60 years ago today, Albert Einstein — the genius physicist behind the equation E=mc2 — died at Princeton Hospital in New Jersey.
And 60 years ago today, his brain started its extraordinary journey through a basement, a cider box and finally dissection, before coming to rest again (at least in part) at the hospital where it was first removed from his head.
Here’s the story of Einstein’s brain in 60 seconds…
1. Albert Einstein’s brain was taken from his body during an autopsy hours after his death, going against his and his family’s wishes.
2. His brain was taken by pathologist Thomas Harvey MD, who kept it in his basement and sometimes in a cider box under a beer cooler…
3. …And carved it into 240 blocks, which were then dissected further into 1,000 slides.
4. Harvey eventually received permission from Einstein’s family to analyse the brain for scientific research, and sent pieces of the brain to other scientists around the world.
5. While many scientists agree that Einstein’s brain is special, no one can agree why…
6. Brain theory one: Einstein had thicker connections between the left and the right side of his brain (in his corpus callosum) than the rest of us.
7. Brain theory two: the brain lacks a part called the Sylvian fissure*.
(*That bit that divides the frontal lobe — which controls decision-making, problem-solving, and emotion — from the temporal lobe — which regulates memory, language, and learning functions. But you knew that, right?)
8. Brain theory three: while Einstein’s brain weighs less, the inferior parietal region of his brain, which controls mathematical operations, is 15 per cent larger.
9. Scientists have also discovered that his brain appears to have degenerated less than expected for a 76-year-old.
10. Harvey eventually donated the remainder of Einstein’s brain to Princeton Hospital in New Jersey, where Einstein died.
11. There are only two places in the world where you can see parts of Einstein’s brain, one of which is the The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia.