History of special relativity History of special relativity The history of special relativity consists of many theoretical results and empirical findings obtained by Albert A. Michelson, Hendrik Lorentz, Henri Poincaré and others. It culminated in the theory of special relativity proposed by Albert Einstein and subsequent work of Max Planck, Hermann Minkowski and others. Although Isaac Newton based his physics on absolute time and space, he also adhered to the principle of relativity of Galileo Galilei restating it precisely for mechanical systems . This can be stated as: as far as the laws of mechanics are concerned, all observers in inertial motion are equally
Criticism of the theory of relativity of the theoretical physicists and mathematicians by 1911, it was not before publication of the experimental results of the eclipse expeditions (1919) by a group around Arthur Stanley Eddington that relativity was noticed by the public. Following Eddington's publication of the eclipse results, Einstein was glowingly praised in the mass media, and was compared to Nikolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton, which caused a popular "relativity hype" ("Relativitätsrummel", as it was called by Sommerfeld, Einstein, and others). This triggered a counter-reaction of some scientists and scientific laymen who could not accept the concepts of modern physics, including relativity theory