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Herbert Dingle (1890 – 1978) was an English astronomer and president of the Royal Astronomical Society. He is best-known for his claimed disproof of the theory of special relativity.

Born in 1890, Dingle was educated at Plymouth Science, Art and Technical Schools and Imperial College, London. He was a member of the British government eclipse expeditions of 1927 and 1932; and became Professor of Natural Philosophy, Imperial College in 1938, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, University College London in 1946–1955 and President of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1951–1953. Appointed Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy of Science in 1955, he died in 1978.

Originally a supporter of Einstein's work on the theory of relativity and an author of the textbook Relativity for All (1922), Dingle came to doubt its foundations after reading an account of the so-called twin paradox. According to this, a clock that moves relative to another will appear to run more slowly as judged by the stationary clock and inversely. Dingle claimed that Einstein's results were inconsistent with those worked out using a "commonsense" method. However, other experts — notably the astrophysicist Sir William H. McCrea — disagreed. The argument between Dingle and McCrea in Nature of 1962 is well-known and Dingle's errors are well understood .

Direct evidence in favour of special relativity came in 1971, when two scientists from the US Naval Observatory took two high-precision atomic clocks on flights around the world in different directions. Einstein's theory correctly predicted a difference in elapsed time as measured by each clock.

Late in life - and posthumously on the Internet - Dingle was vilified and misrepresented by his opponents, often trivially e.g. the claim that he suffered from dementia. More important however is a review of "Science at the Crossroads" in the British Journal for the History of Science 9 (1976) pp. 336-7 that presumed Dingle had died in 1974. This despite the fact that Dingle was a founder of that journal and did not die until 1978! Hence Dingle's subsequent letter to the journal BJHS 10 (1977) p. 94 in which he highlights the suspicion that his supposed death in 1974 only serves to obscure his two remarkable communications in the journal Nature 255 (1975) p. 519, & 256 (1975) p. 162. With these references one can follow back the 'cascade' of publications and see the overall thrust of his life's work culminating in the references given here.

External links

• "Science at the Crossroads" by Herbert Dingle.
• "Challenging Einstein's Special Relativity: Herbert Dingle - Science at the Crossroads" This article links two PDF files: The body and the appendices of Herbert Dingle's book "Science at the Crossroads".
• "Cosmology: Methodological Debates in the 1930s and 1940s"from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• A more detailed look at Dingle's misconception of the Twins paradox
• Herbert Dingle Was Correct! An Impartial look at Dingle's Point of View

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