Sage Journals: Navarro 2020, "Whittaker, Einstein, and the History of the Aether"

Visit: 2026-10-07, Investigator run (STEP I). URL https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0073275320968408 (restricted access; abstract and metadata read). How reached: Google Whittaker "Old and new ideas of gravitation" Endeavour 1944. The Google snippet shows the article cites Whittaker, "Old and New Ideas of Gravitation," Endeavour 3 (1944): 39-42, at p.41.

Citation: Jaume Navarro, "Whittaker, Einstein, and the History of the Aether: Alternative interpretation, blunder, or bigotry?", History of Science 59 (3), 287-314 (2021; online 3 Nov 2020). PubMed 33143481. [web]

Abstract, summarised [web]: - The question is why Vol. 2 (1953) of the History treats Einstein as almost irrelevant to "the relativity theory of Poincaré and Lorentz". - Explanations already in the literature: Whittaker's scientific conservatism as a classical physicist, his commitment to the ether, the priority he gave mathematics over physics, and philosophical disagreements. In the background "the accusation of antisemitism looms". - New evidence: "the abundant correspondence between Whittaker and his son preserved in the archives of the Fisher Library, University of Toronto" (2026-10-07-utoronto-fisher.md). - Finding: "the problematic status quo of general relativity in the early 1950s, a period that has been described as the low-mark of general relativity, was very influential in the historical treatment he gave to Einstein." On antisemitism: "with the insufficient information on this subject the matter cannot be settled."

Further snippets (Google, same article) [web: Google snippets]: - "According to Warwick, Whittaker was convinced that gravitation and electromagnetism were ultimately connected" (citing Andrew Warwick, Masters of Theory, 2003). - Footnote: Whittaker, "The Aether: Past and Present," Endeavour 2 (1943): 117-20, cited at p.120. - Footnote: E. T. Whittaker to J. M. Whittaker, 22 September 1953, Box 5.

How it bears on the claims: - Claim 5 (the aether word kept for the QED vacuum) and the Q07 hypothesis: a professional historian, working from the private letters, records that Whittaker kept the aether as a commitment and held that gravitation and electromagnetism were connected. That runs from 1902 ("an identical property of the medium") to 1953. - Navarro quotes the 1943 and 1944 Endeavour articles, so his article is a way into those two texts, which are not online. - Interested parties: none with a commercial stake. Navarro is an academic historian. The antisemitism question is his to raise and he leaves it unsettled. It is reported here as context, not as a judgement on the physics.

Related, same author: J. Navarro, "Edmund T. Whittaker, physics and Catholicism. Thoughts of a convert", Notes and Records of the Royal Society 79 (1), 195-216 (2025), open access, doi 10.1098/rsnr.2024.0023 (see 2026-10-07-royalsociety.md).