(1875-1948) SHE DIED ALONE AND PENNILESS. BUT SOME SCHOLARS SAY THIS LITTLE KNOWN SERBIAN WOMAN CONTRIBUTED TO THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY.
'How happy I will be when the two of us together will have brought our work on the relative motion to a victorious conclusion.' A young Albert Einstein wrote these words to his first wife Mileva shortly before publishing the Theory of Relativity. The release of letters like this one has scholars arguing over Mileva's contribution to relativity. They met at Zurich's prestigious Swiss Polytechnic School. Mileva was the only woman in the class, and only the fifth in the school's history. The daughter of a wealthy Serbian family, Mileva excelled at physics and math, and was devoted to her studies until she met Albert Einstein. The two brilliant scientists fell in love. They lived and worked together. But more interested in their own work than their classes, both failed their final exams. Einstein passed on a second attempt. Unmarried and pregnant, Mileva failed hers again. Einstein never met his daughter...and no one is sure what happened to the baby. Einstein and Mileva later married and had two sons. Mileva focused her energies on Albert's career. Some scholars believe Mileva did the math for the Theory of Relativity, others say she corrected Einstein's math, and still others claim she was even more deeply involved. The paper outlining the theory is signed with a hyphenated name Einstein-Marty, the Hungarian form of her maiden name Maric.
Before the work was published Albert Einstein left his wife and two sons. He never acknowledged his first wife or her work. He did however give Mileva all of the Nobel Prize money. The money didn't last long. Mileva was sick, and caring for their mentally ill son. Einstein went on to great acclaim, but he never again produced physics equal to the work he did while married to his first wife and collaborator, Mileva Maric.
Credits: Mileva Maric image is courtesy of the Tesla Memorial Society of New York.
For more information, please visit:
http://www.teslasociety.com/Mileva.htm
http://www.pbs.org/opb/einsteinswife/
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