LETTERS TO THE BOOKSHELF
A letter regarding Jill North's review of Concepts of Simultaneity
I read, with not inconsiderable interest, parts of "Concurrent Events," a review by Jill North of Max Jammer's Concepts of Simultaneity (January–February 2008). The review states that "Quantum mechanics seems to require a frame-independent notion of simultaneity—something Einstein did away with when he introduced his theory of relativity!" This statement is an egregious example of non sequitur, for Einstein was antedated by Jules Henri Poincaré, as Walter Isaacson notes in his recent biography of Einstein. (See also pages 5 and 6 of V. I. Arnol’d’s 2006 article “Forgotten and neglected theories of Poincaré” [Russian Mathematical Surveys 61(1):1-18]).
Joseph Roy D. North
Austin, Texas
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