The Portuguese Academic Community and the Theory of Relativity

Abstract

The theory of relativity was a scientific subject that interested a small number of Portuguese scientists in the first decades of the twentieth century. Portugal was associated with the observational confirmation of general relativity ─ observations of the solar eclipse were carried out on the island of Príncipe; however, no Portuguese astronomers took part in the scientific expedition. International seminars, led by foreign scientists and held in Portugal at the beginning of the 1920s and 1930s, were important. A few Portuguese mathematicians, rather than physicists, were first attracted to this theory and the few academic papers dealing with it were published abroad by two members of this group.