Einstein's lack of references - an amusing note taken from Subtle is the Lord (by Abraham Pais)

In his famous 1907 paper "On the Inertia of Energy required by the Relativity Principle" (Uber die vom Relativitatsrinzip geforderte Tragheit der Energie) in the last paragraph of the Introduction, before section I, Einstein writes:     

It seems to me to be in the nature of things that other authors might have already elucidated part of what I am going to say. However, bearing in mind that the problems under consideration are being treated here from a new standpoint, I felt that I should be permitted to forgo a survey of the literature (which would have been very troublesome for me), especially since there is good reason to hope that this gap will be filled by other authors, as it was kindly done by Mr. Planck and Mr. Kaufmann for my first paper on the principle of relativity.

Einstein includes only five citatations - all to his own single author papers from 1905.  In each of two of Einstein's earlier Annus mirabilis year papers, Einstein includes only one reference, to an earlier paper of his own.  The first of these papers, On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, introduces special relativity.  The second three-page paper, Does the Inertia of a Body Depend upon Its Energy Content?, derives the famous mass-energy equivalence.