🚀 go-pugleaf

On Apr 2, 1:26 am, maxwell <s...@shaw.ca> wrote in
sci.physics.relativity:
> Hans C. Ohanian is a well-qualified physicist (PhD with John Wheeler),
> author of numerous papers & several texts on physics (EM, SR, GR, etc)
> and a life-long student of Einstein, who has decided that he is now
> old enough to 'dish the dirt' on the 20th century's "greatest hero".
>
> Some in this NG may know of Einstein's serious flaws in his personal
> life but few will have realized that throughout his professional life
> he made numerous errors & mistakes in his physics.  Ohanian describes
> (without the use of any math) some of the more egregious mistakes made
> in his key papers (4 of the famous 5 in 1905), with a total of over 40
> mistakes in his almost 180 publications.  A few students of the
> history of physics may know that Einstein's 1905 derivation of the
> mass-energy relationship contained a serious, invalidating error or
> that Einstein failed on six other occasions (up to 1935) to prove
> "his" formula.  Throughout his life, Einstein never challenged the
> erroneous Maxwellian EM theory that was the basis for all of SRT.
>
> The critics of Einstein in this NG will find plenty of ammunition
> here, while those physics undergrads who were simply taught that
> Einstein laid the firm foundations for 20th century physics will be
> given pause for thought.
>
> The early chapters on Galileo's and Newton's contributions to the
> concept of relativity also reveal that these 'giants of science' were
> not adverse to fudging their own results to propagate their own
> glory.  You would not want to be on the Enemy's List of either of
> these founders.  This is also an amusing review for those
> professionals who thought that politics only came with the creation of
> modern university departments.
>
> Amazon has this book in stock (published in 2008) priced at $16.47 ;
> it can be found at:
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Mistakes-Human-Failings-Genius/dp/0393062937/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238624467&sr=1-1

This statement (of yours?) deserves special attention:

"Throughout his life, Einstein never challenged the erroneous
Maxwellian EM theory that was the basis for all of SRT."

He did in fact, in 1909 and then again in 1954:

http://www.astrofind.net/documents/the-composition-and-essence-of-radiation.php
The Development of Our Views on the Composition and Essence of
Radiation by Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein 1909: "A large body of facts shows undeniably that
light has certain fundamental properties that are better explained by
Newton's emission theory of light than by the oscillation theory. For
this reason, I believe that the next phase in the development of
theoretical physics will bring us a theory of light that can be
considered a fusion of the oscillation and emission theories. The
purpose of the following remarks is to justify this belief and to show
that a profound change in our views on the composition and essence of
light is imperative.....Then the electromagnetic fields that make up
light no longer appear as a state of a hypothetical medium, but rather
as independent entities that the light source gives off, just as in
Newton's emission theory of light......Relativity theory has changed
our views on light. Light is conceived not as a manifestation of the
state of some hypothetical medium, but rather as an independent entity
like matter. Moreover, this theory shares with the corpuscular theory
of light the unusual property that light carries inertial mass from
the emitting to the absorbing object."

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=317&Itemid=81&lecture_id=3576
John Stachel: "Einstein discussed the other side of the particle-field
dualism - get rid of fields and just have particles."
Albert Einstein 1954: "I consider it entirely possible that physics
cannot be based upon the field concept, that is on continuous
structures. Then nothing will remain of my whole castle in the air,
including the theory of gravitation, but also nothing of the rest of
contemporary physics."
John Stachel's comment: "If I go down, everything goes down, ha ha,
hm, ha ha ha."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com