Einstein's Sounding board ... Michele Besso...

[5fish]

A bit of trivia Besso was an engineer and a friend of Einstein. He was also Einstein's sounding board while he worked on his Theory of General Relativity. Besso would discuss and even do some of the heavy lifting in the math with Einstein...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michele_Besso

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Besso was born in Riesbach from a family of Italian Jewish (Sephardi) descent. He was a close friend of Albert Einstein during his years at the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich,[2] today the ETH Zurich, and then at the patent office in Bern, where Einstein helped him to get a job.[3] Besso is credited with introducing Einstein to the works of Ernst Mach, the sceptical critic of physics who influenced Einstein's approach to the discipline.[4] Einstein called Besso "the best sounding board in Europe" for scientific ideas.[5] In Einstein's original paper on special relativity, he ended the paper stating, "In conclusion, let me note that my friend and colleague M. Besso steadfastly stood by me in my work on the problem here discussed, and that I am indebted to him for many a valuable suggestion."

Besso died in Geneva, aged 81. In a letter of condolence to the Besso family, Albert Einstein wrote “Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present, and future only has the meaning of an illusion, though a persistent one.”[7] Einstein died one month and 3 days after his friend, on 18 April 1955

Here is the manuscript just sold for millions... Besso saved this copy...

The calculations of the Einstein-Besso manuscript were, however, frustrated by a number of unnoticed errors, and later in 1913 Einstein set aside this approach to general relativity out of concerns over its theoretical consistency. Besso left Zurich, taking the document with him. It is thanks to him that the manuscript has, almost miraculously, come down to us: Einstein would probably not have bothered to keep what he saw as a working document.

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In September 1915, Einstein returned to his earlier approach, and at last established the valid field equations for his new theory. He refined and published these in a legendary series of four articles in November 1915, in the third of which he demonstrated that his new theory could indeed account for the anomalous perihelion of Mercury, thus fulfilling the promise of the Einstein-Besso manuscript of two years earlier. The human understanding of the workings of the universe had been changed forever

 

[5fish]

Here is a great article about their friendship and relationship... Einstein coming to terms with Mach...

When Einstein Tilted at Windmills

The young physicist’s quest to prove the theories of Ernst Mach.

nautil.us

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Besso would go on to become a sidekick, of sorts, to Einstein—a sounding board, as Einstein put it, “the best in Europe,” asking the right questions that would inspire Einstein to find the right answers. At times, though, he would seem to be something more—a collaborator, perhaps, making suggestions, working through calculations.

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If Besso never seemed to know quite what he was doing, it wasn’t for a lack of smarts. “The great strength of Besso resides in his intelligence,” Einstein would write, “which is out of the ordinary, and in his endless devotion to both his moral and professional obligations; his weakness is his truly insufficient spirit of decision. This explains why his successes in life do not match up with his brilliant aptitudes and with his extraordinary scientific and technical knowledge.”

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But there was something uncanny about Besso. Over the coming years, he would always show up at exactly the right moment, the perfect deus ex machina, handing Einstein books, innocently offering suggestions, prodding him, goading him, nudging him onto the right path, as if he had a plan. “I … watch my friend Einstein struggle with the great Unknown,” he would write, “the work and torment of a giant, of which I am the witness—a pygmy witness—but a pygmy witness endowed with clairvoyance.”

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By 1904, Don Quixote had become one of Einstein’s favorite books.


Two years earlier, an unemployed Einstein had put an ad in the newspaper offering physics tutoring for three francs an hour, and a philosophy student named Maurice Solovine had shown up at his door. They started talking about physics and philosophy and didn’t stop; the whole tutoring thing never even came up. Soon Conrad Habicht, a mathematics student, joined the conversation, and the three young bohemians formed something of a book club for highbrowed degenerates. They read works of philosophy and literature and discussed them, sometimes until one in the morning, smoking, eating cheap food, getting rowdy and waking the neighbors. They met several nights a week. In mockery of stuffy academia, they dubbed themselves the Olympia Academy. Besso was in Trieste working as an engineering consultant, but he came when he could, and as Einstein’s closest friend, he was made an honorary member of the Academy. Under Besso’s influence, the Olympians read and discussed Mach.

snip... Quantum Mechanics

As Einstein came to grips with Mach’s rejection of relativity, the world of physics was rocked by quantum theory, a revolution Einstein had helped to spark but now refused to join

 

[O' Be Joyful]

The strange afterlife of Einstein's brain

Einstein’s death 60 years ago was just the start of a fascinating and macabre journey for the most prized part of his anatomy, his brain.

www.bbc.com

 

[5fish]

The strange afterlife of Einstein's brain

Einstein’s death 60 years ago was just the start of a fascinating and macabre journey for the most prized part of his anatomy, his brain.

www.bbc.com

It sad but interesting about the brain... My hide opinion the changes in Einstein's brain were do to how he used his brain... the music part and the forth ridge... the brain grows to reflect how you use it the majority of the time... It nice to know but it should have been burned with the other ashes but its nice we now do have his DNA...

 

[5fish]

Here is the guy Einstein was inspired by...

Ernst Mach - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Through his criticism of Newton's theories of space and time, he foreshadowed Einstein's theory of relativity.[9]

here is this...

Ernst Mach – the great teacher of Albert Einstein

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The Mach principle is a hypothesis claiming that the inertia of bodies is caused by the gravitational forces of mass around them, even at great distances. This idea substantially influenced Albert Einstein and his work on the general theory of relativity.

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Mach fiercely criticised Newton and had serious objections to Einstein’s work, specifically to his theory of relativity. And yet Einstein himself admitted how much he was influenced by Mach’s work. In a letter to Mach, Einstein says that it was especially Mach’s book on the development of mechanics that influenced him so much…

However, it was atomic theory Mach criticised the most. For Mach, the atom was a term that referred to something undefinable; something which complicates explanations of a number of phenomena. He felt that unproven ideas used for illustration were redundant and misleading. He claimed that all facts need to be based solely on direct perception. Facts were simply everything; no model ideas or even thinking about them were permitted.

 

[5fish]

Einstein first wife played a big part in his early work and never got any credit... Mileva Marić-Einstein ... @diane

Mileva Marić - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Debate over collaboration
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Some of the debate over whether Marić collaborated with Einstein is based on their letters:

• John Stachel argues that letters in which Einstein referred to "our" theory and "our" work were written in their student days, at least four years before the 1905 papers. Stachel also suggests that some of the instances in which Einstein used "our" in relation to scientific work referred to their diploma dissertations, for which they had each chosen the same topic (experimental studies of heat conduction).[20][21] Stachel argues that Einstein used "our" in general statements, while he invariably used "I" and "my" when he recounted "specific" ideas he was working on: "the letters to Marić show Einstein referring to 'his' studies, 'his' work on the electrodynamics of moving bodies over a dozen times... as compared to 'one' reference to 'our' work on the problem of relative motion."[22]
• Stachel also suggests that in two cases where letters from Marić survive that directly respond to those from Einstein in which he had recounted his latest ideas, she gives no response at all. Her letters, in contrast to Einstein's, contain only personal matters, or comments related to her Polytechnic coursework. Stachel writes: "In her case, we have no published papers, no letters with a serious scientific content, either to Einstein nor to anyone else; nor any objective evidence of her supposed creative talents. We do not even have hearsay accounts of conversations she had with anyone else that have a specific, scientific content, let alone claiming to report her ideas."[23]

Thus, while some scholars have argued that there is not enough evidence to support the idea that Marić helped Einstein to develop his theories,[24][25][26][21] others have argued that their letters suggest a collaboration between them, at least through 1901 before their children were born.[15]

Some of the debate over whether Marić collaborated with Einstein is based on their interactions:

• Marić's brother and other relatives reported eyewitness accounts of Marić and Albert discussing physics together when they were married.[15]
• The couple's first son, Hans Albert (born 1904), said that when his mother married Einstein in 1903, she gave up her scientific ambitions.[27] But he also said how his parents' "scientific collaboration continued into their marriage, and that he remembered seeing [them] work together in the evenings at the same table."[15][28]

... I like the part where she had the only training in a subject but Einstein gets credit for it and the Nobel prize...