Science usually advances through experiments. You build a telescope, you smash particles, or you watch an eclipse to see if light bends. But in 1931, a group of people tried to take down the most famous physicist in history using a pamphlet. Honestly, it was a mess.
The book was titled Hundert Autoren gegen Einstein (One Hundred Authors Against Einstein). It wasn't a collection of peer-reviewed papers or mathematical proofs. Instead, it was a weird, frantic compilation of short essays, letters, and excerpts from people who just really, really hated the Theory of Relativity.
When someone told Albert Einstein about the book, he reportedly gave the most savage response in the history of science: "If I were wrong, one would have been enough."
Why did people hate Relativity so much?
It’s hard to imagine now because we use GPS—which literally relies on Einstein’s math to work—but in the early 20th century, Relativity felt like an insult to common sense. People were genuinely angry.
Einstein’s work suggested that time wasn't a constant. It suggested that space could warp. To a lot of old-school physicists and philosophers, this felt like "Jewish physics" or "mathematical magic" rather than "real" science. They wanted the world to be mechanical, predictable, and logical in the way Isaac Newton described it.
The book wasn't just about science, though. You can't talk about one hundred authors against Einstein without talking about the ugly political undercurrents of 1930s Germany. This was a time when anti-Semitism was becoming the dominant cultural force. Some of the contributors were legitimate scientists who were just stuck in their ways, but others were driven by a desperate need to discredit a Jewish genius.
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A mix of genuine confusion and pure spite
The "One Hundred" weren't actually one hundred authors. If you count them up, there are about 28 formal essays, followed by a list of other people who disagreed with Einstein for various reasons. Some were doctors. Some were journalists. A few were actually talented physicists like Philipp Lenard, a Nobel Prize winner who eventually became a lead figure in the "Deutsche Physik" movement.
Lenard and his peer Johannes Stark didn't just think Einstein was wrong; they thought his work was a threat to the German spirit. They preferred "Aryan Physics," which they claimed was based on actual observation rather than abstract math. It was basically the first major "anti-intellectual" movement of the modern era.
The arguments inside One Hundred Authors Against Einstein
So, what did they actually say? If you read the text today, most of it sounds like gibberish.
One contributor, Hans Israel, helped organize the whole project. He wasn't even a scientist; he was a fringe activist. The arguments in the book mostly fell into three buckets:
- The Philosophical Rejection: Philosophers like Oskar Kraus argued that Relativity was logically impossible. They claimed that "time" was an absolute concept and that Einstein was just playing word games.
- The "Common Sense" Defense: Many authors argued that if you couldn't visualize it, it wasn't real. They couldn't visualize space-time curving, so they concluded it must be a hoax.
- The Ether Obsessives: Before Einstein, scientists believed a substance called "the ether" filled all of space. Many authors in the book were still clinging to this dead idea, trying to explain away the Michelson-Morley experiment which had already proven the ether didn't exist.
Interestingly, the book is a masterclass in what we now call "moving the goalposts." When Einstein's theory predicted the shift in Mercury's orbit, the critics said it was a fluke. When the 1919 solar eclipse confirmed light-bending, they said the data was faked or misinterpreted.
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It was basically a 1931 version of a Twitter dogpile
The most fascinating thing about one hundred authors against Einstein is how modern it feels. It wasn't an attempt to find the truth. It was an attempt to create a "consensus of dissent."
By gathering 100 names, the editors hoped to overwhelm the public. They wanted people to think, "Well, if 100 experts say he's wrong, there must be something to it." It’s the same tactic used today by climate change deniers or people who think the Earth is flat. They value the quantity of voices over the quality of the evidence.
Einstein knew this. He didn't bother writing a rebuttal to every single essay. He knew that science isn't a democracy. You don't vote on the laws of gravity. You either have the math and the experimental evidence, or you don't.
Why the book failed so miserably
Despite the hype, the book did almost nothing to stop the momentum of Relativity. By 1931, the evidence was already stacking up too high.
- The Math Worked: Even if you hated the implications, you couldn't deny that Einstein's equations solved problems that Newton's couldn't.
- Global Support: While German nationalists were attacking him, the rest of the world—from Eddington in the UK to scientists in the US—was verifying his work.
- The Atomic Age: Soon, the relationship between mass and energy ($E=mc^2$) would become the most practical and terrifyingly real equation in human history.
What we can learn from this strange moment in history
The story of the one hundred authors against Einstein is a reminder that being an "expert" doesn't make you immune to bias. It shows that even Nobel Prize winners can be blinded by prejudice and a refusal to let go of old ideas.
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It also teaches us how to spot fake controversies. When you see a large group of people attacking a scientific theory based on "common sense" or "logic" without providing a better mathematical model, you're usually looking at a repeat of 1931.
Einstein eventually left Germany for the United States in 1933, as the Nazis rose to power. The "One Hundred" got their wish—they pushed him out of the country—but they lost the battle of ideas. Today, Einstein is the face of genius, and the authors of that book are mostly forgotten footnotes in the history of science.
Actionable insights for evaluating scientific claims
If you ever find yourself looking at a massive list of people claiming a mainstream scientific theory is wrong, keep these steps in mind to avoid being misled:
- Check the "One Person" Rule: Ask yourself, "Has even one of these critics provided a testable, repeatable experiment that proves the theory wrong?" In science, one solid experiment beats a thousand opinions every time.
- Identify the Motivation: Look at the context. Are the critics attacking the math, or are they attacking the person? The one hundred authors against Einstein were often more concerned with Einstein's identity than his physics.
- Look for the Consensus of Evidence, Not People: Scientific consensus isn't a show of hands; it's a mountain of data. If the data from telescopes, satellites, and particle accelerators all point one way, a pamphlet isn't going to change that.
- Understand the "Fringe" Tactic: Be wary of collections that mix legitimate scientists with "philosophers" and "journalists" to pad the numbers. This is a classic trick to make a weak argument look like a movement.
Science stays alive because it is willing to be proven wrong. But to prove it wrong, you have to do the work. You have to find the error in the math or the flaw in the experiment. Just signing your name to a list of "doubters" doesn't change the way the universe works. Einstein’s legacy survived because his theories described reality better than anyone else's, and no amount of "authors" could change the curvature of space-time.