Word: einsteins
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...movie ends, a bitter drama. Einstein's biographers brushed her off as a gloomy Slav and a sloppy housekeeper, not quite bright enough to follow her husband into the new world of relativity, as if she deserved obscurity...
...idea of Mileva as collaborator can be made to fit like a key into certain puzzles, such as why Einstein never explained where he got the idea for relativity. Meanwhile, Mileva Maric had to be anything but a dunce in order to get into the Swiss Polytechnic, the M.I.T. of Central Europe. The most provocative piece of evidence is also the most disputed. According to a Yugoslav biography of Maric, Russian physicist Abram Joffe, now dead, claimed that he had seen the original 1905 papers and that they were signed Einstein- Maric. If so, those were the only ones...
...this enough to rewrite history? Was Einstein a fraud or just a lousy husband? Would that we could decide. Consider the psychohistorical fun scholars could have with the implications that a woman discovered relativity -- does it have anything to do with the traditional female emphasis on relationships and distrust of male absolutes? The Einstein experts are unconvinced. At worst, they say, Einstein was a lousy husband. The fact is that we will never know; Albert and Mileva have fallen into some Pynchonesque black hole of history that claims the dead. The longer we think about them, the more uncertain everything...
Women have suffered a double blow from the Einstein fiasco. First a possible heroine and role model, Mileva Maric, was lost. Then the agent of that loss was turned around and used as a club against them. Einstein's legacy was style as much as substance. The absentminded, frizzed-out dreamer has become the archetype of male genius. "Don't bother Daddy. He's busy working on the space-time continuum." Substitute "novel," "fast ball" or "takeover plan" for the end of that statement, and you have the image of the lone genius. Genius needs a little slack...
Every revolution has limits. Einstein was an ordinary man. He could see past space and time, yes, but not sex. Not all Einstein's learning nor his liberalism could keep him from making of Mileva what every other man made of his woman: a housewife, helpmate and addendum to his own identity...