On International Women’s Day: The Other Einstein By Mrs Vera West
As readers know, I am a critic of feminism, but also advocate justice for women. As well, I cover women’s health issues, which is sadly lacking at conservative sites across the world. Today, for International Women’s Day, while the origins of this day are feminist, I think one can still support, and celebrate, the fair achievements of women, and note where they have been ripped off. I recently got this information about Einstein, and the way he excluded his more brilliant physicist wife from sharing in his fame with relativity theory, which he admitted, she co-created. It is a sad story indeed, and the halo drops from Saint Albert.
Albert Einstein’s first wife Mileva (Mitza) Marić was also a brilliant physicist. They met at the Polytechnic Institute of Zurich, where she had fought for special permissions to attend and where she received higher marks than Albert. Mitza put in as much if not more work on their theories but wasn’t credited because Albert told her their works wouldn’t get published with a woman’s name on them. Many of his lecture notes are in Mitza’s handwriting, and Albert was once heard at a party saying, “I need my wife, she helps solve all of my mathematical problems.” 80% of Einstein’s famous works were published during this marriage, referred to as his “magic years.” Those magic years ended abruptly after they divorced due to his infidelity and abandonment.
Happy Women’s History Month to the real genius of the Einstein family, Mileva Marić.”
“Today, 19 December, marks the 141th anniversary of the birth of Mileva Marić Einstein. But who remembers this brilliant scientist? While her husband, Albert Einstein is celebrated as perhaps the best physicist of the 20th century, one question about his career remains: How much did his first wife contribute to his groundbreaking science? While nobody has been able to credit her with any specific part of his work, their letters and numerous testimonies presented in the books dedicated to her provide substantial evidence on how they collaborated from the time they met in 1896 up to their separation in 1914. They depict a couple united by a shared passion for physics, music and for each other. So here is their story. …
The decision to publish only under his name seems to have been taken jointly. Why? Radmila Milentijević, a former history professor at City College in New York, published in 2015 Mileva’s most comprehensive biography. She suggests that Mileva probably wanted to help Albert make a name for himself, such that he could find a job and marry her. Dord Krstić, a former physics professor at Ljubljana University, spent 50 years researching Mileva’s life. In his well-documented book he suggests that given the prevalent bias against women at the time, a publication co-signed with a woman might have carried less weight.
We will never know. But nobody made it clearer than Albert Einstein himself that they collaborated on special relativity when he wrote to Mileva on 27 March 1901: “How happy and proud I will be when the two of us together will have brought our work on relative motion to a victorious conclusion.”
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