"Einstein's Mistakes," by Hans C. Ohanian

[Pete]

There is a new book out called Einstein's Mistakes, by Hans C. Ohanian. Ohanian is a really good relativist and an excellant textbook author. I just got a copy of this book. So far is prettty good. Its nice to have a good source like this so one can have a ready reference to Einstein's mistakes, especially since so many people like to think they've proven Einstein wrong. At least this book gives an authoritative collection of his real mistakes and not the claims of his mistakes. Good reading so far.

 

Pete

[Theophrastus]

I certainly understand that einstein, being human, made mistakes, however, I see little point in reading a book all about his various mistakes, embellishing scientific failiure. Personally, I find such a thing, very degrading. One interesting thing, is that his "greatest mistake" (He even acknowledged this himself) , the cosmological constant, which he added to his relativity equations, in an attempt to retain the uniformity of Newton's static universe, was not in fact so great a mistake. It was certainly foolish, in that, had it simply been left out, he might have been able to predict that the universe is either expanding or contracting, however, science has recently found that there may be a smaller (certainly not allowing for a static universe, in its weak influence) cosmological constant, built in to the fabric of spacetime. It's thoughts like these that simply make me feel happy inside. I think the word we're looking for is serendipity.