providing one was willing to abandon the idea of absolute time. A similar point was made a few weeks later by a leading French mathematician, Henri Poincaré. Einstein’s arguments were closer to physics than those of Poincaré, who regarded this problem as mathematical. Einstein is usually given the credit for the new theory, but Poincaré is remembered by having his name attached to an important part of it.
The fundamental postulate of the theory of relativity, as it was called, was that the laws of science should be the same for all freely moving observers, no matter what their speed. This was true for NewtonΓÇÖs laws of motion, but now the idea was extended to include MaxwellΓÇÖs theory and the speed of light: all observers should measure the same speed of light, no matter how fast they are moving. This simple idea
