Einstein’s Opponents – The Popular Opposition to the Theory of Relativity in the 1920s

The dissertation project deals with the opposition to the theory of relativity in the broader public in the 1920s. It focuses on popular concepts of science and nature on which the critique of relativity is based and investigates on both an epistemological  and a social level the struggle against modern physics as a process of marginalization of popular knowledge claims.

The dissertation draws on new source material from the papers of the fervent Einstein opponent Ernst Gehrcke (1878-1960), which the MPIWG acquired recently. Parts of the papers, including a newspaper article collection which contains about 3000 articles on Einstein and the theory of relativity from the early 1920s, were digitized and made available within the framework of ECHO.