Relativity comes to mind.

You could nitpick a rebuttal, but no matter how many people you give credit, general relativity was a completely novel idea when it was proposed. I'd argue for special relatively as well.

▲ Paracompact 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I am not a scientific historian, or even a physicist, but IMO relativity has a weak case for being a completely novel discovery. Critique of absolute time and space of Newtonian physics was already well underway, and much of the methodology for exploring this relativity (by way of gyroscopes, inertial reference frames, and synchronized mechanical clocks) were already in parlance. Many of the phenomena that relativity would later explain under a consistent framework already had independent quasi-explanations hinting at the more universal theory. Poincare probably came the closest to unifying everything before Einstein:

> In 1902, Henri Poincaré published a collection of essays titled Science and Hypothesis, which included: detailed philosophical discussions on the relativity of space and time; the conventionality of distant simultaneity; the conjecture that a violation of the relativity principle can never be detected; the possible non-existence of the aether, together with some arguments supporting the aether; and many remarks on non-Euclidean vs. Euclidean geometry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_special_relativity

Now, if I had to pick a major idea that seemed to drop fully-formed from the mind of a genius with little precedent to have guided him, I might personally point to Galois theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galois_theory). (Ironically, though, I'm not as familiar with the mathematical history of that time and I may be totally wrong!)

	▲	_alternator_ 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Right on with special relativity—Lorentz also was developing the theory and was a bit sour that Einstein got so much credit. Einstein basically said “what if special relativity were true for all of physics”, not just electromagnetism, and out dropped e=mc^2. It was a bold step but not unexplainable. As for general relativity, he spent several years working to learn differential geometry (which was well developed mathematics at the time, but looked like abstract nonsense to most physicists). I’m not sure how he was turned on to this theory being applicable to gravity, but my guess is that it was motivated by some symmetry ideas. (It always come down to symmetry.)
	▲	godelski an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		`> Critique of absolute time and space of Newtonian physics was already well underway` This only means Einstein was not alone, it does not mean the results were in distribution. `> Many of the phenomena that relativity would later explain under a consistent framework already had independent quasi-explanations hinting at the more universal theory.` And this comes about because people are looking at edge cases and trying to solve things. Sometimes people come up with wild and crazy solutions. Sometimes those solutions look obvious after they're known (though not prior to being known, otherwise it would have already been known...) and others don't. Your argument really makes the claim that since there are others pursuing similar directions that this means it is in distribution. I'll use a classic statistics style framing. Suppose we have a bag with n red balls and p blue balls. Someone walks over and says "look, I have a green ball" and someone else walks over and says "I have a purple one" and someone else comes over and says "I have a pink one!". None of those balls were from the bag we have. There are still n+p balls in our bag, they are still all red or blue despite there being n+p+3 balls that we know of. `> I am not a [...] physicist` I think this is probably why you don't have the resolution to see the distinctions. Without a formal study of physics it is really hard to differentiate these kinds of propositions. It can be very hard even with that education. So be careful to not overly abstract and simplify concepts. It'll only deprive you of a lot of beauty and innovation.
	▲	bananaflag 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		From that article: > The quintic was almost proven to have no general solutions by radicals by Paolo Ruffini in 1799, whose key insight was to use permutation groups, not just a single permutation. Thing is, I am usually the kind of person who defends the idea of a lone genius. But I also believe there is a continuous spectrum, no gaps, from the village idiot to Einstein and beyond. Let me introduce, just for fun, not for the sake of any argument, another idea from math which I think it came really out of the blue, to the degree that it's still considered an open problem to write an exposition about it, since you cannot smoothly link it to anything else: forcing.

▲ johnfn 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Even if I grant you that, surely we’ve moved the goal posts a bit if we’re saying the only thing we can think of that AI can’t do is the life’s work of a man who’s last name is literally synonymous with genius.

▲ poplarsol 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's not exactly true. Lorentz contraction is a clear antecedent to special relativity.

	▲	3 hours ago \| parent [-]
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▲ lamontcg 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Not really. Pretty sure I read recently that Newton appreciated that his theory was non-local and didn't like what Einstein later called "spooky action at a distance". The Lorentz transform was also known from 1887. Time dilation was understood from 1900. Poincaré figured out in 1905 that it was a mathematical group. Einstein put a bow on it all by figuring out that you could derive it from the principle of relativity and keeping the speed of light constant in all inertial reference frames.

I'm not sure about GR, but I know that it is built on the foundations of differential geometry, which Einstein definitely didn't invent (I think that's the source of his "I assure you whatever your difficulties in mathematics are, that mine are much greater" quote because he was struggling to understand Hilbert's math).

And really Cauchy, Hilbert, and those kinds of mathematicians I'd put above Einstein in building entirely new worlds of mathematics...

	▲	Paracompact 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Agree with you everywhere. Although I prefer the quote: "Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore." :)