POINCARÉ, HENRI. - THE POINCARÉ RELATIVITY PRINCIPLE.

Sur la dynamique de l'electron. (Séance du Lundi 5 Juin 1905).

Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1905. 4to. No wrappers. In: "Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de L'Academie des Sciences", Tome 140, No 23. Titlepage to vol. 140. Pp. (1497-) 1572. (Entire issue offered). Poincaré's paper: pp. 1504-1508. Titlepage with a stamp on verso. A bit of upper right corner gone. Leaves a bit fragile, caused by the poor paperquality. Clean.

First printing of this famous paper delivered to the Academy of Paris on its session of June 1905, as the first Poincaré relativistic text "On the dynamic of electron", where Poincaré set forth the essential element of relativity and the "Lorentz Transformation". Poincaré concludes "It seems that this impossibility of demonstrating absolute motion is a general law of nature" !! and that Newton's law need modification and that there should exist gravitational waves which propagate with the velocity of light !! - This famous paper gave rice to the controversy about priority around the discovery of special relativity as Poincaré's paper is from June 5 and Einstein's first paper on relativity was received by the "Annalen" on June 30, both 1905.

"The official history tells us that Einstein, without having read the works of Lorentz and Poincaré past 1895 and without any prior publication on the subject, had written alone in Bern the "founder paper" of the Relativity in the last days of June 1905. For that reason, and a few other of less importance, the biographers of Einstein have called that year 1905 "Annus mirabilis" and its centenial is celebrated in 2005. However on June 5, 1905, after many other papers on this subject, Poincaré had presented
a note at the French Academy of Science, a text that contains the essential elements of Einstein paper: the relativity principle and the "Lorentz transformation". This coincidence involves the suspicion of a possible plagiarism of Poincaré by Einstein." (C. Marchal "Poincaré, Einstein and the Relativity: the Surprising Secret."

Order-nr.: 47065