Abstract

One of the three consequences of Einstein’s theory of general relativity was the curvature of light passing near a massive body. In 1911, he published a first value of the angle of deflection of light, then a second value in 1915, equal twice the first. In the early 1920s, when he received the Nobel Prize in Physics, a violent controversy broke out over this result. It was then disclosed that the first value he had obtained in 1911 had been calculated more than a century before by a German astronomer named Johann von Soldner. The aim of this article is therefore to compare the methods used by Soldner and then by Einstein leading to this first value and to explain the importance of the doubling of this value in the framework of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Such a consequence of this theory lies at the intersection of several scientific fields such as Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy and Philosophy.