Special relativity (alternative formulations)
Hendrik Lorentz and Henri Poincaré developed their version of special relativity in a series of papers from about 1900 to 1905. They used Maxwell's equations and the principle of relativity to deduce a theory that is mathematically equivalent to the theory later developed by Einstein.
Lorentz ether theory
Einstein's 1905 presentation of special relativity was soon supplemented, in 1907, by Hermann Minkowski, who showed that the relations had a very natural interpretation in terms of a unified four-dimensional "spacetime" in which absolute intervals are seen to be given by an extension of the Pythagorean theorem. (Already in 1906 Poincaré anticipated some of Minkowski's ideas, see the section "Lorentz-transformation"). The utility and naturalness of the representations by Einstein and Minkowski contributed to the rapid acceptance of special relativity, and to the corresponding loss of interest in Lorentz's ether theory.