Who Did the Math for General Relativity First, Einstein or Hilbert?
Does it matter?<p>I think this misses the forest for the trees.<p>Yeah, we can focus on the first to discover something, but awards and acknowledgments are often on first to publish, e.g. Make it public.<p>After all, what does your grand descovery matter if you&#x27;re the only one that knows about it and someone working in parallel finds it also and publishes first?  And how does the scientific community verify the veracity of discovering first if you didnt publish first?<p>Hilbert might have know about it first, but what does it matter to the world writ large if he didnt publish? Einstein published, and thus the world knows and he is thus recognized for that.