General relativity priority dispute

rdf:langString General relativity priority dispute

rdf:langString Albert Einstein presented the theories of special relativity and general relativity in publications that either contained no formal references to previous literature, or referred only to a small number of his predecessors for fundamental results on which he based his theories, most notably to the work of Henri Poincaré and Hendrik Lorentz for special relativity, and to the work of David Hilbert, Carl F. Gauss, Bernhard Riemann, and Ernst Mach for general relativity. Subsequently, claims have been put forward about both theories, asserting that they were formulated, either wholly or in part, by others before Einstein. At issue is the extent to which Einstein and various other individuals should be credited for the formulation of these theories, based on priority considerations. In general relativity, there is a controversy about how much credit should go to Einstein, Marcel Grossmann, and David Hilbert. Many others (such as Gauss, Riemann, William Kingdon Clifford, Ricci, Gunnar Nordström and Levi-Civita) contributed to the development of the mathematical tools and geometrical ideas underlying the theory of gravity. Also polemics exist about alleged contributions of others such as Paul Gerber. It was noted by Sir Edmund Whittaker in his 1954 book that David Hilbert had derived the theory of general relativity from an elegant variational principle almost simultaneously with Einstein's discovery of the theory. Hilbert's derivation of the theory predated that of Einstein by five days.