Hilbert and Einstein
Ingrid Voigt
yesterday I read in a book review the following side remark:
... David Hilbert, der wahrscheinlich von Albert Einstein
abschrieb ...
In English: ... David Hilbert, who probably copied from/
took from/ cheated from /plagiarized Albert Einstein ...
Does anybody know what this is referring to?
Thx, Ingrid
JCA
I think that this has to do with the vacuum gravitational field
equations (Ricci = 0). Hilbert published them first but, for all I know,
devoid of the physical flesh that Einstein endowed them with. There was
an ensuing priority controversy, and talk of Einstein plagiarizing
Hilbert (and viceversa, as you point out). Nobody, to my knowledge,
disputes nowadays Einstein's original contribution.
Chris Hillman
On Fri, 19 Mar 1999, Ingrid Voigt wrote:
> yesterday I read in a book review the following side remark:
> ... David Hilbert, der wahrscheinlich von Albert Einstein
> abschrieb ...
>
> In English: ... David Hilbert, who probably copied from/
> took from/ cheated from /plagiarized Albert Einstein ...
>
> Does anybody know what this is referring to?
Good grief, some authors certainly like to make deliberately offensive and
inflammatory remarks :-( Who was this, by the way?
Anyway, this person is no doubt referring to an unpleasant (but private)
quarrel between Einstein and Hilbert over whom should get credit for the
field equations of gtr. Briefly, both men found the correct equations
within a few days of each other, and had collaborated intensively (by
postcard!) in the preceeding weeks, informing each other about the details
of their struggles toward the correct equations. Hilbert eventually
discovered that by simply guessing the "correct" Lagrangian, he could very
easily derive the correct field equations; Einstein took a much more
roundabout (but better motivated) approach. These days most textbooks
cover both approaches (or rather, Einstein's route and one or two modern
formulations of Hilbert's Lagrangian approach). The history is covered in
detail in many books, including the excellent biography of Einstein by
Pais. Once you know more about the details, you'll see that neither man
"stole" from the other, and that both approaches (Einstein's and
Hilbert's) to "deriving" the field equations from more fundamental
postulates remain valuable and even central to the subject.
Chris Hillman
Chris Hillman
On Sat, 20 Mar 1999, david raoul derbes wrote:
> Thanks, Chris, for your very informative and interesting post.
>
> I knew that Hilbert (or Hilbert & Palatini) had derived the Einstein
^^^^^^^
Hilbert. The Palatini formulation came later, in 1919.
> equations shortly before Einstein did (by maybe a few days), but I did
> not realize that they'd had a quarrel about it, nor that they had
> collaborated on GR for a while.
The whole thing was over and done with a few months later. I can't
believe we're even discussing this! It's probably the -least- important
footnote in the whole history of the subject :-(
I notice you didn't mention the name of the author guilty of the
inflammatory statement about X stealing from Y. Is it possible that you
exajerated a half-remembered remark?
> I should more carefully reread Reid's "Hilbert" and Pais.
Just to learn about an unfortunate quarrel between two friends? Sheesh!
It almost sounds like you want to book them for Geraldo :-(
> Off-topic, what's your impression of the GR in Landau-Lifshitz, "Classical
> Theory of Fields"?
You mean, is this a good textbook? Sure, in fact the whole series is one
of the most influential textbooks written in this century, but if your
interest is specifically in gtr I'd recommend supplementing Landau &
Lifschitz with a more modern book like Wald or d'Inverno or Huggett & Tod
(in the LMS Student Series). Landau & Lifschitz is still the only
elementary textbook which attempts to explain the BKL paradigm, for
instance (the L is BKL is Lifschitz, not Landau).
> And if I can impose one last one, have you seen a slim
> paperback from the U of Chicago Press by (I think) Weinrich called
> "Geometrical Vectors"? I stumbled onto it one day at a college bookstore
> and haven't seen it since.
I've never seen this.
Chris Hillman