On Einstein's opponents, and other crackpots

Abstract

Einsteins Gegner: Die öffentliche Kontroverse um die Relativitätstheorie in den 1920er Jahren, Milena Wazeck. Campus Verlag, pp. 429, EUR 39.90. ISBN: 978-3593389141 “This world is a strange madhouse. Currently, every coachman and every waiter is debating whether relativity theory is correct. Belief in this matter depends on political party affiliation.”1 Thus begins a letter by Albert Einstein to his one time close collaborator, mathematician Marcel Grossmann. It was written on 12 September 1920, just some three weeks after Berlin's Philharmonic Hall had hosted a rambunctious rally at which Einstein had been denounced as a fraud and scientific philistine.