Lets Talk Feminism - The untold story of Einstein's wife

Hoping you read the intro to this blog , wonderfully put together by Agent Duck Duck, ( Yeah, that's what happens when two little bonkers writers collab together)

Lets dive right into this story.

This story is about Albert Einstein's first wife -Mileva Marić Einstein.

Mileva Maric was also a physicist

Mileva attended high school the last year girls were admitted to Serbia. In 1892, her father obtained the authorization of the Minister of Education to allow her to attend physics lectures reserved for boys.

Albert and Mileva were admitted to the physics-mathematics section of the Polytechnic Institute in Zurich (now ETH) in 1896. They became close friends. She helped him channel his energy and guided his studies as we learn from Albert’s letters, exchanged between 1899-1903 during the school holiday.

By the end of their classes in 1900, Mileva and Albert had similar grades (4.7 and 4.6, respectively) except in applied physics where she got the top mark of 5 but he, only 1. ( writers note- this part of the research was highly debated upon in various sources, am posting the info which I found common in various reliable sources) She excelled at experimental work while he did not. But at the oral exam, Professor Minkowski gave 11 out of 12 to the four male students but only 5 to Mileva. Only Albert got his degree.

Meanwhile, Albert’s family strongly opposed their relationship. His mother was adamant. Moreover, Albert’s father insisted his son find work before getting married. So their marriage was put off.

On 13 December 1900, they submitted the first article on capillarity signed only under Albert’s name. Nevertheless, both referred to this article in letters as their common 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 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

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.”

Peter Michelmore, one of his biographers wrote that after having spent five weeks completing the article containing the basis of special relativity, Albert “went to bed for two weeks. Mileva checked the article again and again, and then mailed it”.

In 1908, the couple constructed with Conrad Habicht an ultra-sensitive voltmeter. Trbuhović-Gjurić attributes this experimental work to Mileva and Conrad, and wrote: “When they were both satisfied, they left to Albert the task of describing the apparatus since he was a patent expert.” It was registered under the Einstein-Habicht patent. When Habicht questioned Mileva’s choice not to include her name, she replied making a pun in German: “Warum? Wir beide sind nur ein Stein.“ (“Why? The two of us are but one stone”, meaning, we are one entity).

But soon after his success with his reports, he started having secret affairs with his cousin Ella, which collapsed their marriage. Mileva moved back to Zurich with her two sons on 29 July 1914. In 1919, she agreed to divorce, with a clause stating that if Albert ever received the Nobel Prize, she would get the money.

Let's make another thing VERY clear.

I am not trying to take any credit from the great scientist Einstein. Please, the guy was a genius and his research rocked the world of science, he deserves the credit he received but the point am trying to highlight is, doesn't Mileva too?

This story is highly debated by various countries and historians. So you might point out, hey, this story is highly based on speculation.

One thing that is undeniably true in this story, that no source I have found so far has denied, is that Mileva was a brilliant physicist, an eager student with an amazing speed at deducing problems, even before she met Einstein.

Just think about it, If Mileva was born a boy instead of a girl, how would her story have changed?

Written By

Ann Hatti

MPT_Writes