The Collective Construction of Scientific Memory: The Einstein-Poincaré Connection and its Discontents,1905–2005

For a series of papers on commemoration in science see Am Pnina G. Abir Elliott Clark A. (eds), Commemorative practices in science: Historical perspectives on the politics of collective memory (Osiris, xiv (1999)); and Am Pnina G. Abir (ed.), La mise en mémoire de la science: Pour une ethnographie historique des rites commémoratifs (Paris, 1998).

The debate on the role of Poincaré in the emergence of relativity theory has been particularly hot in France where amateurs have published books claiming that Einstein plagiarized Poincaré. For a defence of Einstein against this ‘revisionist’ literature, see Cerf Roger , “Dismissing renewed attempts to deny Einstein the discovery of special relativity”, American journal of physics, lxxiv (2006), 818–24. For an analysis of the events, see below Section 11, and Gingras Yves , “Henri Poincaré: The movie. The unintended consequences of scientific commemorations”, Isis, xcviii (2007), 2007–72.

Darrigol O. , “The mystery of the Einstein—Poincaré connection”, Isis, xcv (2004), 614–26, p. 619, emphasis in the text. As we will see in Section 10, the view that Einstein is not the only contributor to relativity was already promoted by Max Born in the mid-1950s in the context of Edmund Whittaker's famous thesis making Poincaré and Lorentz the sole ‘discoverers’ of relativity theory. In making the same suggestion in an earlier paper, Darrigol mentioned, as an example to follow, the case of quantum mechanics where it is usual to talk of Heisenberg and Schrödinger as both creators of the theory. From the historicist point of view adopted here, however, the example is not well suited as co-citation measure clearly shows that physicists at the time (that is, between 1926 and 1930, for example) immediately connected the two authors, whereas, as we will see, this was rarely the case for Poincaré and Einstein between 1905 and 1912. The two cases are thus not analogous from an historical point of view; see Darrigol O. , “The electrodynamic origin of relativity”, Historical studies in the physical and biological sciences, xxvi (1996), 1996–312, p. 312.

Merton R. K. , The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations (Chicago, 1973), 301.

Iliffe Rob , “‘In the warehouse’: Privacy, property and priority in the early Royal Society”, History of science, xxx (1992), 29–68, p. 30.

It should be noted that the name of Lorentz has never been at stake in the debate over the creators of relativity, the theory being often called, as early as 1906, “Lorentz-Einstein”. See Holton Gerald , Thematic origins of scientific thought: Kepler to Einstein (Cambridge, MA, 1973), 234–5; and Jungnickel Christa McCormmach Russell , Intellectual mastery of nature, ii: The now mighty theoretical physics, 1875–1925 (Chicago, 1986), 248–51.

Bourdieu Pierre , “Sur les rapports entre la sociologie et l'histoire en Allemagne et en France”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, cvi—cvii (1995), 108–22, p. 117.

For a review and extensive bibliography on citations see Leydesdorff Loet , “Theories of citation?”, Scientometrics, xliii (1998), 5–25. On co-citation analysis see Small H. Griffith B. C. , “Structure of scientific literatures. 1. Identifying and graphing specialties”, Science studies, iv (1974), 1974–40; Small H. G. , “Co-citation model of a scientific specialty — Longitudinal study of collagen research”, Social studies of science, vii (1977), and 139–66; Small H. , “Cited documents as concept symbols”, Social studies of science, viii (1978), 1978–40.

For examples of uses of this indicator for relativity, see Illy Jozsef , “Revolutions in a revolution”, Studies in history and philosophy of science, xii (1981), 173–210; Goenner Hubert F. M. , “The reception of the theory of relativity in Germany as reflected by books published between 1908 and 1945”, in Eisenstaedt J. Kox A. J. (eds), Studies in the history of general relativity (Boston, 1993), 15–38; and Scott Walter , “Minkowski, mathematicians, and the mathematical theory of relativity”, in Goenner H. Renn J. Ritter J. Sauer T. (eds), The expanding worlds of general relativity (Boston, 1999), 45–86.

Darrigol , “The electrodynamic origin of relativity” (ref. 3), 311.

Warwick Andrew , Masters of theory: Cambridge and the rise of mathematical physics (Chicago, 2003), 402.

On this task see Darrigol , “The mystery” (ref. 3), 619. A truly historicist approach also has methodological consequences: While internal analysis tends to consider all texts on the same footing as if they were equivalent and accessible to all potential readers, the historicist approach recognizes that a textbook is a different object from a paper in a scientific journal, and that an unpublished course has not the same visibility in the scientific field as a paper in a well-known journal. Though obvious to historians, these details are often forgotten in many conceptual analyses of Poincaré's work in physics. In other words, to be an historical object, a document must be known to at least some actors of the time.

For examples of such brief statements, see Staley R. , “On the histories of relativity: The propagation and elaboration of relativity theory in participant histories in Germany, 1905–1911”, Isis, lxxxix (1988), 263–99, p. 277; Paty M. , Einstein philosophe (Paris, 1993), 43; and Janssen Michel , “Reconsidering a scientific revolution: The case of Einstein versus Lorentz”, Physics in perspective, iv (2002), 2002–46, p. 428. For a more detailed analysis of why Minkowski did not cite Poincaré's 1906 paper see Scott , op. cit. (ref. 9), 56–59.

If one starts with the idea that Poincaré's project was different from that of Einstein, there is no reason to expect that Poincaré should cite Einstein and thus no “surprise” or “scandal” that he does not. That is the view adopted by the physicist-historian Abraham Pais. See Pais A. , ‘Subtle is the Lord…’: The science and life of Albert Einstein (Oxford, 1982), 167.

On such an approach see Leveugle Jules , La relativité, Poincaré et Einstein, Planck, Hilbert: Histoire véridique de la théorie de la relativité (Paris, 2004), and Section 11 below.

For details on the Century of science database and the list of journals see http://scientific.thomson.com. Some journals have merged over time or changed titles.

Given that citations to our authors (Poincaré, Einstein and Lorentz) are concentrated in physics and mathematics, with some chemistry (for Brownian motion and specific heat of solids for example), we can limit our analysis to these journals, though our search included all journals in the database over the period 1900–79. The other fields covered in the period 1900–44 are medicine (100 journals), biology (43), engineering (8), geology (5), and psychology (20). We have assigned discipline on the basis of the title of the journal. For the period 1945–79 the data come from Thomson Scientific Web of Knowledge and include science as well as social sciences and humanities journals.

Whittaker E. T. , History of the theories of aether and electricity, ii: The modern theories, 1900–1926 (London, 1953).

Alhough not all scientific journals are covered, the major physics journals are included and it is highly improbable that adding other journals would significantly change the trends. Hence, for the period 1905–11, data for the British journal Philosophical magazine are missing, but we have checked the papers related to “relativity” in this journal and they too tend not to cite Poincaré. We have also checked comparable articles in the Italian journal Il nuovo cimento with the same results. These papers have been identified using the online database of the Archivio di Storia della Fisica. See http://fisicavolta.unipv.it/asf/archives.asp.

Bourdieu Pierre , Science of science and reflexivity (Chicago, 2004).

Let us recall that two documents (or two authors) are said to be “co-cited” when they both appear in the references of another paper. Thus, the number of co-citations to two authors (or papers) in a particular year is given by the number of different papers which, in that year, cite them together.

As early as 1972, N. L. Balàsz had suggested looking at actual citations to discuss the case of Poincaré and Einstein. Using Science abstracts between 1905 and 1910, he concluded, on the basis of fewer than a dozen papers, that “the contemporary scientific community did not attribute the construction of the theory of relativity to Poincaré”. As we will see, we agree with this conclusion on the basis of the analysis of thousands of citations and co-citations, using a tool that did not exist when Balàsz wrote his paper. Balàsz N. L. , “The acceptability of physical theories: Poincaré versus Einstein”, in O'Raifeartaigh L. (ed.), General relativity: Papers in honour of J. L. Synge (Oxford, 1972), 21–34.

For an analysis of the limits of citation analysis see Edge David , “Quantitative measures of communication in science: A critical overview”, History of science, xvii (1979), 102–34.

Beyler Richard H. , “The physics community in the national socialist era”, in Renn J. (ed.), Albert Einstein: Chief engineer of the universe (Berlin, 2005), 320–3, p. 322; and Miller A. I. , “A précis of Edmund Whittaker's ‘Relativity theory of Poincaré and Lorentz’”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, xxxvii (1987), 1987–103, p. 95.

Merton , op. cit. (ref. 4).

Einstein cited Poincaré's 1900 paper published in the Lorentz Festschrift, in his second paper on the inertia of energy, published in Annalen der Physik in 1906 in which he also cites his own first paper on inertia of energy, thus creating a co-citation “Einstein-Poincaré”. See The collected papers of Albert Einstein (Princeton, 1987-; hereafter CPAE), ii, English translation, Document 35, 200. As is well known, Poincaré never cited Einstein.

Of course, scientists could also send reprints as Poincaré did to Lorentz, but it was certainly more efficient to publish in well-known journals to reach a larger audience, as Einstein did by sending all his early papers to Annalen der Physik, the best physics journal of the time. On the evolution of the content of this journal at the turn of the century, see Jungnickel McCormmach , op. cit. (ref. 6), 309–23.

We can limit our inquiry to the period 1905–11, usually accepted as the formative period of relativity. As is well known, Arnold Sommerfeld in 1911 considered that relativity was a secure part of physics, while in 1913 Lorentz observed that the acceptance of Einstein's concepts was surprisingly rapid. Also, given that Poincaré died in 1912 and that from that time on Einstein was more concerned with the development of general relativity, this time frame makes it possible to look at the rise of Einstein before he became famous and to compare his citation pattern to those of well recognized figures in their fields, Poincaré and Lorentz. The data include self-citations.

On network analysis and degree of centrality, which measures the number of links connecting an actor to all the others, see Freeman L. C. , “Centrality in social networks: Conceptual clarification”, Social networks, i (1978/79), 215–39; and Wasserman S. Faust K. , Social networks analysis: Methods and applications (Cambridge, 1994). Note that whereas social network analysis usually concentrates on social links between people, here we apply the technique to co-citations links, which have a more conceptual nature. For a recent survey of co-citation analysis, see Gmür Markus , “Co-citation analysis and the search for invisible colleges: A methodological evaluation”, Scientometrics, lvii (2003), 2003–57.

For a more detailed analysis see Gingras Yves , “Mapping the changing centrality of physicists (1900–1944)”, Proceedings of ISSI 2007 11th International Conference of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics, Madrid, Spain, 2007, 314–20.

On Lorentz see Hirosige Tetu , “Origins of Lorentz's theory of electron and the concept of the electromagnetic field”, Historical studies in the physical sciences, i (1969), 151–209; and Nersessian Nancy J. , “Why wasn't Lorentz Einstein? An examination of the scientific method of H. A. Lorentz”, Centaurus, xxix (1986), 1986–42.

The letter, in French, is reproduced in Miller Arthur I. , Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity: Emergence and early interpretation (1905–1911) (Reading, MA, 1981), 336–37; our emphasis.

Poincaré H. , “Sur la dynamique de l'électron”, in Poincaré H. , La mécanique nouvelle: Conférence, mémoire et note sur la théorie de la relativité, with introduction by Édouard Guillaume (Paris, 1924), 18–76, p. 19; we use the translation by Schwartz H. M. , “Poincaré's Rendiconti paper on relativity. Part I”, American journal of physics, xxxix (1971), 1971–94, p. 1288, emphasis added.

See Crawford E. , The beginnings of the Nobel Institution: The science prizes, 1901–1915 (Cambridge, 1987), 101–8.

A little exercise in reflexivity should easily convince the reader that this mechanism is also at work in the discipline of history of science….

At the request of the Swedish mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler, Poincaré wrote in 1901 a long report on his own works. He presented his own contributions to electrodynamics in a section titled “Critique des théories physiques”. See Oeuvres de Henri Poincaré (Paris, 1954), ix, 7–14, p. 7.

Lorentz H. A. , The theory of electrons, 2nd edn (New York, 1952; 1st pub. 1915), 213–15.

Ibid., Preface, dated January 1909.

Lorentz H. A. , Problems of modern physics, ed. by Bateman H. (Boston, 1927), 127 and 133. Others noticed Poincaré's search for invariants. See for example, Cunningham E. , The principle of relativity (Cambridge, 1914), 173.

Lorentz H. A. , untitled address, The astrophysical journal, lviii (1928), 345–51, p. 350.

The editors of the letter note that Einstein's name is written on the draft letter but does not appear in the typed copy. See http://www.univ-nancy2.fr/poincare/chp/.

Mittag-Leffler to Poincaré, 5 July 1909, cited in Scott, op. cit. (ref. 9), 57.

Darboux to the Nobel Committee, c. 1 January 1910, in La correspondance d'Henri Poincaré, electronic version at http://www.univ-nancy2.fr/poincare/chp/.

V. Volterra to Nobel Committee, 10 January 1910, ibid. Incidentally, the same Volterra had given a series of lectures at Clark University in 1909 in which he talked about relativity theory, commenting on Minkowski's “profound memoir” which “showed in a new light the ideas of Lorentz and those of Einstein on the relations between space and time”. He also mentioned the “relativity theorem of Lorentz”. At the end of his lecture he refered to Poincaré's Rendiconti paper, calling attention only to the fact that he showed that the action is invariant under the Lorentz transformations. See Volterra Vito Rutherford Ernest Wood Robert Williams Carus Carl , Lectures at the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the foundation of Clark University (Worcester, MA, 1912), 13, 22, 27.

For details on this story see Crawford , op. cit. (ref. 34), 136–49.

Pais, op. cit. (ref. 14), 505; Crawford Elizabeth Heilbron J. L. Ulrrich Rebecca , The Nobel population, 1901–1937 (Berkeley, 1987), 52–53; and Elzinga Aant , Einstein's Nobel prize: A glimpse behind closed doors. The archival evidence (Sagamore Beach, MA, 2006). Lorentz had already received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1902 with Pieter Zeeman.

On Langevin, see Cuvaj Camillo , “Paul Langevin and the theory of relativity”, Japanese studies in the history of science, x (1971), 113–42; Paty M. , “Poincaré, Langevin et Einstein”, Épistémologiques, ii (2002), 2002–73; and “Paul Langevin (1871–1946), la relativité et les quanta”, Bulletin de La Société Française de Physique, cxix (1999), 1999–20.

Langevin P. , “L'œuvre d'Henri Poincaré: Le physicien”, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, Supplément, xxi/5 (1913), 675–718, pp. 699 and 702.

Gösta Mittag-Leffler to Einstein, 16 December 1919, CPAE, ix, English translation, Document 218, 186.

The invitation arrived at a time when Einstein was totally taken up by travel and the obligations imposed by his new celebrity, and he replied to Mittag-Leffler that he could not find time to “write the planned essay on Poincaré's position on the problem of geometry and experience”. See Einstein to Mittag-Leffler, 21 July 1920, CPAE, x, English translation, Document 79, 212. Note that his planned essay looked more like a discussion of the philosophy of conventionalism than a physical discussion of “the relationship between space, matter, and time” as suggested by Mittag-Leffler.

Wien W. , “Die Bedeutung Henri Poincaré's Für Die Physik”, Acta mathematica, xxxviii (1921), 289–91, p. 290.

Lorentz H. A. , “Deux mémoires de Henri Poincaré sur la physique mathématique”, Acta mathematica, xxxviii (1921), 293–308; reprinted in Oeuvres de Henri Poincaré (ref. 36), ix, 683–95.

Paty M. , “The scientific reception of relativity in France”, in Glick T. F. (ed.), The comparative reception of relativity (Dordrecht, 1987), 113–67, p. 119.

For an analysis of this event see Sponsel Alistair , “Constructing a ‘revolution in science’: The campaign to promote a favourable reception for the 1919 solar eclipse experiments”, The British journal for the history of science, xxxv (2002), 439–67. See also Missner Marshall , “Why Einstein became famous in America”, Social studies of science, xv (1985), 1985–91.

For the early histories of relativity up to 1911 see Staley Richard , “On the histories of relativity: The propagation and elaboration of relativity theory in participant histories in Germany, 1905–1911”, Isis, lxxxix (1998), 263–99.

On the irritation of some of his friends at the “cult of personality” developing around Einstein see Born Max , The Born—Einstein letters, 1916–1955, new edn (New York, 2005), 32–43; and Elton Lewis , “Einstein, general relativity and the German press 1919–1920”, Isis, lxxvii (1986), 1986–103.

CPAE, vii, English translation, Document 45, 197.

On this debate, see Goenner Hubert , “The reaction to relativity theory, I: The anti-Einstein campaign in Germany in 1920”, Science in context, vi (1993), 107–33; Crowe M. , “Einstein's encounters with German anti-relativists”, in CPAE, vii, 101–13; and Wazeck Milena , “Einstein in the daily press: A glimpse into the Gehrcke papers” (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Preprint 271, 2004), 67–85.

Born Max , Physics in my generation (New York, 1969), 105–6. For a history of that equation, see Fadner W. L. , “Did Einstein really discover ‘E = mc²?’”, Journal of physics, lvi (1988), 1988–22.

For details see Beyerchen A. D. , Scientists under Hitler: Politics and the physics community in the third Reich (New Haven, 1977), 90, 124, 170, 245.

O. Klein to W. Pauli, 8 March 1921, in Hermann A. Meyenn K. V. Weisskopf V. F. (eds), Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel mit Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, u.a., i: 1919–1929 (Berlin, 1979), 27, cited in English translation by Miller, “A précis of Edmund Whittaker” (ref. 24), 95. For the case of Hilbert's contribution, and the historiographical debate it has generated, see Stachel John , “New lights on the Einstein—Hilbert priority question”, Journal of astrophysics and astronomy, xx (1999), 1999–101; Corry L. Renn J. Stachel J. , “Belated decision in the Hilbert—Einstein controversy”, Science, cclxxviii (1997), 1997–3; Winterberg F. , “On ‘Belated decision in the Hilbert—Einstein priority dispute’”, Zeitschrift für Naturforschung, lix/a (2004), 715–19; Sauer Tilman , “Einstein equations and Hilbert action: What is missing on page 8 of the proofs for Hilbert's first communication on the foundations of physics?”, Archive for history of exact sciences, lix (2005), 2005–90.

Pauli W. , Theory of relativity, transl. by Field G. (New York, 1958), 2.

See MacRossan M. N. , “A note on relativity before Einstein”, The British journal for the philosophy of science, xxxvii (1986), 232–4, p. 232; Kittel C. , “Larmor and the prehistory of the Lorentz transformations”, American journal of physics, xlii (1974), 1974–9, p. 726; see also Rindler W. , “Einstein's priority in recognizing time dilation physically”, American journal of physics, xxxviii (1970), 1970–15. For a detailed analysis of Larmor's works in relation to the reception of relativity in England, see Warwick , op. cit. (ref. 11), chap. 7. For an internalist comparison of Larmor and Lorentz, see Darrigol O. , “The electron theories of Larmor and Lorentz”, Historical studies in the physical and biological sciences, xxiv (1994), 1994–336.

Pauli , op. cit. (ref. 62), 3, our emphasis.

Ibid., our emphasis.

X. Léon in Bulletin de la Société Française de Philosophie, séance du 6 avril 1922, xvii (1922), 93.

Nordmann Charles , “Un événement scientifique — Einstein à Paris”, Le Matin, 23 March 1922, cited by Biezunski Michel , Einstein à Paris (Saint-Denis, 1991), 16. One should recall that Einstein had first refused the invitation and then accepted it a few weeks later at the urging of the German Foreign Minister, Walter Rathenau, who saw in it a gesture of reconciliation with the French. The symbolic meaning of Einstein's visit was clear to everyone.

le Bon Gustave , Compte rendus hebdomadaires de l'Académie des Sciences, séance du 6 juillet 1914, clix (1914), 26–27. The note was communicated by the astronomer H. Deslandres.

Le Bon provides another example of the tendency to stake a claim to priority only after a theory has been generally accepted. On the basis of his general philosophical ideas about the transmutation of matter published in the years 1900 and collected in his book L'évolution de la matière (Paris, 1905), he claimed priority for the idea of transmutation after the Curies received the Nobel Prize in 1903. On this episode, see Nye Mary Joe , “Gustave Le Bon's black light: A study in physics and philosophy in France at the turn of the century”, Historical studies in the physical sciences, iv (1974), 1974–95, pp. 191–2, and Marpeau Benoit , Gustave le Bon: Parcours d'un intellectuel, 1841–1931 (Paris, 2000), 250–63.

See the letters between Le Bon and Einstein in Einstein Albert , Oeuvres choisies 4. Correspondances fran&çaises, ed. by Biezunski M. (Paris, 1989), 186–99.

Einstein to Le Bon, 18 June 1922, ibid., 187.

Guillaume does mentions in a note that in their articles for the Encyklopädie der Mathematischen Wissenschften, Pauli W. Kottler M. do cite Poincaré adequately. As we have seen, Felix Klein did make sure this was the case, at least for Pauli but maybe also for Kottler.

Hence Paul Kircherberger, La théorie de la relativité exposée sans mathématiques (Paris, 1922), was translated from German with a preface by von Laue Max . Interestingly, the bibliography contains some works by French authors (such as Langevin P. Becquerel J. ) but none by Poincaré.

Poincaré La mécanique nouvelle (ref. 33).

It has thus been published in German in 1910 as “Die neue Mechanik”, Himmel und Erde (Leipzig), xxiii (1910), 1910–116, and as a reprint: Poincaré H. , Die neue Mechanik (Leipzig and Berlin, 1911), 22 pp.

Guillaume, in Poincaré , “La mécanique nouvelle” (ref. 33), p. viii, italics in the original.

Ibid.

See Einstein to Jacob Laub, 20 March 1909, in CPAE, v, Document 143, 101. The paper on the Maschinchen is in CPAE, ii, English translation, Document 48, 312–15.

See CPAE, iii, Documents 5 and 6.

Biezunski , op. cit. (ref. 67), 21–22 and, by the same author, “Einstein's reception in Paris in 1922” in Glick (ed.), The comparative reception of relativity (ref. 53), 169–88, pp. 176–7.

See the correspondence between them in vols viii—x of CPAE. For an analysis, see Genovesi Angelo , Il carteggio tra Albert Einstein ed Edouard Guillaume: ‘Tempo universale’ e teoria della relatività ristretta nella filosofia francese contemporanea (Milan, 2000); and Introduction to vol. x of CPAE, pp. xliii–xlix.

CPAE, ix, English translation, Document 305, 255, and Document 330, 276.

For details see Biezunski , op. cit. (ref. 67), 47–48.

Appell Paul , Henri Poincaré (Paris, 1925), 86–87.

de Broglie Louis , Savants et découvertes (Paris, 1956), 51.

Ibid., 7.

Discours du Général Dassault, in Le livre du centenaire de la naisssance de Henri Poincaré 1854–1954 (no author) (Paris, 1955), 101–2.

See the contribution of the civil engineer Darrieus M. G. , Ibid., 136.

Discours de M. Le Président André Marie, ibid., 87.

Whittaker , op. cit. (ref. 18), 40. For a detailed critical analysis of Whittaker's point of view, see Holton Gerald , “On the origins of the special theory of relativity”, American journal of physics, xxviii (1960), 627–36, reprinted in Holton, Thematic origins (ref. 6), 165–83; and Miller , op. cit. (ref. 24).

Bridgman P. C. , review, Isis, xlvii (1956), 428–30, p. 429.

Born to Einstein, letter 102, 26 September 1953, in The Born—Einstein letters (ref. 56), 197.

Einstein to Born, letter 103, 12 October 1953, in The Born—Einstein letters (ref. 56), 199. It is in this specific context that one should interpret what Einstein wrote two months later about the upcoming 50th anniversary celebration of relativity in Berne. In a letter to A. Mercier, dated 9 November 1953, in which he declined for reasons of health to participate in this ceremony, he wrote that he “hoped that one will also take care on that occasion to honor suitably the merits of Poincaré and Lorentz” (cited and translated by Pais , op. cit. (ref. 14), 171). Having noted the recent fuss generated by Whittaker about the proper attribution of the “discovery” it was natural for him to mention that “due credit” should also be given to Lorentz and Poincaré. It is doubtful however that he would have raised the question in the absence of Whittaker's point of view and if its impact on Born and other scientists had not put that question on the agenda. Having become an icon and an old sage he could have forgotten that in 1920 he had answered an American journalist about the history of special relativity, that it was Lorentz and himself who had developed it (New York Times, 3 December 1920, cited by Pais, op. cit. (ref. 14), 171). There was then no mention of Poincaré.

Born Max , review of Whittaker's book, The British journal for the philosophy of science, v (1954), 261–3, p. 262.

Whittaker Edmund , “Albert Einstein, 1879–1955”, Biographical memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, i (1955), 37–67, p. 42.

Whitrow G. J. , “Obituary: Professor Sir Edmund Whittaker, F.R.S.”, The British journal for the philosophy of science, vii (1956), 180–1, emphasis in the text.

Bergmann P. G. , “Fifty years of relativity”, Science, cxxiii (1956), 487–94, p. 488.

Born , Physics in my generation (ref. 59), 100–15, p. 106.

Kahan T. , “Sur les origines de la relativité restreinte”, Revue d'histoire des sciences et de leurs applications, xii (1959), 159–65, p. 164.

Grünbaum A. , “The relevance of philosophy to the history of special relativity”, The journal of philosophy, lix (1962), 561–74, pp. 573–4.

Keswani G. H. , “Origin and concept of relativity (Parts I and II): Reply to Professor Dingle and Mr Levinson”, The British journal for the philosophy of science, xvii (1966), 149–52, p. 150; and Keswani G. H. , “Origins and concept of relativity I”, The British journal for the philosophy of science, xv (1965), 1965–306; Part II, ibid., xvi (1966), 1966–32; and Part III, ibid., xvi (1966), 1966–94.

Dingle Herbert , “Note on Mr Keswani's articles, Origins and concept of relativity”, The British journal for the philosophy of science, xvi (1965), 244–6, pp. 244–5.

Popper Karl , “A note on the difference between the Lorentz-Fitzgerald Contraction and the Einstein Contraction”, The British journal for the philosophy of science, xvi (1966), 332–3. The reply by Keswani is in ibid., xvii (1967), 1967–6.

Scribner Charles Jr , “Henri Poincaré and the principle of relativity”, American journal of physics, xxxii (1964), 672–8, p. 672.

Schwartz H. M. , “A note on Poincaré's contribution to relativity”, American journal of physics, xxxiii (1965), 170. He refers to the publication, in 1913, of the original papers of Lorentz, Einstein and Minkowski, a collection that certainly contributed a lot to fix the canonical history of relativity and its main actors: Blumenthal Otto (ed.), Das Relativitätsprinzip (Leipzig, 1913), with notes by Arnold Sommerfeld. E. B. Wilson reviewed it in Science, and characterized Einstein's paper as the “epochal formulation of the principle of relativity as a fundamental physical principle independent of any hypothesis of shortening”, Science, xxxix (1914), 944.

Schwartz H. M. , “Poincaré's Rendiconti paper on relativity”, Part I, American journal of physics, xxxix (1971), 1287–94; Part II, ibid., xl (1972), 1972–72; Part III, ibid., xl (1972), 1972–87; and Kilmister C. W. (ed.), Special theory of relativity (New York, 1970), part of the series Selected Readings in Physics.

Goldberg Stanley , “Henri Poincaré and Einstein's theory of relativity”, American journal of physics, xxxv (1967), 934–44; Cuvaj Camillo , “Henri Poincaré's mathematical contributions to relativity and the Poincaré stresses”, American journal of physics, xxxvi (1968), 1968–13; Cuvaj Camillo , “Note on ‘Poincaré and relativity’”, American journal of physics, xxxviii (1970), 1970–5; Miller Arthur I. , “Comment on: Poincaré's Rendiconti paper on relativity: Part I”, American journal of physics, xl (1972), 923; Giannoni Carlo , “Einstein and the Lorentz-Poincaré theory of relativity”, PSA: Proceedings of the biennial meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, 1970, 575–89. Curiously, despite its title, which refers explicitly to Whittaker's thesis, this paper never discusses Poincaré's work nor cites his papers.

Keswani G. H. Kilmister C. W. , “Intimations of relativity before Einstein”, The British journal for the philosophy of science, xxxiv (1983), 343–54.

See for example Gutting Gary , “Einstein's discovery of special relativity”, Philosophy of science, xxxix (1972), 51–68; Earman John Glymour Clark Rynasiewicz Robert , “On writing the history of special relativity”, PSA: Proceedings of the biennial meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, 1982, 403–16; and Schaffner Kenneth F. , comments on this paper in ibid., 417–28. None of these papers cites Whittaker. For further examples of debates on who really did what in relativity based on rational reconstructions, see the exchanges between E. Zahar and Miller: Zahar Elie , “Einstein's debt to Lorentz: A reply to Feyeraband and Miller”, The British journal for the philosophy of science, xxix (1978), 1978–60; Zahar Elie , Einstein's revolution: A study in heuristic (La Salle, 1989), chap. 5; and Miller , Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity (ref. 32). The fundamentally moral foundation of these enterprises is clearly indicated by the frequent use of the word ‘injustice’ in relation to what was done to either Poincaré or Einstein, depending on the author's side in the debate. Already in 1960, Gerald Holton interpreted Whittaker's mistake in dating a paper of Lorentz from 1903 instead of 1904 as a sign that it was “not merely a mistake” and revealed how the “biographer's preconceptions” interacted with his material; see Holton Thematic origins (ref. 6), 177. For an assessment of this literature see Cassidy David , “Understanding the history of special relativity”, Historical studies in the physical sciences, xvi (1986), 1986–95. For more recent works, some of them generated by commemorative events, see Miller Arthur I. , “Why did Poincaré not formulate special relativity in 1905”, in Greffe J. L. Heinzman G. Lorenz K. (eds), Henri Poincaré: Science et philosophie (Nancy, 1994), 69–100; Darrigol Olivier , “Henri Poincaré's criticism of fin de siècle electrodynamics”, Studies in history and philosophy of modern physics, xxvi (1995), 1995–44; Katzir Shaul , “Poincaré's relativistic physics: Its origins and nature”, Physics in perspective, vii (2005), 2005–92; Provost Jean-Pierre Bracco Christian , “La relativité de Poincaré en 1905 et les transformations actives”, Archive for history of exact sciences, lx (2006), 2006–51; and Cerf, op. cit. (ref. 2).

Dieudonné Jean , “Poincaré, Jules Henri”, in Dictionary of scientific biography, xi, 51–61, p. 59.

Keswani , “Origins and concept of relativity (II)” (ref. 101).

Ives Herbert E. , “Revisions of the Lorentz transformations”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, xcv (1951), 125–31.

On Whittaker's opposition to relativity see Crelinstein Jeffrey , Einstein's jury: The race to test relativity (New Jersey, 2006), 31–35.

For reasons of completeness of our survey, this section and the next summarize an analysis developed in more details in Gingras , op. cit. (ref. 2).

Pilé Gérard , “Henri Poincaré (1873) et la relativité: Avant-propos”, La jaune et la rouge, April 1994, 29.

Leveugle Jules , “Poincaré et la relativité”, La jaune et la rouge, April 1994, 30–51, pp. 49–50.

On Ives, see Ives Herbert E. The Einstein myth and the Ives papers (Old Greenwich, 1980).

Leveugle Jules , La relativité, Poincaré et Einstein, Planck, Hilbert: Histoire véridique de la théorie de la relativité (Paris, 2004).

Respectively in Le Nouvel Observateur, 5 August 2004, 51, and Le Monde, 15 April 2005, 8.

Thomine Philippe , (director), Tout est relatif, Monsieur Poincaré!, produced by Vidéoscop, 2005. The ultimate national icon of France is of course Descartes. See Azouvi François , Descartes et la France (Paris, 2002), which provides a fascinating cultural history of how the philosopher came to incarnate France itself.

For a detailed analysis of the rhetoric of the film see Gingras , op. cit. (ref. 2). On ‘counter-memory’, see Davies Nathalie Zemon Starn Randolph , “Introduction” to the Special Issue on “Memory and counter-memory”, Representations, xxvi (1989), 1–6.

Flood Christopher , “The politics of counter-memory on the French extreme right”, Journal of European studies, xxxv (2005), 221–36, pp. 222 and 234.

Delaporte François , (ed.), A vital rationalist: Selected writings from Georges Canguilhem (New York, 1994), 51.

Clark J. T. , “The philosophy of science and the history of science”, in Clagett Marshall (ed.), Critical problems in the history of science (Madison, 1959), 103–40, p. 103. Interestingly, in his critique of Whittaker, Grünbaum also quotes this author to discredit the method used by the mathematician-historian. See Grünbaum , op. cit. (ref. 100), 573.

Delaporte , op. cit. (ref. 123), 51. Koyré is cited by Canguilhem on the same page.

For a complementary discussion see “Introduction” of Graham Loren Lepenies Wolf Weingart Peter (eds), Functions and uses of disciplinary histories (Dordrecht, 1983), pp. ix–xx.

Galison Peter , “Introduction”, Isis, xcv (2004), 610–13, p. 611.

Darrigol , “The electrodynamic origin of relativity” (ref. 3), 311.

Ibid., 311.

For a general discussion of attribution of a ‘discovery’, see Brannigan A. , The social basis of scientific discoveries (Cambridge, 1981).

On the autonomy of historians of science, see Gingras Yves , “The search for autonomy in history of science”, in Renn Jurgen et Gavroglu Kostas (eds), Positioning the history of science (Dordrecht, 2007), 61–64.