Mileva Marić

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Mileva Marić

Mileva Marić
Born December 19, 1875(1875-12-19)
Titel, Vojvodina, present day Serbia.
Died August 4, 1948 (aged 72)
Zurich, Switzerland
Burial place Nordheim Cemetery, Zurich
Residence Flag of Serbia Serbia (1875-1891 1913-1914 1924-1935 1938-1939) Flag of Switzerland Switzerland (1894-1896) Flag of Italy Italy (1901-1903 1912-1913) Flag of the Czech Republic Czech Republic (1905-1912 ) Flag of Germany Germany (1914-1921 1921-1948) Flag of Sweden Sweden (1921-1923)
Nationality Flag of Serbia Serbia
Occupation Occasional teacher
Spouse Albert Einstein
Children Hans Albert Einstein, Eduard Einstein and Lieserl Einstein.
Relatives Milos Marić, Marija Ruzic Marić, Zorka Marić, and Milos Marić (Jr).
Website
http://www.pbs.org/opb/einsteinswife/
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Mileva Marić (December 19, 1875 – August 4, 1948; Serbian Cyrillic: Милева Марић) was the Serbian first wife (1903-1919) of Albert Einstein, and mother of three children with him. There are some claims that she may have contributed to Einstein's early research, but scholarly scrutiny of these claims indicates that they cannot be substantiated.

Contents

[edit] Timeline of her life

Mileva Einstein about 1903
Mileva Einstein about 1903
  • December 19, 1875 Marić was born into a wealthy family in Titel, in the province of Vojvodina (then a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, today in Serbia). She was the oldest of three children. Shortly after her birth, her father ended his military career and took a job at the court in Ruma and later in Zagreb (at the time also known by its German name, Agram).
  • 1887 Changed to a high-school in Sremska Mitrovica.[1] This school was equipped with excellent laboratories for physics and chemistry. (Trbuhovic-Gjuric 1983)
  • 1890 From 1890 on she attended the Royal Serbian Grammar School in Sabac.[1] In 1891 her father obtained special permission to enroll Marić as a private student at the all male Royal Classical High School in Zagreb.[2] Mileva passed the entrance exam and entered the tenth grade in 1892. She won special permission to attend physics lectures in February 1894 and passed the final exams in September 1894. Mileva Marić's grades in mathematics and physics were the highest awarded.[2] (Trbuhovic-Gjuric 1983; Krstic 1991)
  • 1894 Mileva fell seriously ill and decided to move to Switzerland, where on the 14th November she started at the girls 'high school in Zurich.[3]
  • Winter 1896 Marić started studies in mathemathics and physics in Switzerland at ETH Zurich. This was the only University in the area to accept women for the final exams.

She was the fifth woman to study physics at ETH, the only one in her year.[3] During practical physics lessons, she met Albert Einstein.

  • 1897 until April 1898 Studied in Heidelberg, Germany[4] (Theory of numbers, analytical mechanics, differential and integral calculus, elliptical functions, theory of heat, electrodynamics. (Trbuhovic-Gjuric, 4. Auflage 1984, p.49, and ETH-Archiv der wissenschaftlich-historischen Abteilung)
  • 1898 Mileva rejoined the Zurich Polytechnic in April [4]
  • 1900 Mileva Marić failed her Zurich Polytechnic teaching diploma examination, almost certainly because of her poor grade in mathematics.[5] [The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Vol. 1, Ed. J. Stachel, 1987, p. 247]
  • 1901 Mileva Marić became pregnant by Albert Einstein; it remained a secret. [2]
  • 1901 Mileva Marić left ETH without a certificate; she did not continue her Ph.D. [3]
  • 1902 Birth of Lieserl in Serbia, daughter of Mileva Marić and Albert Einstein.
  • 1903 Marriage with Albert Einstein.
  • 1913/14 In July 1913 Max Planck and Walther Nernst offered Albert a new job in Berlin, which he accepted but which caused Mileva distress. (Highfield 154,156) In August the Einsteins took a walking holiday with their son Hans Albert, Marie Curie and her two daughters, but Mileva was delayed temporarily due to Eduard's illness. (Highfield 157) In September the Einsteins visited Mileva's parents near Novi Sad, and on the day they were to leave for Vienna Mileva had her sons baptised as Orthodox Christians. (Highfield, 160) After Vienna Albert visited relatives in Germany while Mileva returned to Zurich. After Christmas Mileva traveled to Berlin to stay with Fritz Haber who helped her look for accommodation for the Einsteins' impending move in April 1914. (Highfield 166) The Einsteins both left Zurich for Berlin in late March, on the way Albert visited an uncle in Antwerp and then Ehrenfest and Lorentz in Leiden while Mileva took a holiday with the children in Locarno, arriving in Berlin in mid-April. (Highfield 166) In May Ehrenfest noted that Mileva was pining for Switzerland, and in summer Mileva took the boys back to Zurich, to a boarding house , never to return to Albert. (Highfield 167) By the end of 1914 the couple's friends realised the marriage had collapsed; Mileva moved to a flat on Voltastrasse and Albert promised her an annual maintenance of 5600 Reichsmarks[6]. (Highfield 172)
  • 1919 February 14 Albert and Mileva were divorced.[7] They had negotiated a settlement where Mileva would receive the entire Nobel prize money,[8][9] which they both expected Albert would win. After Albert married his second wife in June, he returned to Zurich to talk to Mileva about the children's future, taking Hans Albert on Lake Constance and Eduard to Arosa for convalesence. Afterwards Albert wrote to Mileva urging her to move to Constance in Germany, later Durlach and then Darmstadt, offering to help her hunt for a house. (Highfield 218) Mileva, who was then living in a flat at Gloriastrasse 59 on the Zürichberg, refused to move.
  • 1922 Albert received news that he had won the Nobel Prize in November and the money was transferred to Mileva in 1923. The money was used to buy three houses in Zurich: Mileva lived in one, a five storey house at Huttenstrasse 62, the other two were investments. (Highfield 221) The family of Georg Busch, later to become Professor Busch at the ETH, was one of her tenants. In the late 1930s the costs of Eduard's care - he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia - overwhelmed Mileva and resulted in the forced sale of two of the houses. In 1939 Mileva agreed to transfer ownership of the Huttenstrasse house to Albert in order to prevent its loss as well, with Mileva retaining power of attorney. Albert also made regular cash transfers to Mileva for Eduard's and her own livelihood. (Highfield 252)

[edit] Role in physics

[edit] Annus Mirabilis Papers

The extent of Mileva's contributions to Einstein's Annus Mirabilis Papers is controversial. According to Evan Harris Walker, a physicist, the basic ideas for relativity came from Mileva [5]. Senta Troemel-Ploetz, a German linguist, says that the ideas may have been Albert's, but Mileva did the mathematics. Some argue neither of these claims are likely.[6][7]

On the other hand, John Stachel, keeper of Albert's letters, says that Mileva was little more than a sounding board. The case for Mileva as co-genius mostly depends on letters in which Albert referred to "our" theory and "our" work and on a divorce agreement in which Albert promised her his Nobel Prize money. He gave the money to Mileva but he did not publicly acknowledge any putative scientific involvement by her in his work. Mileva used the award money to support their sons. Based on newly released letters (sealed by Albert's stepdaughter Margot Einstein until 20 years after her death), Walter Isaacson (Time 168(3):50-55, July 17, 2006) reported that Mileva invested Albert's Nobel Prize money in three apartment buildings in Zurich. Some of his current descendents are Christian Knox, and Mathew Knox.[citation needed]

The contention that the Soviet scientist Abraham Joffe claimed to have seen the original manuscripts of Einstein’s 1905 papers is not borne out by an examination of the passage in question, in which he clearly attributes them to a single author. Joffe identifies Einstein as Einstein-Marity, the name by which he presumed Einstein was officially known in Switzerland at that time. This is clearly a single name, not two separate names, and there is no justification for stating that Joffe claimed the articles were co-authored, as Martinez shows:[10] John Stachel comprehensively refutes the claims about Joffe in the editorial Introduction to Einstein’s Miraculous Year: Five Papers that Changed the Face of Physics (2005), pp. liv-lxxii.

There are no strong arguments to support the idea that Mileva helped Einstein to develop his theories. Other Nobel winners, beside Einstein, have shared their prize money with their ex-wives as a part of the divorce settlements. When Einstein's surviving son was asked about his own mother's scientific contribution to the Theory of Special Relativity he couldn’t recall any. Albert remained an extremely fruitful scientist for the rest of his life, producing works of importance long after divorcing Mileva. She, on the other hand, never published any significant work and was never mentioned, including by any of hers or Albert’s acquaintances, as having contributed any ideas to Einstein's work. Mileva never claimed that she took any important part in the scientific work attributed to Albert .[8]

[edit] Children

Einstein and Marić had two sons and a daughter. Their daughter Lieserl, born before their marriage, is variously said to have been given up for adoption or to have died in childhood. Hans Albert Einstein, their older son, became a professor in hydraulic engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. The other son, Eduard Einstein, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and institutionalized; most of the money Einstein had received upon being awarded the Nobel Prize went towards his care. Mileva cared for him until she died in 1948.

Both of their sons were baptized in the Serbian orthodox church of Nikolajevska in Novi Sad.[citation needed]

[edit] Memorials to Mileva Marić

There are three known sculptoral busts of Mileva Marić, and a few memory reliefs (mostly on houses where she lived). All of them are located in different towns in Vojvodina, Serbia. The newest of the busts, one in her high-school town, Sremska Mitrovica, was placed in December 2005. Another bust is located on the campus of the University of Novi Sad. A high-school in her birth town Titel is also named after her[11].

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Highfield 36
  2. ^ a b Highfield 37
  3. ^ a b c Highfield 38
  4. ^ a b Highfield 43
  5. ^ Highfield 56 "theory of functions she scored fewer than half the marks of the other four candidates", "average grade was 4.00 compared with Einstein's 4.91"
  6. ^ (approximately 44000 Euros - 5600 times 7.9 - according to [1])
  7. ^ Highfield 188
  8. ^ Highfield and Carter page 187: 180,000 Swiss Francs
  9. ^ Einstein's Wife. Mileva's Story
  10. ^ Arguing about Einstein's wife
  11. ^ http://www.psok.org.yu/sr/obrazovanje/srednje.html
  • Maurer, Margarete: "Weil nicht sein kann, was nicht sein darf...'DIE ELTERN' ODER 'DER VATER' DER RELATIVITÄTSTHEORIE? Zum Streit über den Anteil von Mileva Maric an der Entstehung der Relativitätstheorie". Published in: PCnews, Nr. 48, Jg. 11, Heft 3, Wien, Juni 1996, S. 20-27. Electronic Version of RLI-Homepage (im RLI-Web): August 2005
  • Ronald W. Clark: Albert Einstein. Leben und Werk, Munich, (1981). English Original: Einstein, the Life and Times, 1973).
  • Dord Krstic: "Mileva Einstein-Maric", in: Elizabeth Roboz Einstein: Hans Albert Einstein. Reminiscences of His Life and Our Life Together, Iowa Cita (Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research) 1991, S. 85-99.
  • R.S. Shankland: "Conversations with Albert Einstein", in: American Journal of Physics, Vol. 31, 1963, S. 47-57.
  • Desanka Trbuhovic-Gjuric: Mileva Einstein, Editions des Femmes (1991). ISBN 2721004077.
  • Desanka Trbuhovic-Gjuric: Im Schatten Albert Einsteins. Das tragische Leben der Mileva Einstein-Maric, Bern: Paul Haupt, (1983). ISBN 3258047006.
  • Stachel, J. (2002). Einstein from 'B' to 'Z'. Boston: Bïrkhauser, pp. 26-38; 39-55.
  • Stachel, J (ed.) (2005). Einstein's Miraculous Year: Five Papers That Changed the Face of Physics. Princeton, pp. liv-lxxii.
  • Stachel, J. et al (eds.) (1987): The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein: Volume 1. (With English commentary).
  • Havas, P. (ed.) (1987): The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein: Volume 1 (English translation).
  • Popovic, M. (ed.) (2003): In Albert's Shadow: The love Life and Letters of Mileva Maric.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Albert Einstein's Family
Main family
Children
Partners
Mileva Marić · Elsa Einstein