The Special Theory of Feminist Relativity By Mrs Vera West

     Albert Einstein once complained in a letter about how pushed around American men were by their women, and he did it in tones that would be howled down today; but he was right. I can’t quickly find the letter on the net, but Einstein has been in hot water for realistic portrayal of various nations in his travels at the time.
  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/12/einsteins-travel-diaries-reveal-shocking-xenophobia

     Now the tide turns, and the claim of his wife Mileva Maric Einstein, to his intellectual contribution is being made:
  https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-forgotten-life-of-einsteins-first-wife/

“On 13 December 1900, they submitted a first article on capillarity signed only under Albert’s name. Nevertheless, both referred to this article in letters as their common article. Mileva wrote to Helene Savić on 20 December 1900. “We will send a private copy to Boltzmann to see what he thinks and I hope he will answer us.” Likewise, Albert wrote to Mileva on 4 April 1901, saying that his friend Michele Besso “visited his uncle on my behalf, Prof. Jung, one of the most influential physicists in Italy and gave him a copy of our article.” 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.” Then Mileva’s destiny changed abruptly. She became pregnant after a lovers’ escapade in Lake Como. Unemployed, Albert would still not marry her. With this uncertain future, Mileva took her second and last attempt at the oral exam in July 1901. This time, Prof. Weber, whom Albert suspected of blocking his career, failed her. Forced to abandon her studies, she went back to Serbia, but came back briefly to Zurich to try to persuade Albert to marry her. She gave birth to a girl named Liserl in January 1902. No one knows what happened to her. She was probably given to adoption. …”

     I lost interest in the fine details after that. See, men can do nothing of significance on their own, that is the message here! Even the great man Einstein is getting a serve now!

 

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Saturday, 09 November 2024

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