MILEVA MARIĆ – OUR SCIENTIST AND HEROINE

Why didn't she talk about her great work with Albert for the rest of her life? Why was she silent about Albert's adultery? How did one great youthful love turn into a disaster? When did she realize her desire and ambition to pursue a career? What was her life like after the divorce?   About this and other little-known details from her life, we are told by Dr. Velimir Abramović, who tried to "peek" into the inner world of this talented heroine.

The life of this talented woman is still shrouded in mystery. Therefore, we asked our conversationalist:   

What is the biggest secret about Mileva Marić Einstein?

There are two big secrets about Mileva. The first – She practically discovered the Special Theory of Relativity (STR); the second – She and Albert  had an illegitimate daughter, Lizerl. But I think the biggest secret is her contribution to Albert's work. Mileva has never said anything publicly about her contribution. But there are many contemporaries who testify to this, including Avram Fedorovic Jofe, a Russian physicist and member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In October 1955, after Albert's death, he published an article dedicated to the memory of Albert in a leading Russian physical journal. In 1905, Albert's three papers were published in the Annals of Physics, which established the three basic principles on which 20th-century physics developed. In 1905. Jofe worked as an assistant to Rengen, who was then on the editorial board of the Annals of Physics, so he read the papers before they were published. Jofe writes that he then saw all three epochal works whose author was a certain   'Einstein-Maric'   , a hitherto unknown official at the Patent Office in Bern.

Another secret is their daughter Lizerl, who was born in 1902 as an illegitimate child. She is still in Vojvodina and her fate is a mystery.

What was their relationship like? What was Albert like towards Mileva as a young man in love, and later as a husband?

He was psychologically dependent on her because Albert was not really a scientific mind. He was artistic in nature and this can be seen in the way he writes and speaks. It's all very nice, with a lot of emotion written and said, but there is hardly a shred of rationality in some of his statements. From their letters, it is clear that there was a great love between them. They became spiritually connected. As the saying goes, "marriages are made in heaven." Then this spiritual connection turned into emotion and into practical living situation. Their separation was neither emotional nor spiritual, but moral. When he started a love affair with Elsa and when fame got to his head, Albert became very rude to Mileva. He would order her not to disturb him, to bring him tea, coffee, food at a certain time. He began to treat her like a servant. But Mileva didn't agree to that. The very next day, after the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy declared war on the Kingdom of Serbia, Mileva traveled to Zurich with her children, accompanied by a good friend. She was an unusually brave woman, and Albert was emotionally immature.

Einstein is said to have been a difficult and capricious man. While they were still married, he had an affair with another woman. After their divorce, it is not known to the public that Mileva had other love affairs.

They were 'one stone',   as Mileva often said about them. "One stone" (Ein Stein) is a translation of their surname from German into Serbian. They were married on Christmas Eve on January 6, 1903. Even after their separation and official divorce (1919), it is not known that Mileva had a man by her side. For example, I was in their apartment in Bern. It is a very modest, small space. It was located above the brewery. When Albert came home from work, he would stop by the brewery. He discussed many issues with his friends and colleagues. Afterwards, they all went up to the apartment to continue the discussion. Mileva also took part in the discussions and wrote them down eagerly. The special theory of relativity was developed for nine years – from 1896 to 1905. More than 2,000 pages of these conversations and records have disappeared. How? It's a mystery. It is most likely that Albert himself removed them, because what he said and what others said it was written down exactly. The entire scientific process and objections could be traced during the creation of this theory.

After all, when Mileva died in 1948. Albert's representatives soon came to Switzerland, searched the entire house, and who knows what they hid and destroyed? Interestingly, their son's first wife, Hans, arrived in Zurich before them to help prepare Mileva's apartment. While she was tidying things up, she also found a box of family correspondence that Mileva had kept, where their love letters were also kept. She took the box with her to America, and Hans kept it unopened until her father's death. But when Hans tried to publish this correspondence, Albert's "guardians of the estate" obtained a court injunction against it. This is just one of many examples of the efforts of the "guardians of Albert's reputation" to cover up the truth. The censorship was terrible! It took more than three decades of legal litigation to allow the public to see the truth about their life together and their scientific work.

Mileva and Albert had two children. Two sons – Hans and Edvard. However, from their love letters, the public learned that they had another child – a girl named Lizerl. That child mysteriously "disappeared".

No records of her remained. It is not known which family adopted their daughter, nor did anyone make any statements about her. Simply, she has "disappeared". I'm pretty sure she was called Lizerl.

His son, Edward, affectionately known as Tete, was mentally unstable and spent most of his life in sanatoriums.

Tete had a sad fate. He was ill, and when he was less than four years old, he developed severe otitis media (inflammatory disease of the middle ear). At that time, there were no antibiotics yet and it was not uncommon for such inflammation to spread to the brain. Tete had severe headaches, he was nervous and impatient. In high school, he loved literature, wrote poems and aphorisms. He played the piano very well.  He didn't like his father because he saw him only occasionally, and his fame weighed him down. He decided to become a medical doctor, with the desire to become a psychiatrist. Unfortunately, his illness (schizophrenia) prevented him from completing his studies. From the age of 22, with short interruptions when he lived with Mileva, he stayed in sanatoriums for the mentally ill. His life ended in a sanatorium in October 1965, at the age of 55.

In addition to Edvard, Mileva and Albert also had a son, Hans. Where did he live?

Hans left for America, from Europe,  in 1938. He was a civil engineer, and when his first wife passed away, he married a second time. He lived in South Carolina and then in California, where he was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Many times, he came from America to Switzerland to visit his mother and brother. He had a good relationship with his father until his death. Although it is known that they have been in a quarrel many times and that Mileva has always mediated for the father and son to reconcile.

Why has our country not yet come into contact with Mileva's descendants? Why hasn't the Marić family house in Novi Sad turn into a museum? A cycling tour could also be introduced on the route Kać – Titel, where Mileva and Albert rode together.

However, this initiative needs to be initiated by a scientific authority, to position the whole thing and to put it in the right place on the scale of scientific values and the history of science. It should be a serious piece of history. Of course, this should be addressed by the Academy of Sciences. You see, this is also politically neglected, because the state should clearly state what the scientific and moral virtues of Mileva Marić are. In 1896, when Mileva enrolled at the Polytechnic, she was among 20 women who studied natural sciences and mathematics at German and Swiss universities. This was a huge achievement in itself, when we know what the position of women was like at the end of the 19th century. Switzerland was one of the last European countries to give women the right to vote, in 1971.

It is important to know: when the certificates of passed exams during the studies at the Polytechnic were finally distributed, Albert's grade point average was 4.6 – and Mileva's 4.7. But, unfortunately, she did not pass the graduation exam, although she had previously passed all the exams. If she hadn't done anything else, it would have been a quite a feat.

What did Mileva do to support herself after the divorce? Why did Albert give her the money from the Nobel Peace Prize in the first place?

She took math and piano lessons. She rented out apartments. With the money that Albert "gifted" her from the Nobel Prize, she also bought three houses in Zurich that she rented. Occasionally, she received income from the rent of a house in Novi Sad and money from her account in "Srpska banka in Zagreb" sent to her by Gajin's godparents.

Albert "gave" her the entire amount of money he received from the Nobel Prize, a few years after their divorce, and this condition was found in the "Divorce Judgment" in which Mileva was the Plaintiff, against Professor Albert. The costs of the trial were carried by the defendant-Albert. This verdict is interesting because the court recorded the Defendant's testimony "that he has been having intimate relations with his cousin from Berlin for four and a half years." The court declared "the plaintiff's petition for divorce on the basis of adultery credible, without the need for further evidence."

The verdict is in Zurich, dated February 14, 1919, and is available to researchers today.

"In the event of a divorce and in the event of a Nobel Prize, Professor Einstein shall become the property of Mrs. Mileva Einstein and shall deposit such principal in a Swiss bank."

In 1922, Mileva received just over 170,000 Swiss francs in recognition of her scientific work.

This clearly shows that Mileva was aware of the stake she had in Albert's works, and later, when their idyllic collaboration ended, she exercised her right in the Divorce Settlement.

Why did he become so cold, even mean to Mileva? 

He was a man on an ego trip. He adored himself and his work. It wasn't hard for him to leave his family, with some trivial explanation. He considered himself a demigod. On one occasion he stated that he "wants to know God's plans!" This is an ironic theism.

Did Mileva have a rich social life even after the divorce?

After the divorce, Mileva often hosted music and literary evenings, and spent the last ten years of her life with a huge correspondence with her son Hans, who lived with his family in America, with her ex-husband Albert, with Helena Savić from Belgrade, as well as with the Gajin godparents.

What was Mileva like in private? Was she sociable? Who did you meet during her studies and later in her life?

On the outside, Mileva was determined. She was a good judge of people (and even Alberta) and was consistent in what she liked or disliked. She had a firm attitude and an inquisitive spirit. She had several friends from her youth, from her student days. They were lifelong friendships. Helena Kaufler (married Savić), Ružica Dražić and Milana Bota (married Stefanović). The book "Friendship, Letters of Mileva and Albert Einstein to Helena Savić" has been published. Mileva played the tambourine and piano, Helena played the piano, while the violin was Albert's instrument. She had Albert's company while they were working together. After the divorce, Albert's friends remained Mileva's close friends and her lifelong protectors.

What did Albert do scientifically after his divorce from Mileva?

Absolutely nothing significant. In the United States – literally nothing. He lived off the old glory and gave lectures at universities. He was very inspiring to the students, they loved him, he knew how to fantasize on the basis of physics and mathematics and make them think. He was an excellent professor. But, unfortunately, he was not a good father, nor was he a good husband. Not to Mileva, not to Elsa.

Did Albert have another genius in his family, such as Mileva's did in her brother Miloš Marić?

Oh, my goodness, no one was particularly impressive. In addition to Mileva, there was another genius in the Marić family – her younger brother Miloš. He was a respected histologist and university professor in Soviet Russia. He published numerous scientific articles and monographs, and many well-known histologists still say that his works have historical significance. Miloš laid the foundations in medicine called cloning. There is also information that he was part of the team that took part in the preparation of the embalming of the body of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. There were no such geniuses in Einstein’s family. Albert was an exception, something of an anomaly   .

THE END OF MILEVA'S SCIENTIFIC CAREER

After Albert and Mileva ended their relationship together in 1914, she devoted herself to her sons, took care of her livelihood and was no longer actively involved in physics. It is interesting that then Albert's creative power also faltered. He became more and more involved in the popularization of physics and the Zionist movement, enjoying the fame he had gained in his youthful days by collaborating with Mileva.