Physicists who were criticised for their works but later celebrated by the people

Question

Life of Galileo Galilei was not simple, predictable, or rational. Being as great as he was, Galileo, for example, did not accept Kepler's laws of planetary motion. At the same time, he believed with all his heart in the Copernicus`s theory of the solar system. Because of his personal belief in the heliocentric doctrine, Galileo was heavily criticized by the church, and in 1616 was sentenced by the Inquisition to life imprisonment in his home in Florence.

It was outrageous that a person such as Galileo was forced to spend the remainder of his days in house exile. Nevertheless, he continued to work and write books while in exile. One of the books was the famous "Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems."

Galileo died in 1642 after having suffered blindness in the last four years of his life and leaving his inventions, discoveries, books, and his devotion to science to future generations, that is, to us.

[source]

Are there any other examples in the history where a physicist was criticised socially or by his peers for his idea/theory/ work, but was later accepted wholeheartedly by the society?

One such instance that I know is the case of Galileo Galilei. I don't know any other example of such a case and I had no idea where to ask. (I am also afraid for the duplication of this question.)

Answer 1

1. Boltzmann. He is one of the main founders of atomic theory. Atomic theory was strongly criticized on philosophical grounds, by some prominent philosophers, including Mach. Boltzmann committed suicide in a state of depression in 1906. I do not claim that criticism was the only reason of this depression, but I suspect it contributed to it.

The paper of Einstein was published in 1905 and Smoluchowski in 1906. Experiments of Perrin in 1908 confirmed the theory of Brownian motion, so the final proof of existence of atoms was obtained.

By the way, Mach was not only a philosopher. He made some contribution to physics as well (Mach's number, for example).

2. Influential philosopher Eugene Duhring (and other philosophers) strongly criticized Riemann (they worked in the same university), and I suppose created some troubles for him. The thing which philosophers did not like were non-Euclidean geometries and multi-dimensional spaces. Few people remembers Duhring today. (Thanks to Conifold who taught me how to spell his name correctly).

By the way, Galileo was prosecuted and criticized mainly not by his peers but by the Catholic Church. Of course not all scientists accepted his theories, but discussions within science are normal. It is mainly philosophers, church and communist authorities that prosecute scientists.

EDIT. To answer the objection of Tom Crowel. I read the article he refers to. Does not look very convincing to me. I cite

Boltzmann was involved in various disputes. But this is not to say that he was the innocent victim of hostilities. In many cases he took the initiative by launching a polemic attack on his colleagues.

Exactly the same can be said about Galileo. Some of his enemies were also respected scientists (Scheiner, for example). History shows that Galileo was right in the main dispute. Same can be said about Boltzmann. Therefore I think that comparison is legitimate.

Further, I find in the article the following argument:

He was elected to membership or honorary membership in many academies (cf. Höflechner 1994, 192), received honorary doctorates, and was also awarded various medals.

This is about Boltzmann. But this also applies to Galileo:-)

But thanks for the reference anyway.

Answer 2

Another well documented example is Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar ... "Chandra" who gave the first mathematical description of black holes. His conflict with Sir Arthur Eddington is portrayed by Arthur I. Miller in Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes. Also see K.C. Wali, "Chandrasekhar vs. Eddington: An Unanticipated Confrontation", Physics Today, vol. 35, no. 10, pp. 33–40 (October, 1982).

Answer 3

Hugh Everett was heavily criticised by his peers, for the "Theory of Universal Wave Function" also known as "Many World Interpretation" of quantum physics. To a point where he decided to end his academic career in physics after his PhD.

His work, published in 1957, was only recognized during 1970's.

See the documentary Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives.

Answer 4

Julius Mayer -conservation of energy and kinetic origin of heat -gravity is not a force (prior to Clifford and Einstein, who showed it's curvature)

Bernard Riemann (AE mentioned him below; his work inspired Clifford on gravity and was directly important for differential geometry, the core of relativity theory)

John Waterston (see Haldane, J. (ed.) (1928) The Collected Scientific Papers of John James Waterston. This is all his works in one place, but an incredibly rare edition. You'll only get it from a university library. Would be nice if somebody scanned it to make more widely available---although too late for me as I made notes.)

• kinetic theory of heat in mathematical detail (the only predecessor was a page in Bernoulli's hydrodynamics, a diagram in fact)
• neural networks / connectionism prior Darwin and Ziehen
• first statement of the ergodic problem
• phase transitions must be accounted for energetically (Kelvin ignored them and thought for a couple months he found disproof of energy conservation ... )