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 within general relativity. However, as pointed out by Willem de Sitter in 1916, Mach's principle is not completely fulfilled in general relativity because there exist matter-free solutions of the field equations. This means that the "inertio-gravitational field", which describes both gravity and inertia, can exist in the absence of gravitating matter. However, as pointed out by Einstein, there is one fundamental difference between this concept and absolute space of Newton: the inertio-gravitational field of general relativity is determined by matter, thus it is not absolute. In the "Bad Nauheim Debate" (1920) between Einstein and (among others) Philipp Lenard, the latter