Galileo’s Relativity: The True Beginning

The principle of relativity — the idea that the laws of physics are the same for all observers in uniform motion — did not begin with Einstein. It began with Galileo Galilei in the 17th century. In his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), Galileo described how, inside the cabin of a smoothly sailing ship, one cannot tell whether the vessel is at rest or moving at constant speed. This is the Galilean relativity principle: no mechanical experiment can reveal uniform motion.

Einstein’s 1905 paper on special relativity is often presented as a radical leap, yet it is simply Galileo’s principle restated in the context of light and electromagnetism. Einstein extended Galileo’s relativity by applying it not just to mechanics, but to Maxwell’s equations of electricity and magnetism. The foundation was already there — laid by Galileo centuries earlier.

Lorentz and Poincaré: Special Relativity Before Einstein

By the late 19th century, the principle of relativity had been mathematically developed by Hendrik Lorentz. In attempting to explain the null results of the Michelson–Morley experiment, Lorentz derived the exact transformations (now called the Lorentz transformations) that Einstein would later use. These equations already embodied time dilation and length contraction — the cornerstones of special relativity.

Meanwhile, Henri Poincaré articulated, even before Einstein, that the laws of physics must be invariant for all inertial observers. In 1904, he wrote that “there is no absolute time,” and in 1905, he described the Lorentz transformations as fundamental to a new mechanics. Poincaré essentially had special relativity in all but name.

Einstein, in his famous 1905 paper, did not cite either Lorentz or Poincaré, despite the fact that their work provided both the mathematics and the philosophy. His contribution was not invention but simplification: discarding the ether and framing the principle as self-evident. For this, he received full credit, while Lorentz and Poincaré were relegated to the footnotes of history.

General Relativity: Hilbert and Grossmann in the Shadows

If Einstein’s special relativity owed much to Galileo, Lorentz, and Poincaré, his general theory of relativity (1915) was likewise not the solitary creation of his mind.

The mathematics of curved space was already developed by Bernhard Riemann in the mid-19th century. Einstein himself lacked the mathematical training to use it until his colleague Marcel Grossmann guided him to the tensor calculus necessary for expressing spacetime curvature.

Even more damning, the German mathematician David Hilbert published the field equations of general relativity five days before Einstein. Hilbert used variational principles to derive the correct equations, arguably beating Einstein to the finish line. Yet Einstein received the glory, and Hilbert was sidelined in the historical narrative.

The Cult of Einstein

Like Newton, Einstein benefited from the creation of a myth — the myth of the solitary genius. His 1905 “Annus Mirabilis” papers were celebrated as miracles of originality, yet each had deep roots in the work of others: Planck and Boltzmann for quantum theory, Lorentz and Poincaré for relativity, and earlier kinetic theorists for Brownian motion.

Einstein’s true gift was not pure invention but rebranding. He distilled scattered insights into simple, powerful principles and presented them with rhetorical clarity. This made him a figurehead — but at the expense of the many minds who paved the way.

Conclusion

Einstein was undoubtedly brilliant, but brilliance is not the same as originality. His special relativity rested on Galileo’s principle of relativity and the mathematics of Lorentz and Poincaré. His general relativity was made possible by Riemann’s geometry, Grossmann’s guidance, and Hilbert’s field equations. Yet history remembers Einstein alone.

The myth of Einstein as the solitary father of relativity is not a faithful account of science but a triumph of narrative over nuance. Like Newton before him, Einstein was less the originator than the consolidator — the man who rebranded a collective intellectual tradition as the creation of one name. The fraud is not only Einstein’s, but also that of the history books, which enshrined one man while erasing the many shoulders on which he stood.