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
History of special relativity was its development by Minkowski into a spacetime theory. Consequently, by about 1911, most theoretical physicists accepted special relativity. In 1912 Wilhelm Wien recommended both Lorentz (for the mathematical framework) and Einstein (for reducing it to a simple principle) for the Nobel Prize in Physics – although it was decided by the Nobel committee not to award the prize for special relativity. Only a minority of theoretical physicists such as Abraham, Lorentz, Poincaré, or Langevin still believed in the existence of an aether. Einstein later (1918–1920) qualified his position by arguing that one can speak about a relativistic aether, but