Édouard Guillaume

Édouard Guillaume (1881–1959) was a Swiss physicist and patent examiner, notorious for his published papers attacking Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity. He is also noteworthy for his work on mathematical economics. Guillaume opposed the theory of relativity, though most of his objections were related to special relativity.

Beginning in 1917, Einstein started to reply to some of the letters Guillaume sent to him. The correspondence went on for a number of years, but Einstein was unable to convince Guillaume.

In the 1930s the Swiss brothers Édouard and Georges Guillaume launched an ambitious attempt to found a science of “rational economics” by analogy with the science of rational mechanics. Their models were intensively discussed by the X-Crise group in Paris, and exerted an influence on the early French contributions to mathematical economics and econometrics. In addition, the Guillaume brothers ... created their own research institute in Paris, which applied their models to real world issues and offered its services to the private sector. Later they became involved in attempts to conceive electrical machines which represented the working of the economic system. In 1932 he was an Invited Speaker of the ICM in 1932 in Zurich, where he gave a talk stemming from the Guillaume brothers' work on mathematical economics.

Selected publications Guillaume, Édouard. "La théorie de la relativité et le temps universel." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 25, no. 3 (1918): 285-323. Guillaume, Édouard. "La théorie de la relativité et sa signification." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 27, no. 4 (1920): 423-469.