Mileva Marić-Einstein

Mileva Marić-Einstein (born December 19, 1875, Titel, Bács-Bodrog county, Kingdom of Hungary [now in Vojvodina, Serbia]—died August 4, 1948, Zürich, Switzerland) was widely regarded as a talented mathematician and physicist. She was the first wife of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein. The question of whether she made significant contributions to Einstein’s work has been a subject of much debate, ultimately complicating her legacy.

Early aptitude

Marić was born into an affluent Serbian family, the eldest of three children. From birth she struggled with a hip defect, which caused a limp that persisted throughout her life. From a young age, Marić excelled in her courses, particularly in science, even during a time in which women faced significant hurdles in pursuing advanced education. With her father’s help, Marić was allowed to attend physics lectures for male students, and she graduated from high school in Zürich in 1894.

Marić continued her education in physics, as well as mathematics, at the Federal Polytechnic School in Zürich (now ETH Zürich). She was only the fifth woman admitted to the school. There she met 17-year-old Albert Einstein, who was studying in the same program. A collection of 54 letters preserved from this time, published by Princeton University Press in 1994, show the pair’s budding friendship, which soon blossomed into romance. In an October 1899 letter, Einstein wrote,

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.

Marriage to Albert Einstein

At the end of their courses, in 1900, the pair had similar grades; indeed, Marić had outperformed Einstein in applied physics. Still, after receiving a failing grade in her oral examination, Marić did not earn a degree. Some biographical sources have gone so far as to speculate that a male professor may have intentionally blocked her from obtaining it. Einstein, though, passed and went on to receive his diploma.

The couple’s difficulties were compounded by the strong objections of Einstein’s parents to the relationship. They believed that Marić was too intellectual and, because she was three years older than Einstein, would be “an old hag” by the time he reached 30—sentiments Einstein relayed to Marić in a letter. Marić corresponded with her close friend Helene Kaufler-Savić about this and other matters throughout her relationship with Einstein. Her letters to her friend were later published by Kaufler-Savić’s grandson in the book In Albert’s Shadow: The Life and Letters of Mileva Marić, Einstein’s First Wife (2003), providing historians insight into the rise and fall of Marić and Einstein’s relationship, regarding both their romance and their scientific collaboration.

As chronicled in one of those letters, Marić and Einstein submitted a paper on capillarity in late 1900, though the paper was published under only his name. In their letters to one another and in Marić’s letters to Kaufler-Savić, they referred to the piece as “our article.” This evidence, combined with historical context, has led historians to believe that the sole attribution to Einstein may have been a means to safeguard the research against bias toward women in science, which was common at the time. Another letter from Einstein to Marić used “our” to describe work on special relativity, or “relative motion,” as he wrote in 1901. However, in her responses, Marić offered encouragement and referred repeatedly to the research as Einstein’s. This has led some historians to argue that Einstein used “our” not to denote Marić’s direct collaboration in the research but rather to convey affection and have the couple viewed as a team.

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Despite having not yet married, the pair had their first child, a daughter named Lieserl, in 1902. What happened to her is unknown, as no birth or death certificate has been found. Some sources suggest that she may have died of scarlet fever or been given up for adoption. Her existence was not widely known until the late 1980s, when a series of letters between Einstein and Marić was discovered. The couple married in 1903. At this time, he was working at the Swiss patent office in Bern while she focused largely on domestic tasks.

Einstein continued to concentrate on science, and in 1904 the pair had another child, Hans Albert. Then came Einstein’s “breakout year,” 1905, when he published a series of revolutionary papers on relativity, quantum theory, and atomic theory.

Divorce and later life

As his profile rose in the wake of the 1905 papers, Einstein increasingly devoted himself to his work. The strain this put on the couple’s marriage was evidenced in a 1909 letter Marić-Einstein wrote to Kaufler-Savić: “With all this fame, he has little time for his wife.”

Swept up in the flurry of success, Einstein earned an academic position in Zürich, where he and Marić-Einstein had a third child, Eduard, in 1910. The pair continued to express affection for each other in correspondence, as shown by the pet names they used in letters through 1911. However, it is believed that in 1912 Einstein started an affair with his first cousin Elsa Löwenthal, who would become his second wife. After separating in 1914, Marić-Einstein and Einstein divorced in 1919, and later that year he married Löwenthal.

The divorce agreement contained a pivotal and prescient clause: If Einstein were ever to receive the Nobel Prize, Marić would get the prize money. And in 1922, for his research the year prior, he did receive the prize. With the money, which amounted to 121,572 Swedish kronor (about $32,000), Marić bought two small apartment buildings in Zürich, where she lived.

Marić made money by running a boardinghouse and giving private lessons while also receiving alimony from Einstein, though there is evidence that his payments may have been irregular. Their communication after the divorce was often bitter, and Marić struggled with being a single parent to their sons. Along with her mixed success as a landlord, there were significant medical expenses associated with the mental health and eventual schizophrenia diagnosis of Eduard Einstein, who was later institutionalized. This led Marić to struggle continually with finances, and eventually she lost the apartment buildings. After the divorce Einstein’s relationship with his sons was at times difficult. Hans Albert Einstein, who moved to the United States in 1938, once said of his father, “Probably the only project he ever gave up on was me.”

Death and a disputed legacy

Marić died in 1948. The release of her letters to Kaufler-Savić and her correspondence with Einstein, along with numerous books, have brought increased attention to her life—as well as her contributions to Einstein’s research in physics.

A 1969 biography titled In the Shadow of Albert Einstein: The Tragic Life of Mileva Einstein-Marić, originally published in Serbian and written by Desanka Trbuhović-Gjurić, asserted that Marić was a coauthor of many of Einstein’s major papers, including those of 1905. The biography spurred a narrative that Marić had been an equal, if silent, partner. The divorce settlement built on that narrative. However, numerous Einstein scholars have rejected a great many of the claims made in the biography. Physics historian Alberto Martínez wrote, “I want her to be the secret collaborator. But we should set aside our speculative preferences and instead look at the evidence.”

The exact role that Marić played in Einstein’s work may never be known. Was she a muse and a sounding board, or did she correct his calculations? What does seem clear is that Marić was a woman of great intellect and savvy, whose ability to showcase her talents was limited by the norms of the time in which she lived.