From: D. F. Siemens, Jr. (dfsiemensjr@juno.com)
Date: Wed Jul 16 2003 - 14:11:20 EDT
George,
I think I see the differences in where we're coming from. You're
presenting Hlavaty's publications where my material comes from the
popular press. The effort he put in and his conclusion that the math was
OK has no place in peer-reviewed journals. However, had he found the math
mistaken, that would rate an entry. I see a similarity with Weil's first
report on proving Fermat. Had the checkers found it complete, there would
have been a short news item. Finding a hole in the proof required a
paper. Newspapers are concerned about the human side and often get the
technicalities wrong. Can you imagine a news story detailing a proof?
Dave
On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 07:18:06 -0400 George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com>
writes:
> D. F. Siemens, Jr. wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, 14 Jul 2003 16:26:22 -0400 George Murphy
> <gmurphy@raex.com>
> > writes:
> > > D. F. Siemens, Jr. wrote:
> > > >
> > > > George,
> > > > Thanks for filling in the information.
> > > >
> > > > As for Glenn's note that alternates are hard to find, this may
> be
> > > in
> > > > large measure because the theories are so complex. For
> example,
> > > sometime
> > > > about 1950, Einstein produced a theory, probably unified
> field,
> > > which
> > > > involved some complex math. There were supposedly only three
> > > persons
> > > > capable of understanding the math. One (Havarti ?) reported
> that,
> > > after a
> > > > year's very difficult work, he had found the math correct,
> but
> > > could not
> > > > comment on its application. He was quoted as saying something
> > > like, "I am
> > > > only a mathematician: Professor Einstein is a genius."
> > > >
> > >
> > > The statement that "only 3 men in the world understand
> > > Einstein" was made after
> > > the eclipse verifications of the bending of light got general
> > > relativity worldwide
> > > publicity. Eddington said jokingly, "Who is the third?" But
> in
> > > fact the statement was
> > > never true. GRT made use of math that most physicists of the
> time
> > > weren't familiar with
> > > but they quickly learned, & while the equations of GRT are
> difficult
> > > because of, inter
> > > alia, their nonlinearity, so are those of classical
> hydrodynamics.
> > > I've never made a
> > > detailed survey of the literature but a quick count of
> references in
> > > Pauli's book gives
> > > 19 authors (besides Einstein) who published on GRT before 1919 -
> &
> > > that was with the
> > > limited communications due to WWI.
> > > What Hlavaty did was to find how to solve one of the
> basic
> > > equation sets of
> > > Einstein's last attempts at a unified field theory. I worked
> on
> > > this theory - actually
> > > on a closely related attempt by Schroedinger - & learned, among
> > > other things, that most
> > > of the people then interested in it (in the 70s) were
> mathematicians
> > > with little feel
> > > for physics. (One was unfazed by my pointing out to him that
> his
> > > cosmological model had
> > > blueshifts instead of redshifts.) I published a few paper, had
> some
> > > fun with it, &
> > > still think that it has some attractive features. But I also
> > > convinced myself that it's
> > > very unlikely to represent the real world.
> >
> > George,
> > Despite the apparent similarity, I wasn't quoting the earlier
> claim that
> > only 3 men understood Einstein. Eddington was dead several years
> before
> > the event I noted. I recall a report ca. 1953 that Hlavaty had
> > meticulously worked through the mathematics of what was then
> recent work
> > by Einstein. I don't doubt that later the specific math became
> more
> > familiar, for what is taught changes. Feynman, in connection with
> his
> > lecture proving the elliptical planetary orbits, noted that the
> earlier
> > proof involved some geometry that was familiar at the time but
> which he
> > did not understand, and did not expect others to recognize.
> Historically,
> > the calculus which is now part of the undergraduate curriculum
> could only
> > be learned, about a century after Newton and Liebnitz, if one
> could
> > wangle an invitation to live with one of the Bernoulli brothers.
> Things
> > change.
>
> Dave -
> By the time Einstein developed his last theory, tensor
> calculus was quite
> familiar. What Einstein did was basically to remove the previous
> condition that the
> metric tensor be symmetric. This made the equations more
> complicated but not
> conceptually more difficult. (Hlavaty's work, BTW, is in his
> _Geometry of Einstein's
> Unified Field Theory_ [P. Noorhoff, 1957].)
> The main reason why not more was done with that last theory
> of Einstein was that
> by that time most physicists concerned with basic forces had become
> convinced that the
> whole approach via a classical unified field theory was the wrong
> way to go & were
> working with quantum field theories. & at that time (early 50s) not
> a lot new had
> happened in general relativity for ~30 years & the field was kind of
> dormant.
>
> Shalom,
> George
>
>
>
>
>
> George L. Murphy
> gmurphy@raex.com
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
>
>
>
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