Examples of Physicists Not Proved Right Until After Death

[drwayne]

It was stated in another thread by Woggle that:

""Many great people in history had experience this frustration, and had not been proven correct till many years after their pasting."

I though it might be an interesting exercise for the community to come up with a list of such cases. Please include not only the scientist, but also the theory, and the timeframes involved.

 

[yevaud]

The first that comes to mind with me is, Alfred Wegener and Plate Tectonics, who first proposed this idea in 1912, and then expanded upon it in his book The Origin of Continents and Oceans (1915). He died in 1930 (precise date unknown), his theory mocked and to some extent, repudiated.

And then, post-WWII, once we began to survey the Atlantic Ocean, we discovered the mid-Atlantic ridge, followed by other proofs that Plate Tectonics was, in fact, viable and correct.

Alfred Wegener

 

[5hot6un]

Can we broaden this to Scientists?

 

[drwayne]

Sure.

I would discourage anything where the time for a theory being proved right is in the future.

I am trying to keep this as a "list", so please avoid conspiracy to supress new ideas side discussions.
I did not intend this as a debate/argument/flame thread, but rather something to bring together
information and (I hope) learn some fascinating history.

I am thinking of starting another thread that covers something along the lines of "Important
Scientific Advances Brought About by Non-Scientists" which will probably be harder to keep
out of the weeds...

 

[skeptic]

I think we'd have to include Copernicus and Galileo.

 

[drwayne]

Please try to avoid just naming names, give the specific theory they advocated, and when it was later
accepted.

 

[yevaud]

Oskar Klein and Theodor Kaluza. They proposed a five-dimensional theory of Physics which was not well received, considering the day and age it was proposed (first in 1926). Many years later, with the advent of Yang-Mills, Kaluza-Klein was shown to have been correct.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaluza%E2% ... ein_theory

 

[Woggles]

It was stated in another thread by Woggle that:

""Many great people in history had experience this frustration, and had not been proven correct till many years after their pasting."quote]

Hey drwayne what a great topic! Why didn't I think of that, wait I did lol. Still great you brought it forward!! I can’t wait to see all the responses!!

 

[ramparts]

Kaluza-Klein theory certainly hasn't been shown to be correct yet; it's just that their original idea (unification through extra dimensions) is one that is more popular and shows up in more theories after their deaths.

 

[yevaud]

Rampartrs, I would strongly disagree. Kaluza-Klein is the basis for Yang-Mills; Yang-Mills is a key to the Standard Model. Repudiate KK and you do so with all of modern physics.

 

[ramparts]

The basic idea, maybe. But there are two major components to KK that seem very much unproven to me: the higher-dimensionality, and the idea that E&M is a "projection" of higher-dimensional gravity.

 

[yevaud]

Isn't that mixing metaphors? I was to the understanding that gravitational extradimensional propagation was a function of M-Theory, not Kaluza-Klein/Yang-Mills? And that one can do such things as simplify, say, Maxwell's ugly equations into a single equation by the addition of one dimension appears to demonstrate that there is a certain correctness going on there.

Well, we can disagree on whether KK/YM is correct or not; it is still accepted as a keystone of the Standard Model.

 

[ramparts]

My understanding of Kaluza-Klein, as originally formulated by Kaluza and Klein, was that it was explicitly about higher-dimensional unification. I could be wrong.

 

[skeptic]

Newton's corpuscular theory of light reincarnated as photons.

 

[yevaud]

No, Ramparts, you're correct, that was the intent of KK. The problem was, the concept of higher dimensions was considered as almost a sort-of joke in that day and age.