Olinto De Pretto
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Olinto De Pretto (1857 - 1921) was an Italian industrialist from Schio, Vicenza. According to University of Perugia historian of mathematics Umberto Bartocci, Pretto published the famous formula E=mc² two years before Albert Einstein on June 16, 1903 in a paper titled "Ipotesi dell’etere nella vita dell’universo" (Hypothesis of the Essence of the Universe). The paper was later included in the Italian scientific journal "Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti" (The Veneto Institute of Science, Letters and Proceedings) on February 27, 1904.
An extract with the help of machine translation (Systran): "the matter of any body contains in it a sum of energy represented by the entire mass of the body[... ] Nobody will easily admit that stored and to the latent state, in a kilogram of any matter, completely hidden to all our investigations, hides a such sum of energy, equivalent to the amount that can be carried out from million and million kilograms of coal" This estimate of the energy content of mass over-estimates the relativistic view by over a factor 250.
It has been claimed [1] that Einstein, who spoke Italian as well as he spoke German, first learned of this formula from his friend Michele Besso, who also may have known [2] Olinto De Pretto.
But of course Pretto did not derive the equation using the theory of relativity. The equation seems to have been anticipated by several other physicists such as Henri Poincaré also, although not attaching to it the same implication of equivalence of mass and energy.
