MILEVA MARIC

MILEVA MARIĆ EINSTEIN

Women in Science

Podcast in spanish

The forgotten life of Einstein's first wife

Albert and Mileva were admitted to the physics-mathematics section of the Polytechnic Institute in Zurich (now ETH) in 1896 with three other students: Marcel Grossmann, Louis Kollros and Jakob Ehrat. Albert and Mileva became inseparable, spending countless hours studying together. He attended only a few lectures, preferring to study at home. Mileva was methodical and organized. She helped him channel his energy and guided his studies as we learn from Albert’s letters, exchanged between 1899-1903 during school holidays: 43 letters from Albert to Mileva have been preserved but only 10 of hers remain(5). These letters provide a first-hand account on how they interacted at the time. In August 1899, Albert wrote to Mileva: “When I read Helmholtz for the first time, it seemed so odd that you were not at my side and today, this is not getting better. I find the work we do together very good, healing and also easier.” Then on 2 October 1899, he wrote from Milan: “… the climate here does not suit me at all, and while I miss work, I find myself filled with dark thoughts – in other words, I miss having you nearby to kindly keep me in check and prevent me from meandering”. Mileva boarded in a pension for women where she met her life-long friends Helene Kaufler-Savić and Milana Bota. Both spoke of Albert’s continuous presence at Mileva’s place, where he would come freely to borrow books in Mileva’s absence. Milan Popović, Helene’s grandson, published the letters Mileva exchanged with her throughout her life(4). By the end of their classes in 1900, Mileva and Albert had similar grades (4.7 and 4.6, respectively) except in applied physics where she got the top mark of 5 but he, only 1. She excelled at experimental work while he did not. But at the oral exam, Professor Minkowski gave 11 out of 12 to the four male students but only 5 to Mileva. Only Albert got his degree. Meanwhile, Albert’s family strongly opposed their relationship. His mother was adamant. “By the time you’re 30, she’ll already be an old hag!” as Albert reported to Mileva in a letter dated 27 July 1900, as well as « She cannot enter a respectable family ”. Mileva was neither Jewish, nor German. She had a limp and was too intellectual in his mother’s opinion, not to mention prejudices against foreign people. Moreover, Albert’s father insisted his son found work before getting married. In September 1900, Albert wrote to Mileva: “I look forward to resume our new common work. You must now continue with your research – how proud I will be to have a doctor for my spouse when I’ll only be an ordinary man.“ They both came back to Zurich in October 1900 to start their thesis work. The other three students all received assistant positions at the Institute, but Albert did not. He suspected that professor Weber was blocking him. Without a job, he refused to marry her. They made ends meet by giving private lessons and “continue[d] to live and work as before.“ as Mileva wrote to her friend Helene Savić. On 13 December 1900, they submitted a first article on capillarity signed only under Albert’s name. Nevertheless, both referred to this article in letters as their common article. Mileva wrote to Helene Savić on 20 December 1900. “We will send a private copy to Boltzmann to see what he thinks and I hope he will answer us.” Likewise, Albert wrote to Mileva on 4 April 1901, saying that his friend Michele Besso “visited his uncle on my behalf, Prof. Jung, one of the most influential physicists in Italy and gave him a copy of our article.” The decision to publish only under his name seems to have been taken jointly. Why? Radmila Milentijević, a former history professor at City College in New York, published in 2015 Mileva’s most comprehensive biography(1). She suggests that Mileva probably wanted to help Albert make a name for himself, such that he could find a job and marry her. Dord Krstić, a former physics professor at Ljubljana University, spent 50 years researching Mileva’s life. In his well-documented book(2), he suggests that given the prevalent bias against women at the time, a publication co-signed with a woman might have carried less weight. To read the complete article, tap here.

CONTROVERSY

CONTROVERSY We will never know. But nobody made it clearer than Albert Einstein himself that they collaborated on special relativity when he wrote to Mileva on 27 March 1901: “How happy and proud I will be when the two of us together will have brought our work on relative motion to a victorious conclusion.”

MORE INFORMATION

Theory of relativity

PROBLEMS. The effect of relative motion on mass •The special theory of relativity predicts that an object’s mass will change as its speed increases.The relativistic massmrel of an object travelling at speedv is given by: where m is the rest mass of the objectand c is the speed of light (2.99792458 x 108 m s-1). 1.Use the formula to calculate the relativistic mass of a 100 kg person travelling at 1000 m s-1. 2.Calculate the relativistic mass of the person travelling at 50% of the speed of light. •The Australian synchrotron uses electric and magnetic fields to accelerate electrons around a circular track. As they travel around the track, their acceleration causes them to emit electromagnetic waves (light). This light is used in research programs to investigate the structure of matter. 3.Use the formula to calculate the relativistic mass of an electron travelling around the synchrotron at 99% of the speed of light. (Rest mass of an electron is 9.1093897 x 10-31 kg). 4.Why is more energy needed to accelerate an electron as its speed increases?

SCIENTIFIC WOMAN. Mileva MARIC-EINSTEIN 20th century Fields: Physics and maths. Born: 1875 in Titel (Serbia)Death: 1948 in Zurich (Swiss) Mileva was born on 19 December 1875 to a rich family in Title, Vojvodina. Following her secondary education in Novi Sad she enrolled at the Royal Classical High School which until then had been an all-male institution. She had to get special permission to study Physics which she went on to pass and achieve the highest grades of anyone. In November 1894 Maric moved to Zurich, Switzerland to study medicine initially and then switched to Eidgenossische Technische Hoschule (Zurich Polytechnic) where she enrolled on a diploma course to teach Physics and Mathematics. Not only was Mileva the only woman on this course, but she was also only the fifth woman ever to study at this prestigious academic institution.

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MILEVA MARIC

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