Planck, as secretary of the Academy’s physical-mathematical “class,” delivered the public reply to Einstein’s inaugural lecture and began by praising him but went on to say that he “runs the risk of occasionally losing himself in dark regions and unexpectedly encountering hard contradiction.” Planck then said that he “could not resist the temptation” to argue that the special theory of relativity did not, in fact, need to be generalized. Planck dissented from Einstein’s most important new ideas at the very moment he was sponsoring Einstein’s induction into the Prussian Academy. As Planck
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