The relativity deniers

摘要

This world is a strange madhouse," remarked Albert Einstein in 1920 in a letter to his close friend, the mathematician Marcel Grossmann. "Every coachman and every waiter is debating whether relativity theory is correct. Belief in this matter depends on political affiliation." Einstein's general theory of relativity, published in 1915, received an overwhelming public response - not all of it positive. Numerous accounts which appeared during the 1920s claimed to show relativity was wrong, and Einstein received many letters from laypeople who claimed to have found the ultimate refutation of his theory.