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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 claim to have found an inconsistency in 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 essay Relativity for All which was published as a booklet in 1922, Dingle came to doubt the foundations of the theory after reading an account of the twin paradox. In the twin paradox, one twin leaves Earth on a high speed trip into outer space, and later returns to find the he has aged less than his twin brother who stayed on the Earth. Dingle's specific objection was based on the idea that the effect should be symmetrical, in accord with the fact that, in special relativity, each of two relatively moving clocks will run slow with respect to the inertial coordinate system in terms of which the other clock is at rest. Dingle himself had written about the reciprocity of relativistic effects decades earlier, beginning in 1922, and continued to teach and write approvingly about special relativity (including a text book in 1940, entitled "The Theory of Special Relativity", whose 4th edition he published in 1961) until his retirement. Thereafter his views began to change, and over the next few years he became convinced that special relativity is logically self-contradictory. He then wrote about this in letters to the editor of various scientific magazines, including Nature. Other individuals — notably the astrophysicist Sir William H. McCrea — voiced disagreement. The arguments between Dingle and McCrea in Nature are well-known A recent biographical sketch of McCrea has labeled these friendly but heated exchanges as "part of the legend of the early days of relativity".

It is the current mainstream scientific view that Dingle's objections to the logical consistency of special relativity were unfounded.

References

1. Dingle, H. (October 14 1967). "The Case against Special Relativity". Nature: 119. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
2. McCrea, W.H. (October 14 1967). "Why The Special Theory of Relativity is Correct". Nature: 122. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
3. Williams, Iwan (2003). McCartney, Mark and Whitaker, Andrew (ed.). Physicists of Ireland: Passion and Precision. IOP Publishing Ltd. pp. p. 252. ISBN 0750308664. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)

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.
• "Symmetrical Experiments to Test the Clock Paradox (PDF file)" Published in Physics and Modern Topics in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering 1999.

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