particles could behave as waves, said of Poincare in 1954, “Yet Poincare did not take the decisive step; he left to Einstein the glory of grasping all the consequences of the principle of relativity.” See Schilpp, 112; Galison, 304.

69

. Dyson.

70

. Miller 1981, 162.

71

. Holton 1973, 178; Pais 1982, 166; Galison, 304; Miller 1981. All four authors have done important work on Poincare and the credit he deserves, from which some of this section is drawn. I am grateful to Prof. Miller for a copy of his paper “Why Did Poincare Not Formulate Special Relativity in 1905?” and for helping to edit this section.

72

. Miller 1984, 37–38; Henri Poincare lecture, May 4, 1912, University of London, cited in Miller 1984, 37; Pais 1982, 21, 163–168. Pais writes: “In all his life, Poincare never understood the basis of special relativity . . . It is apparent that Poincare either never understood or else never accepted the Theory of Relativity.” See also Galison, 242 and passim.

73

. Einstein to Mileva Mari

, Mar. 27, 1901.

74

. Michelmore, 45.

75

. Overbye, 139; Highfield and Carter, 114; Einstein and Mileva Mari

to Conrad Habicht, July 20, 1905.

76

. Overbye, 140; Trbuhovic-Gjuric, 92–93; Zackheim, 62.

77

. The issue of whether Mari

’s name was in any way ever on a manuscript of the special theory is a knotted one, but it turns out that the single source for such reports, a late Russian physicist, never actually said precisely that, and there is no other evidence at all to support the contention. For an explanation, see John Stachel’s appendix to the introduction of

Einstein’s Miraculous Year

, centennial reissue edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), lv.

78

. “The Relative Importance of Einstein’s Wife,”

The Economist

, Feb. 24, 1990; Evan H. Walker, “Did Einstein Espouse His Spouse’s Ideas?”,

Physics Today

, Feb. 1989; Ellen Goodman, “Out from the Shadows of Great Men,”

Boston Globe

, Mar. 15, 1990;