Mrs. Albert Einstein's Genius
Mileva Maric’s Role in Shaping Her Husband’s Thinking
© Jim Rada
Mar 6, 2009
Mileva Maric, Albert Einstein’s first wife, has emerged from the shadows of history to show her own genius and cause some historians to wonder how much credit she deserves in developing the theory of relativity.
Maric’s Background
Maric was born in Hadsburg, Serbia in 1875. As a child, she showed a gift for math, languages and the arts. She was a high achiever even among her male peers.
She enrolled in Zurich Polytechnic in 1896 at the age of 21. There she met Einstein, who was 17 at the time.
Maric’s Affair with Einstein
Einstein and Maric fell in love and began a love affair in 1899. She had Einstein’s illegitimate child in 1902 and had to leave school.
The two married in 1903. Mileva became a mother and housewife while Einstein became a clerk in the Bern Patent Office and began to think outside the box.
Though the illegitimate child died or was given up for adoption, Einstein and Maric would have two sons, Hans Albert and Eduard.
Maric’s Role in Einstein’s Career
Besides being his lover, Maric had also served as Einstein’s sounding board and partner in developing some of his ideas.
“How happy and proud I will be when the two of us together will have brought our work on the relative motion to a conclusion!” Einstein wrote to Maric in 1901.
It is passages like these that have made people wonder is Maric deserves to share in the credit for Einstein’s work on relativity.
“It's true that during the period when they were students, a few of Einstein's letters allude to 'our work' and one to 'our theory of relative motion,' but this was at least four years before Einstein produced his 1905 papers, and there is no serious evidence that Maric played any role in these,” wrote physicist and historical author, Allen Esterson
However, Maric herself has claimed credit. During a family vacation in August 1905, she told her father, “Not long ago we finished a very significant work that will make my husband world famous.”
Another rumor is that her name appeared on an early draft of the relativity paper, but Walter Issacson points out in his biography of Einstein that the comments goes back to a Russian scientist and it turns out he never said that.
A Bitter Divorce
As Einstein’s star rose, he became more distant from Maric and began various affairs. His initial requests for a divorce were rebuffed.
He finally gained her agreement by promising Maric his money from winning the Nobel Prize. The couple divorced in 1919. Though it was still years in the future, Einstein had no doubt that he would eventually win the Nobel Prize. He did in 1922 and he gave Maric the money.
Some supporters of Maric’s role as a collaborator use this as evidence to show that Maric was a partner in her husband’s research. However, though she received the money, he did not give her any scientific credit.
Nor did she seek it, which one would think she would do being involved in a bitter divorce as she was.
Mileva Maric died in Zurich on August 4, 1948 at the age of 72.
What Was Maric’s Role?
So was Maric a collaborator in Einstein’s greatest theories?
Isaacson’s conclusion is that Maric, like many wives, served as a sounding board for her husband’s work. She did check his math, but she did not come up with any of the mathematical concepts.
