I think that the story is more complicated that that. There is a certain genre of physics crackpottery ("Down with Einstein!" in Martin Gardner's _Fads and Fallacies_) that involves rejecting the theories of the biggest names in physics.

Thus, during the 19th cy., there were several physics crackpots who rejected the existence of gravity; though when pressed, one of them claimed that gravity exists, but does not extend all the way to the Moon (story from astronomer Simon Newcomb). Also, there were some who rejected the wave theory of sound, arguing for a particle theory instead. They'd argue about how difficult it is to keep a great mass of air in motion, as if emitting lots of sound particles is no real difficulty. In fairness to that genre of crackpottery, according to quantum mechanics, sound is quantized, thus acquiring particle properties. But sound still has wave properties, so the crackpots still lose.

Moving to the 20th cy., lots of these crackpots turned to attacking Einstein and relativity; especially amusing was the case of a certain George Francis Gillette, whose "spiral Universe" is extremely funny. Many of these crackpots see themselves as restoring the honor and reputation of Newton, whom they consider unjustly rejected. GFG's "spiral Universe" "out-Newton's Newton", for example.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: lpetrich on 2002-02-06 17:51 ]</font>