Einstein's Plagiarism of the General Theory of Relativity

Albert Einstein had a terrible reputation as a career plagiarist. It was well known among his colleagues that he had plagiarized the special theory of relativity from Hendrik Antoon Lorentz and Jules Henri Poincaré. Einstein desperately sought to distinguish the general theory of relativity as if it were his unique achievement. But his dreams were deflated when David Hilbert deduced and published the generally covariant field equations of the general theory of relativity before Einstein could copy them from him. In addition, Einstein was publicly accused of plagiarizing Paul Gerber's formula for the perihelion motion of the planet Mercury and Johann Georg von Soldner's prediction for the gravitational deflection of a ray of light grazing the limb of the Sun. Even Einstein's famous thought experiments were appropriated from his predecessors.