Alternatives To General Relativity - Theories From 1917 To The 1980s

Theories From 1917 To The 1980s

This section includes alternatives to GR published after GR but before the observations of galaxy rotation that led to the hypothesis of "dark matter".

Those considered here include (see Will (1981), Lang (2002)):

Listed by date (the hyperlinks take you further down this article)

Whitehead (1922), Cartan (1922, 1923), Fierz & Pauli (1939), Birkhov (1943), Milne (1948), Thiry (1948), Papapetrou (1954a, 1954b), Littlewood (1953), Jordan (1955), Bergman (1956), Belinfante & Swihart (1957), Yilmaz (1958, 1973), Brans & Dicke (1961), Whitrow & Morduch (1960, 1965), Kustaanheimo (1966), Kustaanheimo & Nuotio (1967), Deser & Laurent (1968), Page & Tupper (1968), Bergmann (1968), Bollini-Giambini-Tiomno (1970), Nordtveldt (1970), Wagoner (1970), Rosen (1971, 1975, 1975), Wei-Tou Ni (1972, 1973), Will & Nordtveldt (1972), Hellings & Nordtveldt (1973), Lightman & Lee (1973), Lee, Lightman & Ni (1974), Bekenstein (1977), Barker (1978), Rastall (1979)

These theories are presented here without a cosmological constant or added scalar or vector potential unless specifically noted, for the simple reason that the need for one or both of these was not recognised before the supernova observations by the Supernova Cosmology Project and High-Z Supernova Search Team. How to add a cosmological constant or quintessence to a theory is discussed under Modern Theories (see also here).