Mileva Marić: The Other Einstein
A short film written and directed by Alana Cash
A critical examination by Allen Esterson of contentions made in the film.
Amazon.com Synopsis:
Mileva Maric attended Swiss Polytechnic Institute where she met Albert Einstein and became his lover. Was the Theory of Relativity her doctoral thesis, as some believe? Einstein barely managed to pass his exams - receiving very poor marks in most subjects. Maric failed her exams when she found herself pregnant with Einstein's child. She left for home and did not receive her diploma. What happened to the child remains a mystery. What happened to Mileva Maric and her marriage to Einstein is tragic.
(i) The subject of Mileva Marić's diploma dissertation was heat conduction, and it was this that she was working on in the hope of developing it into a doctoral thesis before giving up that ambition a few months after failing her diploma examination for the second time in 1901.
(ii) It is not the case that Einstein barely managed to pass his exams. In the intermediate diploma examination he came first in their group of six students. (Marić's grade placed her fifth.) In the following two years he neglected his studies to read and work on extra-curricular material in more advanced physics. Nevertheless in none of the four topics examined for the final diploma examination did he achieve less than grade 5 (on a scale 1-6).
(iii) Marić was not pregnant when she failed the diploma examination in 1900. She was some three months pregnant when she retook the exam in 1901.
Some contentions made in the film:
1. Narrator: Einstein attended lectures of Hermann Minkowski on his development of four dimensional space-time and from this they [Einstein and Marić] began to formulate the basis of the special theory of relativity.
Einstein did not use Minkowski's four dimensional space-time concepts in his 1905 special relativity paper. As Cornelius Lanczos writes on Einstein's paper, "today these questions are handled in a totally different way, having at our disposal the four dimensional Minkowskian approach, which was not available in 1905". (The Einstein Decade, 1974, p. 136)
2. Narrator: Professor Wilhelm Fiedler intimidated Marić and gave her an unsatisfactory grade in projective geometry.
There is no evidence that Fiedler intimidated Marić. On the other hand, in a letter to Einstein in 1899 she wrote that the projective geometry material "was the hardest to master" when revising for her intermediate diploma exam.
3. Narrator: Einstein often skipped classes to work in the laboratory where Mileva would join him to work on their own experiments.
When Einstein skipped classes it was mostly in order to follow up his extra-curricular interests in theoretical physics. The above can only refer to the work they were individually doing in the laboratory for their respective diploma dissertations in the final year of their course. (They had both chosen heat conduction for their dissertation topic.)
4. Narrator on the final diploma exam: Although her grade point average was passing, inexplicably Marić was denied a diploma by the Board of Examiners.
It is certainly not "inexplicable" why Marić failed to pass the exam. In 1900 she achieved a final diploma exam grade average of 4.00 on a scale 1-6 (against Einstein's 4.91). Her grade in the mathematics component of the exam (theory of functions) was a very poor 2.5 (scale 1-6), which alone suffices to explain her failure to gain the diploma to teach mathematics and physics in secondary schools.
In a different story from the above, Senta Troemel-Ploetz has claimed that the passing grade was 5 (on a scale 1-6), that both Einstein and Marić failed the exam, and that Einstein alone was allowed to obtain a diploma. However, John Stachel has searched the regulations for the formerly-named Zurich Polytechnic (now the Swiss Federa l Technical University, ETH), and found no evidence that there was a pass grade of 5. [Stachel 2002, p. 32] (Incidentally, graduation also partly depended on end of semester grades on specific topics taken throughout the four-year course.)
5. Narrator: After passing the diploma exam, in 1901 Einstein continued to write letters to Marić enquiring about their baby and making reference to the theories that he and Marić were developing. Quote from Einstein letter: "I will be so happy when we are together again and can bring our work on relative motion to a successful conclusion."
There is no evidence that Marić played any role in the ideas being developed by Einstein which he was reporting to her at that time. For a discussion of the context of the highly selective quotation above (written four years before Einstein's decisive breakthrough that led directly to his writing the 1905 relativity paper) see John Stachel:
http://www.esterson.org/Stachel_Einsteins_letters.htm
As Stachel writes:
"In summary, the letters to Marić show Einstein referring to his studies, his ideas, his work on the electrodynamics of moving bodies over a dozen times (and we may add a couple more if we include his letter to Grossmann), as compared to one reference to our work on the problem of relative motion. In the one case where we have a letter of Marić in direct response to one of Einstein's, where it would have been most natural for her to respond to his ideas on the electrodynamics of moving bodies, we find the same response to ideas in physics that we find in all her letters: silence." (In fact I found two such letters, and in neither of them does Marić make any response to what Einstein has told her about his latest ideas.)
6. Narrator: While Einstein was at his desk at the patent office, Mileva immersed herself in reading scientific journals and conducting research. When Albert returned home they worked together until well after midnight. Shortly after the birth of Hans Albert in 1904 the couple completed three papers on Brownian motion, the photo-electric effect, and special relativity. […] In Vojvodina they finished the forth paper, the one containing the famous equation E = mc2.
There is no serious evidence for any of this. See
http://www.esterson.org/milevaMarić.htm
As John Stachel writes:
"In Marić's case, we have no published papers; no letters with a serious scientific content, either to Einstein nor to anyone else; nor any other objective evidence of her supposed creative talents. We do not even have hearsay accounts of conversations she had with anyone else that have a specific, scientific content, let alone a content claiming to report her ideas."
http://www.esterson.org/Stachel_Einsteins_letters.htm
The following are some passages from the fifteen or so letters Marić wrote to her closest friend Helene Kaufler Savić during the relevant years. (Not one of them mentions anything about her being involved with any work on advanced physics with Einstein.)
December 1900:
"Albert wrote a paper in physics that will probably soon be published in the Annalen der Physik. You can imagine how proud I am of my darling."
December 1901:
"Albert has written a magnificent study, which he has submitted as his [doctoral] dissertation… I have read this work with great joy and real admiration for my little darling, who has such a clever head."
March 1903:
"We have a nice little household, which I am taking care of quite alone, so you can imagine, at least in the beginning, until I got used to it, I did not have much leisure time… I am even closer to my sweetheart, if that is at all possible, than I was in our student days. He is my only company, and I am happiest when he is next to me, and I am often angry at the boring office that takes so much of his time…"
June 1904:
"If you are coming to Switzerland this year… I can show you my dear little sweetheart, who is also named Albert [Hans Albert]. I cannot tell you how much joy he gives me when he laughs so cheerfully on waking up or when he kicks his legs while I am taking a bath… His father is very proud of him…"
December 1906:
"My husband often spend his leisure time at home playing with the little boy, but to give him his due, I must note that it is not his only occupation aside from his official activities; the papers he has written are already mounting quite high."
The evidence purporting to support the above account in Alana Cash's film comes entirely from reports, mostly of words supposedly said by Einstein or Marić when they stayed with the Marić family at Novi Sad (Serbia) in late summer 1905, obtained from relatives, friends or acquaintances of the Marić family more than half a century after the event. Leaving aside the unreliability of such third hand (at best) reports obtained from interested parties full of patriotic pride in what they fondly believed were achievements of a local fellow Serb, if Marić had been so open with friends of her family about her collaboration with Einstein, why did she never so much as hint to her close friend Helene Savić that she had contributed in some way to his work?
7. Physicist N. L. Harshman: "The mathematics of special relativity is very easy, it's basically algebra in relationships that were created by Hendrik Lorentz ten years before, and the manipulation of the equations is very simple. It is the interpretation that is the difficult part."
The reports obtained by Marić's Serbian biographer Desanka Trbuhović-Gjurić in the 1960s, recycled by Senta Troemel-Ploetz in her much-cited 1990 article "Mileva Einstein-Marić: The Woman Who Did Einstein's Mathematics", repeatedly state that Marić did Einstein's mathematics for the 1905 special relativity paper. However, as many other physicists well as Harshman have pointed out, the level of the mathematics required would have posed no difficulties for Einstein, who had virtually reached that standard in differential and integral calculus by self-study at the age of fifteen. Assertions about the supposed help on mathematics given by Marić on the special relativity paper demonstrate the unreliability of these (and other) reports found in Trbuhović-Gjurić's biography and Troemel-Ploetz's 1990 article.
8. Narrator: All four papers were published in 1905. One of the assistant editors at Annalen der Physik recalls seeing Mileva's name as author on the original documents. Why she was not co-author on publication is not explained.
Here an already grossly erroneous story is given one more twist.. The claim to which the narrator refers is attributed to the Soviet physicist Abraham Joffe, who was not an editorial assistant at Annalen der Physik, did not write that he had seen the original manuscripts, and did not state that Marić's name as author was on them. For a refutation of the erroneous Joffe story recounted by Trbuhović-Gjurić see Stachel's meticulous examination of the claims:
http://www.esterson.org/Stachel_Joffe.htm
9. Narrator: As an Einstein biographer wrote: "Mileva was as good at mathematics as Grossman." (Grossman was one of five students in Einstein's and Marić's group studying for a mathematics and physics teaching diploma at Zurich Polytechnic in 1896-1900.)
The biography in question (by Peter Michelmore) is a popular work containing errors and occasional imaginative scenarios with invented dialogue that disqualify it as a reliable source of evidence. Michelmore's assertion that Marić was as good at mathematics as Grossman does not withstand examination. It is negated by a comparison of their respective grades at intermediate and final diploma examinations: Marić received lower grades than Grossman in every single mathematics topic that they both took for these exams. Moreover, whereas Marić failed her final diploma exam, almost certainly because of her very poor mathematics grade (2½ on scale 1-6), Grossman went on to become a professor of mathematics at Zurich Polytechnic (by then the Swiss Federal Technical University, ETH) at the early age of 29. He also assisted Einstein (himself very competent at traditional mathematics) in 1912-1915 on the application of highly abstruse mathematics to general relativity theory.
See http://www.esterson.org/Who_Did_Einsteins_Mathematics.htm
10. Narrator: "[Marić] never clamoured for the fame that was bestowed on her ex-husband. Given Mileva's natural shyness and her need to hide her first pregnancy, it is understandable that she never asserted her co-authorship with her husband."
There is a much more straightforward reason why Marić never asserted her co-authorship of Einstein's papers: she did not co-author any of them. As historian Robert Schulmann and historian of physics Gerald Holton have written, "All serious Einstein scholarship has shown that the scientific collaboration between the couple was slight and one-sided", as is demonstrated in the articles listed below that examine the claims of Trbuhović-Gjurić, Troemel-Ploetz, and others.
Bibliography
Trbuhović-Gjurić, D. (1993). Im Schatten Albert Einsteins: Das tragische Leben der Mileva Einstein-Marić. Bern: Paul Haupt. (The 1983 German language edition is an edited version of the book by Trbuhović-Gjurić originally published in Serbo-Croat in Yugoslavia in 1969. Edited and augmented second German edition: 1988. Third German edition: 1993.)
Trbuhović-Gjurić, D. (1991), Mileva Einstein: Une Vie (French translation of Im Schatten Albert Einsteins: Das tragische Leben der Mileva Einstein-Marić). Paris: Antoinette Fouque.
Troemel-Ploetz, S. (1990). "Mileva Einstein-Marić: The Woman Who Did Einstein's Mathematics." Women's Studies International Forum, Vol. 13, No. 5, 1990: 415-32.
Renn, J. and Schulmann, R. (eds.) (1992). Albert Einstein and Mileva Marić: The Love Letters. Trans. by S. Smith. Princeton University Press.
Popović, M. (2003). In Albert's Shadow The Life and Letters of Mileva Marić, Einstein’s First Wife. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Michelmore, P. (1963). Einstein: Profile of the Man. London: Frederick Muller.
Esterson, A. (2006a). Mileva Marić: Einstein's Wife:
http://www.esterson.org/milevamaric.htm
Esterson, A. (2006b). Who Did Einstein's Mathematics? A Response to Troemel-Ploetz:
http://www.esterson.org/Who_Did_Einsteins_Mathematics.htm
Martínez, A. A. (2005). Handling Evidence in History: The Case of Einstein's Wife. School Science Review, March 2005, 86 (316), pp. 49-56:
http://www.ase.org.uk/htm/members_area/journals/ssr/ssr_march_05pdf/eins_wife-pg49.pdf
Stachel, J. (2002). Einstein from ‘B' to ‘Z'. Boston/Basel/ Berlin: Birkhäuser.
Response to Senta Troemel-Ploetz and Evan Harris Walker, pp.31-38:
http://www.esterson.org/Stachel_Einsteins_letters.htm
Stachel, J. (ed.) (2005). Einstein's Miraculous Year: Five Papers That Changed the Face of Physics. Princeton University Press. Appendix to Stachel's "Introduction", on the Joffe story, pp. liv-lxxii: http://www.esterson.org/Stachel_Joffe.htm
Allen Esterson
allenesterson@compuserve.com
February 2010