If you ask a kid to name the most brilliant person in the world, most would probably go with the name of Albert Einstein, at least after their own name. And it has been more than 60 years since the death of this world-renowned scientist and still, there is no one to match his intellect or status in the scientific community, even with so many novel discoveries and original researches. It won't be an exaggeration if I say, that he is one of the most famous human beings in world history. Even people who have achieved nothing significant in their life have 250-page biographies today. So, it wouldn’t be a surprise to know that his life has been documented as movies, biographies, and albums. However, Einstein’s biography never ended with his biological death. The brain of this genius has a story of its own. Here is the story of Einstein’s brain.
On the night of April 17th, 1955 Albert Einstein got admitted to the Princeton hospital with a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm (in other words, he was sick) and died early the next morning. The autopsy was handled by a pathologist by the name of Dr. Thomas Stoltz Harvey. He was only instructed to find the cause of death, which was obviously heart failure. However, Harvey couldn’t resist taking a look at the brain which came up with the idea of general relativity. It was all fine until then, If I see Mr. Einstein dead on my couch, even I would take a look at his brain. But Harvey took it a bit further, quite literally. He removed the brain and took it home with him, preserved in Formaldehyde. He neither had any legal rights nor orders from superiors to do so. The news of the missing brain reached Hans Albert, Einstein’s son and he was furious, as he should be. Albert Einstein had left explicit instructions to cremate his body and spread the ashes in secret. However, Harvey somehow managed to get permission to keep the brain, but only for research purposes.
Amidst all the controversies and media mania, Harvey lost his job at the Princeton hospital. So he moved to Philadelphia where he got the brain sectioned to 240 pieces using a microtome. A bit of the brain remained unsectioned. These pieces were preserved in two glass jars which Harvy kept in his basement for almost two decades, without a single study or research. Eventually, Harvey and Albert’s brain moved to Kansa, where Harvey worked as a medical supervisor in a laboratory and the brain was shifted to a cider box under a beer cooler.
In the year 1978, a journalist named Steven Levy from New Jersey monthly tracked down the brain and the media went crazy. So, in 1984, Harvey sent 4 blocks of the brain to the University of California, Berkley. The year after, the first research paper was published on Einstein’s brain. This study claimed that the brain has abnormal proportions of neurons and glial cells. Similar studies were conducted in the years to follow. Researchers thought that they would be able to pinpoint the neurological basis of intellect. However, these studies have been largely discredited by modern-day scientists.
In 1997, a young journalist- Michael Paterniti go the opportunity to drive Harvey along with Einstein’s brain to California. So, they packed the brain in two plastic containers and drove to California in a rented car. Paterniti wrote a book based on the incident by the title- Driving Mr. Albert. The brain still remained with Harvey’s family after his death in 2007. It was in the year 2010 that the remaining pieces were transferred to the National Museum of Health and Medicine, including 14 photographs of the whole brain.
Albert Einstein- what made him the genius he was?; This was the question that the researchers were trying to crack throughout the story. And still, we don’t have a solid answer to that. With all those photos and memes of Einstein with his tongue out or licking a lollipop, we will always be fascinated by his brain. Was it the lollipop that was the secret to his intellect or did sticking out his tongue made him smarter? The question remains unsolved.
(In case it went over your head, I was kidding. Lollipops and sticking out your tongue is not going to make you smarter, and if you thought it would, then you probably aren’t that smart to begin with)
