Word: mileva
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...letters to her were published. Yes, love letters. But at least some of the language in those letters makes Albert and Mileva sound like research partners: "How happy and proud," he wrote in 1901, "I will be when the two of us together will have brought our work on the relative motion ((relativity)) to a victorious conclusion!" Our work...
...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...
...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 becomes. Einstein will forever after be a little more mortal, and that's good...
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...