The Other Einstein

By Marie Benedict
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You know this face well, right? Grandfatherly, sweet, mischievous even. You also recognize him as one of the brilliant minds of our time, perhaps.



But what do you know about the also-brilliant woman behind Albert Einstein?

Mitza Maric met Albert Einstein when they were both students in the physics program at a Zurich's Polytechnic University. She was as intelligent as her future husband; perhaps even more so, given as she was one of VERY few women admitted to advanced universities. They began an affair. When Mitza became pregnant, she was forced to drop temporarily out of the program.

She never finished her degree. Here is the controversy and the conflict of this novel: Mitza claimed that many of the basic ideas that would make her husband famous were actually her ideas. The debate rages on. Mitza and her children received a stipend from the Nobel winnings, but Mitza wanted most to be recognized as one of the authors of the Theory of Special Relativity. The Other Einstein is historical fiction, but only in the sense that details such as conversations are imagined by the author. The story itself is true. And I don't like Albert Einstein nearly as much anymore.

To read more about how women scientists struggled for recognition, search for information about Katherine Klerk Maxwell. She also worked alongside her husband, but he was wise enough to credit her in papers and publicly.