Édouard Guillaume (1881–1959) was a Swiss physicist and patent examiner, notorious for his published papers attacking

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein (14 March 187918 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence f ...

theory of special relativity In physics, the special theory of relativity, or special relativity for short, is a scientific theory of the relationship between space and time. In Albert Einstein's 1905 paper, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", the theory is present ...

. He is also noteworthy for his work on mathematical economics. Édouard Guillaume was the younger cousin of

Charles Édouard Guillaume Charles Édouard Guillaume (; 15 February 1861 – 13 June 1938) was a Swiss physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1920 "for the service he had rendered to precision measurements in physics by his discovery of anomalies in nickel ...

, who won the Nobel prize in physics in 1920. Both of the Guillaume cousins received doctorates in physics from the Zurich Polytechnique (

ETH Zurich ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...

). Édouard Guillaume (the younger cousin) worked at the Swiss patent office where Einstein worked from 1902 to 1909. Beginning in 1913 Guillaume began publishing in the ''Archives des Sciences Physiques et Naturelles'' papers arguing for a Lorentzian electrodynamics with a universal time. He claimed that Einstein's theory mistakes changes in the units of measurement for physical changes and that time can be regarded as absolute. Guillaume opposed the theory of relativity, though most of his objections were related to special relativity. Beginning in 1917, Einstein started to reply to some of the letters Guillaume sent to him. The correspondence went on for a number of years, but Einstein was unable to convince Guillaume. In 1915 he moved from the Swiss patent office to the Swiss Federal Office for Insurance. From 1916 to 1946 when he retired, he worked for the Swiss insurance company ''La Neuchâteloise'', of which he became a director. For the academic year 1936-1937 he lectured on financial economics as a ''privat docent'' at the

University of Neuchâtel The University of Neuchâtel (UniNE) is a French-speaking public research university in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. The university has four faculties (schools) and more than a dozen institutes, including arts and human sciences, natural sciences, ...

. Édouard Guillaume was an Invited Speaker of the ICM in 1920 in Strasbourg, where he presented his ideas concerning relativity theory.Guillaume, E
"Expression mono et polyparametrique du temps dans la theorie de la relativité."
In ''Comptes rendus du Congrès international des mathématiciens'': Strasbourg, pp. 22–30. 1920. In 1932 he was an Invited Speaker of the ICM in 1932 in Zurich, where he gave a talk stemming from the Guillaume brothers' work on mathematical economics.

Selected publications

*Guillaume, Édouard
théorie de la relativité et le temps universel." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale
25, no. 3 (1918): 285-323. *Guillaume, Édouard
"La théorie de la relativité et sa signification."
Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 27, no. 4 (1920): 423-469.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Guillaume, Edouard 1881 births 1959 deaths ETH Zurich alumni Patent examiners Relativity critics