Olinto de Pretto a Citizen Scientist a Century Ago

The paper is an examination by the author of the contents of a publication written by the Italian scholar Olinto De Pretto in 1904. This work was virtually unknown until it was cited a few years ago by the Italian professor Umberto Bartocci. Bartocci, who teaches the history of mathematics at the University of Peru, confirmed that De Pretto had written the mass-energy equivalence formula of special relativity in his paper a year before Einstein's famous article. Bartocci affirmed that Einstein could have understood formula by a friend of his who was a friend of De Pretto too Bartocci idea was not taken seriously. The author has now examined De Pretto's paper. In this paper De Pretto presented his vision of the universe as composed of matter and luminiferous ether in interaction with each other and both having an atomic structure. In this paper there are similarities with aspects of contemporary physics, including a formula formally equivalent to the most famous formula of Einstein's theory of relativity. However, De Pretto's vision is entirely internal to classical physics and is therefore surpassed by the facts. The figure of De Pretto, on the other hand, is very interesting and has strong similarities with the current phenomenon of citizen science.