Word: mileva
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...year-old Albert, as roguishly independent in his personal life as he would be in his science, brushed off Mutti's agitated words and continued the romance. On Jan. 27, 1902, nine months after an idyllic interlude at Lake Como, Albert's classmate--and future wife--Mileva Maric secretly gave birth to a girl at her parents' home back in Serbia. Neither Mileva nor Albert ever talked about her, even to close friends. Like some brief, fiery meteor, the baby named Lieserl (diminutive for Elisabeth) soon vanished into the Balkan night...
Even after publication of seven more volumes of Einstein papers--and many more embarrassing revelations about his private life (his flirtations, his stormy divorce from Mileva, his possible dalliance with the daughter of the woman who would become his second wife, his estrangement from his two sons, one of whom was schizophrenic)--Lieserl's fate shadows the Einstein legend like some unsolved equation...
Every day, it seems, a celebrity's something-or-other is on the block. A year ago, Albert Einstein's love/hate letters to his first wife Mileva Maric were sold at Christie's. A Christie's spokesman explained why he thought Einstein's relativity-theory manuscript went for more money than the letters. "I think Einstein will be known as a scientist," he said...
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...