I strongly disagree with the conclusion:<p><i>Why did Mileva remain silent? Being reserved and self-effaced, she did not seek honors or public attention.</i><p>She was failed and denied a degree in spite of having better grades than Albert, probably solely because she was a woman. Albert was probably blocked from employment positions he wanted by the same professor that failed her, possibly because he was treating a woman like his equal.<p>This reads to me like they coped as best they could with a world that absolutely wouldn't accept a woman as a serious scientist and even with trying to be self effacing, etc, they both paid a high price -- such a high price, it likely destroyed their marriage.
She is portrayed quite well in the recent National Geographic series about Einstein's life, "Genius".<p>Well worth watching. Mileva was a talented physicist and mathematician, contributed significantly to Einstein's early success, gave him three children and Albert dumped her for his cousin.
Something similar happened with Carl Sagan’s wife, Lyn Margulis, whose perseverance with endosymbiosis should see her ranked alongside Darwin as a scientist who deduced where we came from.
Sounds like she had more technical knowledge so she could verify his equations and ensure his papers had good structure and were legible by the academic community.<p>But she says herself that their work will make him famous. So clearly she believed his ideas were the foundation.
Definitely dims my view of Einstein the way he treated her. Doesn’t dim it completely though nor anywhere near. I know the times were very different and nothing’s perfect but it’s just a gut reaction that I’m feeling on hearing about this.
Besides being a really good insight into women in science in early 1900s I wonder whether inadvertently her upbringing and the society around her stole a female icon in science for the generations that followed.
This is the 'racism' that women have faced from the dawn of civilization. It seems to have been born from the early formation of tribal conflict. We have seen that hunter-gatherers functioned more equitably, even though women bore the children and had a higher burden. It seems that as agrarianism grew and allowed a higher population density, some degree of group impingement competition arose - which led to resource scarcity - and then to conflict. Men with their greater strength became more combative and role specialists emerged. I suspect this was the start.
With a warrior class emerged the pushed around class.....the middle ages were bad, no vote at all for women in many societies, and not vote even for men with no land. By the 1600's this was solidified in many places. Gradually universal suffrage emerged after years of conflict. In Einstein's day women were severly abused in the way that Mileva was. This endures to this day, try as we do to eliminate it, these abuses persist all throughout society in many places.
I agree, Mileva deserved far more credit than she got. That evil professor was one of many that infested the ranks of Academe. The ranks of higher education are still riddled with these abuses - every day we see more of them outed.
Downgrading women is a HUGE burden to society and I do whatever I can to eliminate this is an my interactions.
Einstein was a complete dick to her.<p>He sent her a letter with a list of demands to stay married:<p><a href="http://www.openculture.com/2013/12/albert-einstein-imposes-on-his-first-wife-a-cruel-list-of-marital-demands.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.openculture.com/2013/12/albert-einstein-imposes-o...</a><p>A. You will make sure:<p>1. that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;
2. that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;
3. that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.<p>B. You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego:<p>1. my sitting at home with you;
2. my going out or travelling with you.<p>C. You will obey the following points in your relations with me:<p>1. you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;
2. you will stop talking to me if I request it;
3. you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.<p>D. You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior.
I'm sad it didn't have to end that way.. melavia sacrificed everything for him. She also knew that the fame Einstein had achieved would get into his head and destroy things. In the end Einstein enjoyed huge career success but she didn't. She lost her family and career.<p>Her sacrifices and contributions should have been recognised.
The currently accepted view is that she was a sounding board, or had a similar role as Grossmann who also got little recognition (as detailed in the brilliant biography by Isaacson).<p>There are a quite a few odd facts that became quite difficult to ignore though (the article has the original quotes / sources on some of them):<p>* There are plenty of letters from Einstein to Minerva discussing love and physics in historical record, but all but 10 letters from Minerva to Einstein are lost. It is unknown why they are lost. Without these personal writings it is difficult to assess whether her depth of knowledge and love for physics was on a similar level.<p>* Their relatives and children claim they always sat at the table together in the evening, discussing physics and working.<p>* She gave up her authorship contribution for an engineering project before for Albert, claiming "we are one, Einstein".<p>* Several references to 'our work' in various letters.<p>* Three of the 1905 papers originally had the author Einstein-Marity, a typical double name women adopt after marriage. It is unknown why. (Maybe Einstein wanted her to get recognition though?)<p>* There are some differences in how mathematical notation is used in the 1905 papers, and how much detail is given for the steps.<p>* Her divorce agreement stated that she would get the Nobel prize money. The amount was pretty much making her rich back then, which is an excellent situation to be in for a struggling single mother who might want to stay in Switzerland and not go back to Serbia. Some more details here: <a href="https://www.einstein-website.de/z_information/nobelprizemoney.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.einstein-website.de/z_information/nobelprizemone...</a><p>* Minerva did not work in physics after she got pregnant. (The article states how she couldn't get through the academic system.) Though, Einstein, while still a productive physicist, never had an as successful year as 1905 again.<p>* She had better grades, Einstein copied her maths lecture notes, and you’ve got to say that you have to have quite a bit of endurance, intelligence and a thick skin to go from Serbia to ETH to study physics as a girl at that time. Not trying to devalue Einstein here, but it definitely took quite a bit more from her than for a boy at that time.<p>On the other hand, Einstein seemed to respect female scientists as evident in the letter to Curie, and might not have agreed to let her trade recognition for money if her contribution was real. In their honeymoon phase he also clearly saw Minerva as an equal (not so much later on, there is an awful letter by him setting rules for her as a housewife, but their marriage clearly was in pieces at that time.)<p>I’ve been following this case for a while and wish we could collect all neutral evidence (letters etc.) in original (german) form, similar to what the article already did.<p>There is a chance that the true story is that a couple that loved physics collaborated in 1905 and revolutionized the subject. I would love this conclusion.
Did she have a name or did she go around referring to herself as "einstein's first wife"? Why not "The Life of Mileva, Einstein's First Wife?
I believe they had <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenuptial_agreement" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenuptial_agreement</a>
I recently was interviewed by a national/international news organization, I have concerns "Fame will get to me".<p>Although, the big lesson I learned from this is Einstein cheated, and that caused the collapse. Solutions could be resisting urges or open relationships (although I have doubts).<p>Anyway, my wife has contributed or provoked ideas, editing, and real life implementation of the ideas. She didn't get interviewed.<p>I'm not famous (yet), I was a B+ student, I feel normal. But over the years strangers greeting me. IRL, or strangers being dissapointed in a personal political opinion, or the interviews make me realize it might happen.<p>I don't want to destroy the family I love.
Pregnancy and post partum, women’s IQ falls. There is some neural plasticity tho’ and it’s easy to retrain mental skills to reawaken full span of intellectual capability. It’s not politically correct to say this but biologically, we have evolved to pay more attention to dangers to the baby than traits like memory retention/pattern matching/comprehension etc. The mother’s brain is primed to be on mama bear mode all the time.<p>Maybe it would be easy to work in an office environment but sitting exams is a whole diff ball game post partum.
Old joke: A reporter once asked the aging Einstein if he though inventing the Cosmological Constant [1] was his biggest mistake. "No" he replied, "that was my second biggest mistake. The first biggest mistake was marrying my first wife."<p>[1]. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant</a>
This article hasn't been grammer checked, uses a lot of recent, sensationalist words, doesn't ask questions directly except at the end, provides no new or interesting information on Mileva, her accomplishments or her day to day, her kids and family, background, or their accomplishments. I conclude with no picture of what her life was like.<p>It's substance consists fully of vague diatribes about why Mileva didn't get credit for general relativity, asking vague, emotional questions that can easily be construed as accusations without providing new information or answers.<p>It is, by definition, trite and spin and poisons the news feed of HN. If it's a slow news day, it's a slow news day.<p>This reminds me of slashdot back in the early 2010's after Cowboy McNeal sold it off to I think it was Dice. Every day there was minimum 1-2 SJW Agenda pieces; initially they were recieved warmly but as the material got more and more radical over time, the community realized what was going on and turned extremely vitriolic. Then they drew an unbelievable amount of automated bot spam and even people with old accounts became hostile and left. Towards the end, they got sneakier and sneakier about the agenda pieces; you'd see one about an obvious feminist topic draw ire and a tremendous amount of vitriol, then another about "How do I help my daughter learn STEM\Electronics". Articles like the ladder became more common and people began ignoring them. Eventually the community left and all you had were a bunch of hateful people left. BizX stopped posting those pieces after buying the site a few years backl; They have a different agenda mostly inline with their financial portfolio.<p>I remember when the site had minimum 300-400 responses per article, many of which were tremendously useful, with some articles hitting 1000-2000 and it did that on every article. Today they're lucky to hit 100 and most of that, these days, looks like astroturf.