Einstein, the Nobel Prize winning physicist and one of the most brilliant scientific minds
in history, left very specific instructions to have his body cremated after his death.
He said “scatter the ashes secretly in order to discourage idolators.”
He was well aware of his celebrity status and loathed the thought of being memorialized
or studied.
But on the night of April 17th, 1955 he arrived at Princeton Hospital with a ruptured abdominal
aortic aneurysm and died early the next morning.
What happened next would set the course for a long and wild ride.
The pathologist on call the day Einstein died was Dr. Thomas Stoltz Harvey.
He autopsied the body and without direct instruction to do so, took the extra step of removing
Einstein’s brain, under the assumption it would be studied.
In what he thought would be a career making move, he seized the opportunity and vowed
to lead the study of Einstein’s brain himself “to make a major professional contribution.”
So he preserved the brain in formaldehyde and took it home with him.
Reporters quickly found out that he didn’t have permission nor any legal right to remove
the brain or keep it for himself.
When Einstein’s son Hans Albert found out the next day, he was outraged.
His father, a private and modest man had left explicit instruction to cremate his body so
as not to be exploited.
This was exactly the kind of scandal he wanted to avoid.
And yet, somehow Harvey still managed to get permission, albeit reluctantly, from Hans
Albert to keep the brain.
Though it was granted only on the condition that it be used for scientific research and
any results would be published in reputable scientific journals.
It has been speculated that there were two possible reasons for Harvey to remove and
keep the brain for himself.
The first one was that it was at the request of Harry Zimmerman, Einstein’s personal
physician and professional mentor to Harvey.
Zimmerman never publicly admitted this to be true, though he did make the request for
the brain once it had been removed.
The other possible theory is that perhaps Harvey was inspired by the study done on Lenin’s
brain in 1926 and simply got “caught up in the moment, transfixed in the presence
of greatness.”
Either way, he thought that removing Einstein’s brain would change the course of his career
and believed he was on the brink of a Scientific discovery.
Things didn’t quite pan out that way though.
Harvey was in way over his head.
He was neither a neurosurgeon, nor a brain specialist.
His responsibility that day was to determine the cause of death, which was heart failure.
There was no instruction to remove the brain or indication that the brain would be studied.
You can’t blame the guy for thinking that it would be a loss to lose such an incredible
brain.
I mean, who wouldn’t want to study the brain that came up with the theory of relativity,
the photoelectric effect, and the concept of E=mc^2 (squared).
But you can’t steal a brain and not expect some repercussions.
Naturally, amid all the controversy surrounding the unauthorized removal of the brain, Harvey
lost his job.
So with the brain in tow, Harvey drove to Philadelphia where there was a rare instrument
called a microtome that was used to section a brain.
The team there carved the brain into 240 pieces and preserved it in celloidin, a gelatinous
rubbery material.
Other parts were preserved in slides, and a bit of the brain remained unsectioned.
Harvey divvied up the pieces into two glass jars and stored them in his basement.
For two decades the brain sat there, with not one study published.
Eventually Harvey and the brain moved to the Midwest settling in Wichita Kansas in the
mid 70s where he worked as a medical supervisor in a biological testing lab and kept the brain
in a cider box under a beer cooler.
In 1978 a journalist named Steven Levy who worked for a regional magazine called the
New Jersey Monthly was given the assignment to find Einstein’s brain.
The editor of the magazine had read in a biography on Einstein that his body had been cremated
except for his brain which was kept for scientific research.
But Einstein had been dead for 22 years and no one had heard a thing about the brain since.
Levy eventually tracked down Harvey in Wichita and after a bit of persuasion Harvey finally
admitted that he still had the brain in his possession.
Levy had found the brain.
Harvey even showed him the brain down to the red “Costa Cider” box he kept it in.
After the article came out in the August 1978 edition of the magazine, the media went a
little crazy.
They camped out on Harvey’s lawn, Levy had 2 solid days full of radio interviews.
Johnny Carson even made a joke about it.
And Scientists finally took an interest.
In 1984 Harvey sent four blocks of the brain to Doctor Marian Diamond who worked at the
University of California, Berkeley at her request.
Unfortunately the fact that the brain tissue was preserved in celloidin meant that the
methods of examination would be limited and any experimental results would likely be flawed.
In 1985 Harvey and collaborators from Dr. Diamond’s study in California published
the first study of Einstein’s brain claiming that it had abnormal proportions of neurons
and glial cells.
This study was followed by five others reporting differences in individual cells or in particular
structures in Einstein’s brain.
The researchers behind these studies aimed to uncover the neurological underpinnings
of intelligence.
However, they have been largely discredited by modern science.
In 1988 Harvey lost his medical license after failing a three day competency exam.
He moved again, this time to Lawrence, Kansas where he took a job on an assembly line in
a plastic extrusion factory.
He moved into a second floor apartment next to a gas station, and befriended his neighbor,
the famed beat generation author William Burroughs.
The two men regularly met for drinks on Burroughs’s front porch.
Harvey would tell stories about sending off pieces of the brain to researchers around
the world.
Burroughs would then boast to visitors that he could have a piece of Einstein anytime
he wanted.
In 1997 a young journalist named Michael Paterniti jumped at the opportunity for an exclusive
and offered to drive Harvey and the brain to California.
Harvey agreed and a few days later he packed the famous brain into two plastic containers
in a gray duffel bag and they hit the road in a rented Buick skylark.
Paterniti even wrote a book about it called Driving Mr. Albert.
After Harvey’s death in 2007, the brain remained in the possession of Harvey’s family
until 2010 when they transferred what was left of the brain to the National Museum of
Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, Maryland including 14 photographs of the whole brain.
There are bits and pieces of the brain that were never returned and likely kept as curios.
Although the scientific significance of Einstein’s brain remains debatable, it’s been culturally
significant, spawning countless articles and stories, a play, a novel, and, of course,
the controversy surrounding Harvey’s reasons for keeping the brain largely to himself for
40 years instead of handing it off to scientists who would be able to study it more thoroughly.
You could chalk all this up to a sad ending for a great man whose scientific discoveries
changed the world.
Or you could see this as a sign of a cultural fascination with greatness and our collective
desire to understand what, exactly, makes a genius, a genius?
But as long as photos and memes of Einstein with his tongue out are getting circulated
amongst us, he will continue to be a fascination among all us normal-brained folks.
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