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 as real time. (Yet, Poincaré's contributions were rarely mentioned in the first years after 1905.) All of those expressions, (Lorentz-Einstein theory, relativity principle, relativity theory) were used by different physicists alternately in the next years. Kaufmann (1905, 1906) announced the results of his new experiments on the charge-to-mass ratio, i.e. the velocity dependence of mass. They represented, in his opinion, a clear refutation of the relativity principle and the Lorentz-Einstein-Theory, and a confirmation of Abraham's theory. For some years Kaufmann's experiments represented a weighty objection against the relativity principle, although it was criticized by Planck and Adolf Bestelmeyer (1906). Following