IIRC Einstein’s theory had a pretty immediate impact on publication on a lot of top physicists even before more empirical evidence came in. Wikipedia on the history of relativity says:
Walter Kaufmann (1905, 1906) was probably the first who referred to Einstein’s work. He compared the theories of Lorentz and Einstein and, although he said Einstein’s method is to be preferred, he argued that both theories are observationally equivalent. Therefore, he spoke of the relativity principle as the “Lorentz–Einsteinian” basic assumption.[76] Shortly afterwards, Max Planck (1906a) was the first who publicly defended the theory and interested his students, Max von Laue and Kurd von Mosengeil, in this formulation. He described Einstein’s theory as a “generalization” of Lorentz’s theory and, to this “Lorentz–Einstein Theory”, he gave the name “relative theory”; while Alfred Bucherer changed Planck’s nomenclature into the now common “theory of relativity” (“Einsteinsche Relativitätstheorie”). On the other hand, Einstein himself and many others continued to refer simply to the new method as the “relativity principle”. And in an important overview article on the relativity principle (1908a), Einstein described SR as a “union of Lorentz’s theory and the relativity principle”, including the fundamental assumption that Lorentz’s local time can be described as real time. (Yet, Poincaré′s contributions were rarely mentioned in the first years after 1905.) All of those expressions, (Lorentz–Einstein theory, relativity principle, relativity theory) were used by different physicists alternately in the next years.[77]
Following Planck, other German physicists quickly became interested in relativity, including Arnold Sommerfeld, Wilhelm Wien, Max Born, Paul Ehrenfest, and Alfred Bucherer.[78] von Laue, who learned about the theory from Planck,[78] published the first definitive monograph on relativity in 1911.[79] By 1911, Sommerfeld altered his plan to speak about relativity at the Solvay Congress because the theory was already considered well established.[78]
Overall I don’t think Einstein’s theories seemed particularly crazy. I think they seemed quite good almost immediately after publication, without the need for additional experiments.
Did Einstein’s theory seem crazy to people at the time?
IIRC Einstein’s theory had a pretty immediate impact on publication on a lot of top physicists even before more empirical evidence came in. Wikipedia on the history of relativity says:
Overall I don’t think Einstein’s theories seemed particularly crazy. I think they seemed quite good almost immediately after publication, without the need for additional experiments.
Thanks for the fact check. I was trying to convey the vibe the book gave me, but I think this specific example was not in the book, my bad!
Thanks! And makes sense, you did convey the vibe. And good to know it isn’t in the book.