Otto Luther
Otto Luther | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 31, 1907 New York, United States |
| Died | August 1, 1977 (aged 70) |
| Residence | Yorba Linda, CA, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Criticism of relativity; "Theory of Dynamic Space" |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Photographer, Scientist |
Otto Luther (1907–1977) was an American art director and self-taught physicist who, after a career in commercial art and imaging technology, devoted his retirement to a sustained critique of Einstein's theory of relativity. In a series of self-published books he argued that special relativity is untenable and that E = mc² is invalid, and he set out in its place his own "Unified Field Theory of Dynamic Space".
Biography
Luther was a native of New York, educated there and employed for most of his working life as an art director for several companies. He worked in depth on electronic photography, and while still in the industry he developed and patented a device for converting motion-picture film into television images — an early film-to-television (telecine) system, at a time when the two media were regarded as technically incompatible.
He retired around 1961 and moved to Yorba Linda, California, where he turned to the study of physics, a subject that had fascinated him since childhood. Largely self-taught in the field, he devised his own techniques and built physical devices intended to demonstrate his theories. He gained a measure of recognition for his work in Europe as well as in the United States.
Criticism of relativity and the "Theory of Dynamic Space"
Luther held that Einstein's relativity is fundamentally in error, tracing the whole edifice back to a mistaken starting assumption. His central objection was that Einstein "did not take into account the existence of transverse movement of light", accounting for the propagation of light in only one direction. From this initial flaw, he argued, followed a train of "paradoxes, oversights, misconceptions, contradictions, [and] inversion of fact" that he set out to expose.
He was pointed about the consequences. Invoking Einstein's own remark that the theory could not survive the falsification of any single one of its conclusions — that it "cannot be modified without destroying it" — Luther maintained that E = mc² would have to be abandoned and that relativity should be replaced entirely. His alternative, developed across his books, was a "Unified Field Theory of Dynamic Space", a constructive account of physics built on the properties of space itself, which he claimed to be able to support with a device of his own invention.
His work was, in his lifetime, "not as yet been generally accepted in the world of science" — as a 1968 profile in the Santa Ana Register put it — but he remained confident that acceptance "will have to come." He is catalogued here among the dissident scientists who challenged the relativistic consensus.
Books
- 1974 – "E = mc2 is Invalid"
- 1974 – "Einstein's Principle of Invariance Challenged" (Read in full)
- 1973 – "Return to Reason: Theory of Dynamic Space" (Read in full)
- 1971 – "The Little Book: Refutation of Relativity Theories" (Read in full)
- 1966 – "Relativity is Dead" (Key Research Corp., Yorba Linda, 159 pp.) (Read in full)
Source
- Ron Kenner, "[profile of Otto Luther]", Santa Ana Register (c. 1968).