Einstein's Opponents: 100 Years Ago and Today
Einstein possessed an astonishing ability: he left no one indifferent. He knew how to evoke sympathy, and his lectures were a great success. But he also inspired, and still does, a terrible hatred that drove people mad.
One of Einstein's first opponents was the renowned experimental physicist (formerly simply physicist) Philipp Lenard, winner of the 1905 Nobel Prize. The two outstanding scientists had fundamentally different approaches to explaining physical phenomena, opposing political positions, and fundamentally incompatible worldviews. Their confrontation did not remain confined to traditional scientific debate; it spread to the streets, newspapers, and radio. The irreconcilable struggle between Philipp Lenard, one of the first Nobel laureates in physics, and the author of the theory of relativity is well known to historians of science and Einstein's biographers. Less well known is the background to the conflict, which is also quite instructive. A consistent opponent of Einstein's theories was Ernst Gehrcke, head of the optics department at the National Physikalisch-Technische Institut in Berlin. He called the theory of relativity "the result of mass hypnosis." Gehrcke corresponded with many of Einstein's opponents, including physicists Philipp Lenard, Ludwig Glaser, Hermann Fricke, Johannes Stark, and Otto Lummer, as well as philosophers Oskar Kraus, Melchior Palagy, Leonore Frobenius-Kühn, and others. These names represent only a small fraction of the professional scientists who opposed Einstein in defense of the concepts of classical physics, which he had discarded or modified during his scientific revolution. Beyond this large group, there was also a vast army of amateur scientists, engineers, lawyers, doctors, and attorneys—who, thanks to reading popular science books, had mastered the basics of physics but did not understand the essence of the author's proposals for the theory of relativity. In the 19th century, Germany saw a flourishing of popular science literature, primarily on physics.
One of these opponents of relativity, cited by Arrhenius in his report to the Nobel Committee, was Hermann Fricke, a physicist and employee of the Patent Office, who proposed his own "vortex" theory of the ether. Fricke considered the main advantage of his theory to be its clarity, as it was entirely based on hydromechanical analogies. The theory's creator crammed it with a plethora of unfounded assumptions, generalizations, and suppositions, but it lacked the most important thing—any mathematical formalism. From a scientific standpoint, this theory was worthless, but Fricke caused quite a stir around criticism of Einstein and even Lorentz as a forerunner of the theory of relativity. Demands for clarity and simplicity in the theory easily meshed with political and nationalistic concerns about the worldview of the author of the theory of relativity. Lenard and his followers increasingly believed that the noted features of Einstein's theory were linked to his origins. This was only a step toward dividing physics into German (Aryan), based on the clarity and simplicity of natural laws, and Jewish, replete with formalism and mathematics, and far from comprehensible to the "common man." On this point, Lenard was readily joined by many anti-Semitic critics, for whom the most important thing was that Einstein was Jewish.
Pais's book, or rather its 29th chapter, is the source of the erroneous assertion that Einstein received the prize for his theory of the photoelectric effect, as well as the simplistic notion that Gullstrand simply made an unfortunate error in his assessment as the reason for the lack of recognition of the theory of relativity. The lack of recognition of the theory of relativity runs much deeper than this simple reason. It would be wrong to ignore the political views of the 1920s in Germany and Sweden.
The development of the general theory of relativity is one of the most impressive scientific achievements of the 20th century. The fact that the most prestigious scientific award in the community has failed to recognize this achievement is an anomaly at best, and a scandal at worst. We must learn from this mistake!
Biographies come in all shapes and sizes. Some are good, some flawed, and some poisonous. Their goal isn't to portray a scientist, but to humiliate them, to knock them off the pedestal to which grateful humanity has raised them.
In 2009, a program from the "Obvious-Incredible" series aired in which Academician Arnold accused Einstein of plagiarism. We had a separate lecture on this. How should Arnold's statements be understood? They were like a bit of trolling by Kapitsa; they used to call them a prank. For a long time, Arnold's thesis served as a trump card for anti-Semites. Now that trump card has been knocked out of their hands.