When Albert Einstein’s Brain was Stolen
Stolen?… hold up.
I can imagine at some point late in his life pathologist Thomas Harvey was looking over at Albert Einstein and reminiscing on all the good times they’ve had, the time they spent together, and the road trips they’ve been on.
Their time in New Jersey, Philadelphia, Kansas, Missouri, the return to Kansas, and then New Jersey. Oh, and then who could forget that cross-country trip to California, what fun they must have had.
And as Thomas calls it a night he picks up the two liquid-filled jars containing what’s left of Einstein’s brain and puts them into his closet.
Oh, did I forget to mention all those trips were with Einstein’s brain that Thomas had stolen?
Why didn’t you mention that first?!
Albert Einstein: The Man
Before we start I would like to think that everyone knows of Albert Einstein but just in case, Einstein was a German theoretical physicist born on March 14th, 1879, who eventually moved to the United States during Hilter’s rise to power, since he was Jewish and made a target.
Oh, by the way, I’ve heard the misconception that Einstein helped with the building of the atomic bomb by working on the Manhattan Project. In truth, he was actually deemed a security risk and wasn’t allowed, but in 1939, he did write a letter to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, encouraging the construction of such bombs, since Einstein was worried Germany was already constructing the bombs themselves.
Years later when Einstein found out the bombs had been used on Japan and that Germany was actually nowhere close to creating the bombs, he called the letter one of his biggest mistakes.
As for what weren’t mistakes, during his lifetime he developed the theory of relativity, revolutionizing our understanding of space, time, gravity, and the universe. If you heard of “E=MC squared”, that was him. He made contributions to quantum mechanics, and statistical physics, along with furthering our understanding of black holes and wormholes. By 1921 he had earned a Nobel prize in physics.
To sum up, his brain made him a genius and people made him a celebrity for it.
Today the pieces of Einstein’s brain sit in the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, The National Museum of Health and Medicine in Maryland, some pieces in Princeton, New Jersey, and the rest? We’re not entirely sure but to quote several hundred people on Instagram, “It’s not about where you end up, it’s about the journey that you took to get there.”
This is honestly pretty debatable but for the purposes of this story, it works, I guess.
Sure I’m in hell for eternity but I had fun getting here… worth it?
The Death of A Genius
This journey starts on April 17th, 1955 with some chest pain. The 76-year-old Albert Einstein suffered from a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm, which besides being a tongue twister is actually pretty fatal. He died the following day in Princeton Hospital. Some sources say he accepted death, even declining an attempted surgery to save his life.
Einstein’s body was brought to our anti-hero of this story, Thomas Harvey, the same guy who at the beginning of this episode was just chilling with parts of Einstein’s brain. I think you can see where we’re going with this.
Thomas Harvey was the pathologist in charge of determining the cause of death and after doing this, he saw an opportunity that some others might not have seen. I don’t know any pathologists so I can’t take a poll, but speaking for myself, I don’t usually go around thinking “What I wouldn’t do for a brain right now.”
Taking the Brain
We actually don’t know what Harvey was thinking when he took the brain, he was pretty coy about his reasoning in future interviews. He once stated his mentor Dr. Harry Zimmerman told him to retrieve the brain, which Zimmerman later refused.
And another time he said he just assumed the brain was going to be studied so he took it out of the body. Others think he was just caught up in the moment and had to ensure it was studied.
Of course, that doesn’t explain why he took it home with him. Either way at some point, Harvey decided he wanted to study the brain of a genius himself. See for a long time, people had speculated Einstein’s brain would be different than a non-genius. They assumed it would be bigger, weigh more, and have lights emanating from every crevice, alright maybe not that last one.
But it turns out Einstein’s brain wasn’t actually bigger and weighed the same as the average brain, it all appeared anti-climatic; it was normal.
Thomas Harvey couldn’t accept that. He wanted to study it further. Here’s the thing though, Harvey wasn’t a neurologist or a specialist at studying brains. Now I’m sure being a pathologist is tough work and Harvey was an intelligent guy, but I’m not going to fly the plane if I’m the guy who fixes the plane, is all I’m saying.
At the moment, I don’t think Harvey was thinking too hard about it. He took the brain home and like a guy finding out your dad’s brain has been stolen, people were not happy. Also, that guy’s name? Hans Albert Einstein, son of Albert Einstein. It turned out Albert Einstein wanted to be cremated, with his ashes spread in secret. He was aware of his celebrity status and didn’t want to be idolized and this is what his son feared was happening.
Permission
Yet, a day later through phone calls Thomas Harvey somehow got permission, from Hans, to study the brain on the condition that it purely be on scientific grounds and any papers printed be done so in reputable scientific journals.
Harvey now had the freedom to study the brain, except it wouldn’t be in Princeton, since after his denial to bring it back to the hospital, he was fired. Instead, Harvey and Einstein took their first trip of many and headed to Philadelphia where Harvey was able to work with a lab to cut up parts of Einstein’s brain into cubes and make slides for further study.
Now, some of you reading this may be thinking Thomas Harvey sounds a little like a psychopath but he’s not. All he did was steal a genius’s brain, took multiple pictures of it at different angles, cut it up into 240 cubes, placed them into 2 separate jars with a formaldehyde preservative, sliced up the remainder creating 1,000 slides, and then placed them into 5 separate boxes to be studied later.
All that was then placed in a cardboard box in his closet under a cooler. That’s not a psychopath.
….wait a second, maybe that’s not normal
Oh, he also stole Einstein’s eyeballs… but he gave them to Einstein’s optometrist who then put them in a safety deposit box in New York City.
I’m starting to think there’s a fine line between psychopath and scientist. I don’t think Thomas Harvey crossed that line. He also never crossed the line in studying the brain himself, true to his word he was going to leave that to the professionals.
For the next 50 years, Harvey would move around with the pieces of Einstein’s brain all across the U.S, sending slides to any brain specialist that asked.
Tracking the Brain Slides
The slivers of the brain were harder to track so let’s get that out of the way first. For the most part they stayed in his home. It’s known he sent slides to Dr. Zimmerman in New York and Dr. Marian Diamond at the University of California. It’s rumored some slides may be in Japan and who knows some other slides might be in random safe deposit boxes around the world.
But when Thomas Harvey passed away in 2007, the remaining slides that were in his home were donated to Princeton Hospital. The Museum of Health and Medicine received a full box of slides while the Muller Museum in Philadelphia received 46 slides.
Tracking the Jars
Now, the jars of brain, let’s go back to 1955, after Thomas Harvey was fired he kept having a hard time. His marriage reportedly fell apart and he moved to Wichita, Kansas taking a job as a medical supervisor in a biological testing lab.
During this time he was interviewed about the brain in which he stated he would have research papers ready in a year's time for print. That never happened but not for a lack of trying.
Harvey and Einstein next moved to Weston, Missouri to practice medicine and study the brain whenever he could. Unfortunately, he would hit another roadblock when in 1988, Harvey lost his medical license and had to move to Lawrence, Kansas to take a job in a factory. Eventually, Harvey and Einstein would move back to Princeton, New Jersey in 1995, two years before their final road trip.
The Road Trip
In 1997, journalist Michael Paterniti would track down Harvey and create a friendship that would lead the two of them on a road trip to California. Actually, the three of them. The road trip was Harvey’s idea as he wanted to meet with Evelyn Einstein, Albert’s granddaughter. Michael wondered if the meeting was a way to make amends or at the very least relieve Harvey of some guilt he might have had for stealing the brain to begin with.
Michael would later write a book, documenting the entire trip, from their start in New Jersey, through Pennsylvania, Chicago, Kansas, New Mexico, and Las Vegas before ending in California.
Now Michael is a great writer and if you’re interested the book is called Driving Mr. Albert. I, personally, don’t like a lot of unnecessary detail, it’s why these articles tend to be short. And I think right around the multiple paragraphs describing farming, I started to tap out a bit. But then again it won awards so who am I to judge?
These mean everything I do is super interesting
Giving Back A Genius?
In the end, Harvey and Michael meet with Evelyn Einstein who seemingly held no grudge against Harvey. Afterward, Michael drives Harvey and Albert back to New Jersey where Harvey has a change of heart. After 42 long years, he gives the brain back to Princeton for study.
As far as whether any study shows something extraordinary about Einstein’s brain, that’s inconclusive. With all those samples Thomas Harvey gave, there were some studies but none really held up to peer review. One from Dr. Diamond at UCLA was called, “seriously flawed” and found to be biased but not before being circulated by the media.
This is a problem known as publication bias wherein a study is published because it reaches a preconceived outcome where a researcher unknowingly or knowingly ignores negative results in order to reach that outcome.
A set of brains were studied against Einstein’s and only the one test where there was a slight difference was used as proof that his brain was genius.
It’s also thought by some that publication bias was the reason for Thomas Harvey not publishing anything for decades. For decades he knew Einstein’s brain was incredibly similar to other brains and instead of publishing that, he kept trying to find a way to show it was different.
Maybe this is why Einstein wanted to be cremated, maybe the decades of studies including the ones still happening now were what he wanted to avoid. Like Ponce de Leon’s constant search for the fountain of youth, Einstein didn’t want us searching for what possibly isn’t there and wanted us to focus on what he accomplished using his brain while alive.
So let’s bring this journey of Einstein’s brain to a close. I know we jumped around back and forth the timeline to tell this story but as Albert Einstein, himself once said, “Time is relative.”
