“The Other Einstein” – Marie Benedict

 

📔Mileva Marić. Google her. Read about her. Know her name. This is most definitely a fictionalized account of her life, and I don’t mean to detract from Einstein’s gifts and accomplishments, but Mileva  deserves to be known as well. In fact, Benedict writes that one of her motivations in writing this novel was to take Mileva beyond a mere footnote in Albert Einstein’s life. In writing this novel, Benedict encourages us to ask questions about the women’s stories left out of history books.

 

📔Benedict hops back and forth in time between Mileva’s childhood, her time at university in Switzerland, and the years after the birth of her and Albert’s first child, Lieserl. We learn a great deal about this woman who broke barriers based upon her gender, disability, and her Serbian nationality. Growing up with a limp, Mileva’s parents assumed the traditional marriage and motherhood role would not be available to Mileva. But her father recognized the spark of brilliance in her and cultivated her education.

 

📔Readers will observe several early red flags in Mileva’s relationship with Albert, but Mileva is at once savvy and guileless – forgiving omission after omission with the elusive promises of collaboration with Albert, dangling before her. Things begin to go irrevocably wrong for her when she finds she is pregnant with Albert’s child. Being a woman was nearly grounds enough for exclusion from the world of physics and mathematics, but Mileva clawed her way in; a pregnancy out of wedlock forced her to abandon her education. Without academic credentials, she would always be erased from her contributions to her joint work with Albert. As the biography I read earlier about Queen Victoria notes, all the advantages in life do not compensate for the toll of childbirth that falls exclusively to women. I drew parallels between Albert’s machinations during Victoria’s many pregnancies which sidelined her, with Albert Einstein’s purported actions during Mileva’s pregnancies.

 

📔No spoilers here, so I won’t note major plot points, but let’s just say that my impression of Albert was dramatically altered. I knew that he cheated on his first wife, but we are so accustomed to the image of Albert sticking his tongue out (the brilliant, goofy scientist), that the fact that he could have an incredibly devious and manipulative side, came as a shock. Benedict paints a portrait of young man who fully recognized Mileva’s capabilities, and found a way to siphon Mileva’s knowledge while simultaneously silencing her voice. 

 

📔Per this (fictionalized) account, the very idea and bulk of work for Einstein’s vaunted paper on relativity had been Mileva’s. Benedict posits that he surreptitiously removed her co-authorship. Mileva had only agreed to co-author this paper based on her ideas because she lacked a formal degree, and without credentials, she would not be able to attract publishers. He would go on to repeat this tactic of promising credit, and then deleting her name for various other projects.

 

📔Benedict notes her research sources for this book included the trove of Einstein’s private letters housed at Princeton University. Her claims regarding Mileva’s work on his vaunted relativity paper, are not implausible. Take a look at this “Nature” article if you are interested in scholarship on the subject of Mileva’s legacy: The debated legacy of Einstein’s first wife

 

📔Part II was a tough read, particularly the parts involving Lieserl, and psychological effects on Mileva. TOE might not have been the best choice to dive into right after Divakaruni’s “Forest of Enchantments” – back-to-back gaslighting and mistreatment of women by their spouses and all, but I enjoyed this book tremendously. It was an emotionally gripping story, but also informed me about a person who was erstwhile unknown to me. 

 

📔If you enjoyed TOE, I’d recommend “Mrs. Poe” by Lynn Cullen and “The Paris Wife” by Paula McClain. I’m thinking of picking up Isaacson’s “Einstein: His Life and Universe” to gain a balanced perspective.