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Many great mathematicians and physicists had used time as 4th dimension, but none developed it out into special relativity, even Lorentz has his name on the Lorentz's transformation, but he didn't see a brand new space-time relationship. There is a huge gap between linking something together to writing it down with a mind boggling and fundamentally new theory to reshape how human beings see the universe. That said, all people's work are built on top of predecessors. Without generations work on mathematics before 20 century, Einstein wouldn't have developed GR as well.

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Great point and you said it well. Darwin was much the same, many of the ideas he discusses were already out there, but he brought them together in a novel, united, coherent, and compelling way that really made the idea of evolution stand on its own feet.

Most great theories connect existing concepts:

Darwin connected the specialization of finches to two bodies of existing work — animal husbandry and the nest hierarchy of biology, by explaining they’re both outcomes of reproductive selection.

Einstein connected the idea of Galilean relativity to Maxwell’s equations to explain why Michelson-Morley behaves how it does.

>nest hierarchy of biology

Which itself is a derivative of the "great chain of being" ontology which tried to explain the continuous gradation of structures in the world. Ideas like "missing link" appear within this worldview before Darwin's theory[1].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_chain_of_being#Scala_Nat...

> Without generations work on mathematics before 20 century, Einstein wouldn't have developed GR as well.

"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" - Newton

I'm sure Einstein would have no problem with applying such a quote to himself.

He was infamous at being bad at math with hi wife doing some of the math for him. He never recognized her in doing so.

That’s false he wasn’t bad at math. It’s a (false) myth that’s perpetuated. Before he was years 15 old he’d mastered differential and integral calculus:

https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28...

Tbh I was taught both in school at about the same age.

This doesn't prevent me from kicking the kubernetes can down the road instead of coming up with more general relativity. Maybe it's the lust that's insufficient.

The low hanging fruit on physics discoveries using current technology is also all taken.

The right person at the right place at the right time -- the time is maybe the biggest one. It's not just Einstein who revolutionized physics, his contemporaries did too

I remember when I was a kid, I'd heard various things about how Einstein failed school or was bad at mathematics or was just a simple patent office clerk etc etc...

Seems he was in fact super smart and educated at good schools / universities in the countries he lived in. As you'd expect from someone who revolutionised parts of science.

His grades were good.

His promise was recognized very early.

He got a lot of math help from David Hilbert though as an adult

On General Relativity after having published ground breaking publications on Special Relativity and Brownian motion. David Hilbert is one of the greatest mathematicians in history - it is a bit unfair to detract from someone's abilities if they receive help from the one of the world's top practitioners.

There is a myth, that Einstein was so bad at math that he failed math.

There is also a quip by mathematicians and physicists that he just wasn't that good at math. I heard this a few times in undergrad physics, and the proof was typically that while he had good insight, his field equations for GR, Einstein said were neigh impossible to solve, but Schwarzchild and a few others almost instantly had solutions. Einstein was really good at math with regards to normal people, but when you compare with great mathematicians and physicists (Gauss, Euler, Von Neumann, etc), he was probably on the lower end.

He wasn't bad at math, but his wife was better at math than he was, and there is a lot of historical evidence suggesting they collaborated on his "miracle year" papers.

Indeed

https://www.cantorsparadise.com/the-wall-of-albert-einsteins...

To make such a significant breakthrough like relativity theory it's not enough to see connections between seemingly unrelated things.

You have to have a sufficiently open and free mind to be able to discard beliefs of generations of scientists. Including your own, implanted through instincts.

I think it’s safe to say without 5000+ years of mathematically research Einstein wouldn’t have developed GR.

It's also remarkable that the mathematical tools required for GR were developed just in the few decades before Einstein wrote down his equations.

Yeah there’s definitely some singularity like stuff happening. While we don’t see visibly dramatic evolutions like GR happening, we are making incredible strides on unsolved problems and extravagantly complex discoveries at a blistering pace, so much so that they’re not noteworthy any more.

Very true.

From the perspective of something like a Tardigrade we are definitely well into a “singularity”.

From the perspective of a rock the Tardigrade itself is matter experiencing a “singularity”.

One way to view things is that GR was obvious to a smart person with good enough tools and that if Einstein wouldn't have discovered it someone else would have soon after.

Hmmm, when I studied GR, the consensus was that it came out of nowhere and if it wasn't for Einstein's genius, it would have taken at least a long time until someone else had discovered it. But you make a good point. Ultimately it's an unanswerable question, I guess.

When I studied GR my professor said that Maxwell was close and had he not died young it would’ve been him.

Of all the physical theories, general relativity is probably the one that's least likely to be true of. Because it just wasn't needed in all its generality at that point of time. Instead of going from first principles like Einstein some other physicist could have developed it from the other end, and made corrections to Newton mechanics based on the observed precession of Mercury and the deflection of starlight by the Sun (if someone would have done that observation without the impetus of GR). It could have been akin to how quantum theory in its first 25 years was a collection of ad-hoc explanations of various phenomena using the quantized energy idea but having no generalized theory of them.

Quantum mechanics and relativity are both explanations of the interferometer from Michelson-Morley.

Which turns out to work, now called LIGO, if you apply relativistic and quantum corrections.

We'd have found out for sure when we first built a GPS system without relativity correction. It wouldn't work and that experimental error would have to be explained somehow and that in turn would lead to the discovery of GR if it had not been discovered through some other means at that time.

David Hilbert, for one, was apparently close. That said, I feel that it is a bit of a stretch to call it obvious (maybe more obvious in the sense of "this is the way to go" rather than that the answer was obvious.)

From what I remember, Hilbert actually got the equations first by applying the principle of least action, so a much more mathematical than Einstein's physical approach. However, everybody agreed that Einstein did all the heavy lifting (he worked closely with mathematicians for years to figure things out), so that's why they aren't called the Einstein-Hilbert equations.

Least action is a very physical approach?

Not compared to how Einstein derived the equations

That's true about Lorentz, although for completeness I just want to point out that the geometric spacetime extension was done by Minkowski.

When I read about special relativity I notice how many equations and concepts had names of other people. It seemed like Einstein combine various observations and ideas into a single coherent framework.

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