The National Geographic Channel is now airing Genius, about Albert Einstein. Of course, the enigmatic man was a genius, but he was also a lover, a philanderer and a pacifist — making his life almost as complicated as the mathematical equations he wrote on those giant chalkboards. Here are 14 of his secrets.
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Baby Einstein
Image Credit: Creative Commons via Wikipedia Einstein had a giant head when he was born, making his mother, Pauline Einstein, think he was deformed. According to the official Einstein website, his family was really worried something was wrong with the boy until the doctor assured them he was fine. But his grandmother wasn’t convinced, saying about his head, “Much too fat, much too fat!”
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Speech delayed
Image Credit: NatGeo Einstein was a quiet child, rarely speaking or speaking very slowly until he was 9 years old. His parents were very worried, not knowing this is a trait shared by many highly intelligent people. Otto Neugebauer, a science historian, wrote about Einstein’s parents’ relief when at the dinner table one night, Albert said, “The soup is too hot.” When his parents asked why he had never said a word about his food before, the boy replied, “Because up to now, everything was in order.”
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Inspiration from a compass
Image Credit: WENN According to the American Museum of Natural History, Einstein’s father gave 5-year-old Albert a compass to play with while he was sick in bed. The compass fascinated the curious boy. He later wrote about the effect the compass had on him: “That experience made a deep and lasting impression on me… Something deeper had to be hidden behind things.”
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Flunked his entrance exam
Image Credit: NatGeo When Einstein applied to university in 1895, at the age of 17, he managed to pass the math and science sections of the entrance exam but failed the history and language portion of the test. Einstein spent a year in trade school before he was finally admitted to study at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School.
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Illegitimate daughter
Image Credit: NatGeo While Einstein was in Bern, Switzerland, in 1902, his girlfriend and former student, Mileva Maric, gave birth to a daughter she named Lieserl. The child may have been developmentally disabled and died a year later from scarlet fever. Einstein never saw his daughter, and she was never mentioned in his letters after 1903.
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A husband’s demands
Image Credit: NatGeo Einstein eventually married Maric, who had two sons. But after 11 years, the spark between the two fizzled out. Maric herself was incredibly intelligent and free-spirited, making for an unconventional wife at a time when wives were supposed to be docile and focused on domestic duties. Einstein’s solution was to make a cold-hearted list of demands for her, including making sure his clothes were clean, serving him three meals a day in his study, to stop speaking to him if he asked and to never expect any affection from him. Maric agreed to the terms but, needless to say, the marriage didn’t last.
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Alimony
Image Credit: NatGeo When Einstein divorced Maric, he promised he would give her and her sons the money from his 1921 Nobel Prize in physics. He fled to the United States when tensions in Germany were growing due to the Nazis and he resisted giving her the money, however. Later, after much arguing with Maric, he did eventually pay her more than the $32,000 he earned from the prize.
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Kissing cousins
Image Credit: NatGeo Less than a year after his divorce from Maric, Einstein married his first cousin Elsa Lowenthal. But before the marriage, he also considered marrying Elsa’s daughter Ilsa, who was 18 years younger than him. Ilsa didn’t have any romantic feelings for Einstein and stayed out of the messy situation.
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A price on his head
Image Credit: WENN By 1933, Einstein had gained much notoriety in Germany as a brilliant physicist, but this made him a target for the Nazis. He discovered that a price of approximately $5,000 had been put on his head, forcing him and Elsa to flee to the United States. According to Fred Jerome, author of The Einstein File, Einstein said he “wasn’t worth that much.”
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His competition
Image Credit: NatGeo As more and more Jews fled Europe to escape from the Nazis, Einstein worried that many other intelligent physicists would come to America and steal his limelight and work. In a letter to Elsa, he wrote, “One fears everywhere the competition of the expelled ‘brainy’ Jews. We are even more burdened by our strength than by our weakness.”
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Pacifist no more
Image Credit: NatGeo Though Einstein was a well-known pacifist, he was gravely worried that the Nazis would develop an atom bomb. He wrote a letter to President Roosevelt, urging him to begin work on creating a nuclear weapon based on his theory of relativity. He later regretted writing the letter, after learning that 200,000 people were killed in Japan at the hands of the United States. “I could burn my fingers that I sent that letter to President Roosevelt,” Einstein said.
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Einstein’s unusal brain
Image Credit: WENN After Einstein died in 1955, samples of his brain were highly sought after by researchers. According to Scientific American magazine, “His brain had extraordinary prefrontal cortices, right behind the forehead, which revealed an intricate pattern of convolutions. We know from comparative studies in primates that this part of the brain became highly specialized during hominin evolution. We also know that in humans, this area functions in higher cognition that entails working memory, making plans, bringing plans to fruition, worrying, thinking about the future and imagining scenarios… In a famous quotation, Einstein wrote that his thinking entailed an association of images and ‘feelings’ — that for him, the elements of thought were not only visual but also muscular.”
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Einstein’s brain in the trunk of a Buick
Image Credit: NatGeo Dr. Thomas Harvey, the lead scientist in charge of sending tissue samples of Einstein’s brain to other researchers, stole Einstein’s brain and drove cross-country with it in the trunk of his Buick in hopes that he would make some giant discovery that would help his career. But being the sole keeper of such an artifact grew too much for Harvey, who said, “Eventually, you get tired of the responsibility of having it.” In 1996, 45 years later, Harvey finally returned the brain to the hospital from which he took it.
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‘Genius’
Image Credit: NatGeo Oscar-winning actor Geoffrey Rush plays the complicated Albert Einstein in Genius, the National Geographic Channel’s first scripted television show. Genius airs on Tuesday nights.
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