Johann Georg von Soldner

In 1808, he was invited by Joseph von Utzschneider to Munich to work on trigonometry for the newly formed Tax Survey Commission.

As a result, his young assistant Johann von Lamont (under his supervision) led the operations of the observatory.

In a paper written in 1801 and published in 1804, he calculated the amount of deflection of a light ray by a star and wrote: "If one substitute into tang ω the acceleration of gravity on the surface of the sun, and the radius on that body is set to unity, one finds ω=0,84".

Soldner already noted that if it were possible to observe fixed stars in close distance to the Sun, it might be important to take this effect into consideration.

Other prescient work that became unpopular and largely forgotten for similar reasons include possibly Henry Cavendish's light-bending calculations, John Michell's 1783 study of gravitational horizons and the spectral shifting of light by gravity, and even Isaac Newton's study in Principia of the gravitational bending of the paths of "corpuscles", and his description of light-bending in Opticks.

At the time, Einstein may well have been genuinely unaware of Soldner's work, or he may have considered his own calculations to be independent and free-standing, requiring no references to earlier research.