The story of Mileva Maric: Did Einstein’s first wife contribute to his scientific work?

Authors

  • Allen Esterson Independent scholar (United Kingdom).

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.10.14142

Keywords:

history of science, physics, Mileva Maric, Albert Einstein

Abstract

It is currently widely believed that Einstein’s first wife, Mileva Maric, made significant contributions to his scientific work. Numerous publications since 1990 have variously contended that she co-authored his celebrated 1905 papers, did the mathematics for the special relativity paper, or even continued to collaborate with him up to the time of the birth of the couple’s second son in 1910. In this article the author cites the mostly widely disseminated claims and provides evidence that they do not withstand close examination. Citations are given for more detailed refutations of these claims. It is concluded that there is no good evidence that Mileva Maric was Einstein’s secret collaborator.

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Author Biography

Allen Esterson, Independent scholar (United Kingdom).

Independent scholar (United Kingdom). Formerly lecturer in Physics and Mathematics at Southward College, London (UK). He has published articles on Freud, Darwin, and Einstein in History of the Human Sciences , History of Psychology , History of Psychiatry , and SAGE Open. In 2019, he has published, with David C. Cassidy, Einstein’s wife: The real story of Mileva Einstein-Mari ?  (MIT Press).

References

Einstein, A. (1987). The collected papers of Albert Einstein. Vol. 1. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Esterson, A., & Cassidy, D. C. (2019). Einstein’s wife: The real story of Mileva Einstein-Marić.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Fölsing, A. (1997). Albert Einstein. New York: Viking Penguin.

Frank, P. (1947). Einstein: His life and times. London: Jonathan Cape.

Gabor, A. (1995). Einstein’s wife: Work and marriage in the life of five great twentieth-century women.New York: Viking Penguin.

Gagnon, P. (2016). Appendix B. In Who cares about particle physics? Making sense of the Higgs Boson, the Large Hadron Collider and CERN (pp. 234–246). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Krstić, D. (2004). Mileva & Albert Einstein: Their love and scientific collaboration.Kranjska, Slovenia: Didakta.

Michelmore, P. (1962). Einstein: Profile of the man.London: Frederick Muller Limited.

Milentijević, R. (2015). Mileva Marić Einstein: Life with Albert Einstein. New York: United World Press.

Popović, M. (Ed.). (2003). In Albert’s shadow: The life and letters of Mileva Marić, Einstein’s first wife. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Renn, J., & Schulmann, R. (1992). Albert Einstein/Mileva Marić: The love letters. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Stachel, J. (2002). Einstein from ‘B’ to ‘Z’. Boston: Birkhäuser.

Stachel, J. (2005). Introduction, Centenary Edition. In Einstein’s miraculous year: Five papers that changed the face of physics. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Trbuhović-Gjurić, D. (1988). Im Schatten Albert Einsteins: Das tragische Leben der Mileva Einstein-Marić. Bern: Paul Haupt. 

Troemel-Ploetz, S. (1990). Mileva Einstein-Marić: The woman who did Einstein’s mathematics. Women’s Studies International Forum, 13(5), 415–432. doi: 10.1016/0277-5395(90)90094-E

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Published

2020-01-03

How to Cite

Esterson, A. (2020). The story of Mileva Maric: Did Einstein’s first wife contribute to his scientific work?. Metode Science Studies Journal, (10), 6–12. https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.10.14142
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Issue

Shades of science (2020)

Section

Documentary texts

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