The Portuguese Academic Community and the Theory of Relativity A Comunidade Académica Portuguesa e a Teoria da Relatividade Fitas, Augusto José dos Santos Universidade de Évora author text articles Winter 2005 2005-12 eng por 15 p. born digital The theory of relativity was a scientific subject that interested a small number of Portuguese scientists in the first decades of the twentieth century. Portugal was associated with the observational confirmation of general relativity—observations of the solar eclipse were carried out on the island of Príncipe; however, no Portuguese astronomers took part in the scientific expedition. International seminars, led by foreign scientists and held in Portugal at the beginning of the 1920s and 1930s, were important. A few Portuguese mathematicians, rather than physicists, were first attracted to this theory and the few academic papers dealing with it were published abroad by two members of this group. A teoria da relatividade foi um tópico que muitos cientistas portugueses das primeiras décadas do século XX abordaram. Portugal esteve associado às observações que corroboraram a teoria geral da relatividade. Observações do eclipse solar ocorreram na ilha de Príncipe; contudo, nenhum astrónomo português participou da expedição científica. Houve importantes seminários internacionais, liderados por cientistas estrangeiros, que se realizaram em Portugal em princípios das décadas de 1920 e 1930. Alguns poucos matemáticos portugueses, em vez de físicos, foram os primeiros que se interessaram por esta teoria, e dois membros deste grupo publicaram no estrangeiro alguns ensaios académicos sobre o tema. 3 vol. 2 no. 5 no. Science Portugal History 20th century Special relativity (Physics) General relativity (Physics) Reader-response criticism e-Journal of Portuguese History vol. 3, no. 2 10.26300/ndnq-4z25