Soldner Had Found in 1802 the Deflection of the Light by the Sun as the General Relativity Shows

Abstract

Systematically, it is written in the literature that only the general relativity (GR) allows finding the just value of the deflection of the light by the sun. Yet, we noted, by reading over the original text of SOLDNER of 1801: “Ueber die Ablenkung eines Lichtstrals von seiner geradlinigen Bewegung, durch die Attraktion eines Weltk ö rpers, the welchem er nahe vorbei geht” (that we think it is important to put in English in full in Appendix ) that, contrary to what we read since about 100 years, he found the right value. Soldner had started from a Newtonian gravitational calculation and, with the value of 1801, find 1.64”. This calculation, with the actual values, allows finding the right value of 1.752”. There are reasons to explain the wrong calculations which we usually make. However, there is no epistemological reason for questioning the general relativity. Some observations are only explained by the GR. But the Newtonian calculations are much simpler. We can continue to say that the theory of Newton is incomplete but we cannot say it is false.