What Did Charles Darwin Read? See His Handwritten Reading List & Read Books from His Library Online

in Biology, History, Science | February 12th, 2014

darwin-diary-books-to-be-read

Click to enlarge

Today marks the 215th anniver­sary of pio­neer­ing Eng­lish nat­u­ral­ist Charles Dar­win’s birth — a suit­able occa­sion, per­haps, to final­ly take that copy of On the Ori­gin of Species down off your shelf (or from our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks). Though Dar­win’s best-known pub­li­ca­tion lays out his obser­va­tions on evo­lu­tion by nat­ur­al selec­tion, cul­mi­nat­ing in the the­o­ry often and unhesi­tat­ing­ly called the most impor­tant in biol­o­gy, the book remains more respect­ed than read. Still, any sci­en­tist’s lega­cy, even that of one with a name so wide­ly known as Dar­win’s, comes down to what they under­stood, and thus what they allowed the rest of human­i­ty to under­stand, not what they wrote. But you still have to won­der: what did Dar­win read?

We have two answers to that ques­tion, the first of which comes in the form of Dar­win’s 1838 “to read” list above, which runs as fol­lows:

Humboldt’s New Spain — — —
Richardson’s Fau­na Bore­alis
Ento­mo­log­i­cal Mag­a­zine — — —
Study Buf­fon on vari­eties of Domes­ti­cat­ed ani­mals — — — —
Find out from Sta­tis­ti­cal Soc. where M. Quetelet has pub­lished his laws about sex­es rel­a­tive to the age of mar­riage
Brown at end of Flinders & at the end of Con­go voy­age (Hook­er 923) read
Decan­dolle Philoso­phie
Decan­dolle on Geo­graph dis­trib: —
F. Cuvi­er on Instinct read
L. Jenyns paper in Annals of Nat. Hist.
Prichard; a 3d vol  Lawrence read
Bory St Vin­cent Vol 3. p 164 on unfixed form: Dr Royle on Him­malaya types (read)
Smellie Phi­los­o­phy of Zool­o­gy.
Flem­ing Dit­to
Fal­con­ers remark on the influ­ence of cli­mate

You can find more on the list’s con­text at End­pa­per, whose post describes it as found in Dar­win’s “series of note­books for the­o­ret­i­cal work now known as Note­books A, B, C, D, etc.,” specif­i­cal­ly Note­book C. (The famous Tree of Life sketch, they add, came from Note­book B.) For our sec­ond answer to the ques­tion of which books equipped the cel­e­brat­ed biol­o­gist’s mind, we offer the books that fur­nished his home: back in 2011, we fea­tured Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty’s Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library and its project to dig­i­tize and make freely avail­able 330 texts from Dar­win’s library. All come anno­tat­ed by the man him­self, so you can learn not just from what he read, but about how he read. The next, much more dif­fi­cult step, then presents itself: to think how he thought.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Dar­win, a 1993 Film by Peter Green­away

Read the Orig­i­nal Let­ters Where Charles Dar­win Worked Out His The­o­ry of Evo­lu­tion

The Genius of Charles Dar­win Revealed in Three-Part Series by Richard Dawkins

Darwin’s Per­son­al Library Goes Dig­i­tal: 330 Books Online

Darwin’s Lega­cy, a Stan­ford course in our col­lec­tion of 750 Free Online Cours­es

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Watch the Highly-Anticipated Evolution/Creationism Debate: Bill Nye the Science Guy v. Creationist Ken Ham

in Religion, Science | February 5th, 2014

Bill Nye the Sci­ence Guy has spent his career try­ing to “help fos­ter a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly lit­er­ate soci­ety, to help peo­ple every­where under­stand and appre­ci­ate the sci­ence that makes our world work.” A grad­u­ate of Cor­nell and a stu­dent of Carl Sagan, Nye has pro­duced edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams for the Sci­ence Chan­nel, the Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel, and PBS. Most recent­ly, he has gone on record say­ing that teach­ing cre­ation­ism in Amer­i­ca’s class­rooms is bad for kids, and bad for Amer­i­ca’s future. “If the Unit­ed States pro­duces a gen­er­a­tion of sci­ence stu­dents who don’t believe in sci­ence, that’s trou­ble­some” because the Unit­ed States needs sci­ence to remain com­pet­i­tive,” he warns in this video.

For some weeks, the inter­net has been abuzz about a debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham, the pres­i­dent of Answers in Gen­e­sis (AiG) and the Cre­ation Muse­um. The debate — some­thing Richard Dawkins called a point­less endeav­or — took place last night in Peters­burg, Ken­tucky.  It’s now online, all two and a half hours of it. We’re you’re done watch­ing the spec­ta­cle, you can view some oth­er high-pro­file reli­gion-sci­ence debates that we’ve fea­tured in the past.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bertrand Rus­sell and F.C. Cople­ston Debate the Exis­tence of God, 1948

Does God Exist? Christo­pher Hitchens Debates Chris­t­ian Philoso­pher William Lane Craig

Has Sci­ence Refut­ed Reli­gion? Sean Car­roll and Michael Sher­mer vs. Dinesh D’Souza and Ian Hutchin­son

Richard Dawkins and Jon Stew­art Debate Whether Sci­ence or Reli­gion Will Destroy Civ­i­liza­tion

Ani­mat­ed: Stephen Fry & Ann Wid­de­combe Debate the Catholic Church

Find the Stan­ford course Dar­win’s Lega­cy in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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New Carl Sagan Archive Features His Digitized Home Movies, Student Journalism, Draft of His Pale Blue Dot & More

in Archives, Astronomy, History, Science | February 3rd, 2014

Sev­er­al days ago, we brought you a rare Carl Sagan sketch, where the young sci­en­tist depict­ed an imag­ined his­to­ry of inter­stel­lar space flight. In that post, we made brief men­tion of the Seth Mac­Far­lane Col­lec­tion of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, which mer­its to be high­light­ed in its own right: its arrival means that the Inter­net now has access to a vast repos­i­to­ry of the emi­nent sci­ence educator’s orig­i­nal papers and per­son­al arti­facts.

His­to­ri­ans, biog­ra­phers, and die-hard Sagan devo­tees will inevitably want to vis­it the Library of Con­gress in per­son to view the full archive, which con­tains over 1700 box­es of mate­r­i­al. The lay read­er curi­ous about Sagan’s life, how­ev­er, won’t need to make the trek to the U.S. cap­i­tal to sam­ple the archive’s con­tents. That’s because the Library of Con­gress has uploaded a por­tion of the col­lec­tion online, includ­ing sundry fas­ci­nat­ing bio­graph­i­cal pieces. Above, you can view a dig­i­tized set of the Sagan fam­i­ly’s silent home movies, where young Carl shows off his boy­hood box­ing prowess, rides horse­back, and plays piano (pre­cious­ly, we pre­sume).

It was dur­ing high school that Sagan began to fill out intel­lec­tu­al­ly. His senior year­book is tes­ti­mo­ny to both his inter­est in sci­ence and the human­i­ties: not only was Sagan pres­i­dent of both the sci­ence and chem­istry clubs, he also led the French club, served as an edi­tor on his school’s news­pa­per, debat­ed, took part in the­atre pro­duc­tions, and was a mem­ber of the pho­tog­ra­phy club.

sagan archive

Indeed, Sagan dis­played his uncan­ny abil­i­ty to merge sci­ence with the human­i­ties in Wawawhack, his high school news­pa­per, writ­ing a piece enti­tled “Space, Time, and The Poet.” He begins by say­ing, “it is an exhil­a­rat­ing expe­ri­ence to read poet­ry and observe its cor­re­la­tion with mod­ern sci­ence. Pro­found sci­en­tif­ic thought is hard­ly a rar­i­ty among the poets.” Through­out the piece, Sagan goes on to draw from vers­es by Alfred Lord Ten­nyson, T. S. Eliot, John Mil­ton, and Robert Frost.

Mix­ing sci­ence and lit­er­a­ture would remain one of Sagan’s spe­cial­ties, and would even­tu­al­ly lead to his writ­ing The Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of Human Future In Space (1994). The book dis­cuss­es humankind’s place in the uni­verse, past, present, and future, and a PDF ver­sion of the anno­tat­ed sec­ond draft, pic­tured below, is avail­able in the archive.

sagan archive 3

For more of the dig­i­tized col­lec­tion, vis­it Seth Mac­Far­lane Col­lec­tion of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive.

via Boing Boing

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

Free Mini Course: Carl Sagan Presents Six Lec­tures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar Sys­tem … For Kids (1977)

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else

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Download 100,000+ Images From The History of Medicine, All Free Courtesy of The Wellcome Library

in Art, Biology, History, Science | January 21st, 2014

L0043496 Ambroise Pare: prosthetics, mechanical hand

The Well­come Library, in Lon­don, spe­cial­izes in the his­to­ry of med­i­cine. While the insti­tu­tion has long offered a good dig­i­tal col­lec­tion for brows­ing, the library announced yes­ter­day that they are mak­ing more than 100,000 his­tor­i­cal images free to down­load under a Cre­ative Com­mons CC-BY license. (Users can dis­trib­ute, edit, or remix at will; the license even allows for com­mer­cial use, with attri­bu­tion.)

The Wellcome’s hold­ings rep­re­sent the institution’s long-term inter­est in col­lect­ing art relat­ed to med­i­cine, the body, pub­lic health, and med­ical sci­ence. The drop-down menu labeled “Tech­nique” in the stan­dard search box returns a stag­ger­ing array of types of visu­al cul­ture, from aquatint to carv­ing to fres­co to X‑ray. The library reports that the ear­li­est image avail­able is from 400 AD: a frag­ment of papyrus from an illus­trat­ed herbal man­u­script, fea­tur­ing a fad­ed col­or draw­ing of a plant.

L0031627 Mastectomy, attributed to a Dutch artist, 17th century

Some images in the col­lec­tion are, per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, squirm-induc­ing (an 1851 Japan­ese wood­cut show­ing an ampu­ta­tion of the low­er leg; a Dutch etch­ing depict­ing a 17th-c mas­tec­to­my; a Ger­man illus­tra­tion show­ing 17th-cen­tu­ry monks per­form­ing eye surgery). But there is plen­ty of beau­ty here, as well. I loved an a 19th-c wood­cut of a sumo match, and a Tibetan illus­trat­ed man­u­script used in the pro­duc­tion of med­i­cines.

L0038345 Tibetan plant manuscript Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk https://wellcomeimages.org Illustrations of Tibetan materia medica, plant and animal, used in the production of medicine. Title: 'A Selection of Substances used for the Production of Medicine based on the Teaching of the four (medical) Tantras' This anonymous manuscript is written in the 'Trungpa' ('khrungs dpe) genre of Tibetan medical literature. Entitled, 'Sman bla'i dgongs rgyan rgud bzhi'i nang gi 'khrungs dpe re zhig', it deals with various material medica, plant and animal, used in the production of medicine. The book comprises unbound sheets of thick (perhaps Russian?) paper held together by two boards and wrapped in a piece of cloth. The medical illustrations are finished in colour. The manuscript is very rare and obviously very expensive. Its owner made a significant effort to obtain illustrations for every medicine mentioned, including plants, stones and animals. There are several suggestions about the origin of the manuscript. It might well be a copy from Sangye Gyatso's 'tankas', possibly written by a painter or doctor who travelled from Mongolia to Lhasa. It could have been transcribed in Tibet and subsequently sold to Mongolia. There is a similarity between the images of material medica in this manuscript and those found in the 19th century Tibetan xylographs of medical works, like the 'Mdzes mtshar mig rgyan', which circulated in the territory of Mongolia in the nineteenth century. 18th century Sman bla'i dgongs rgyan rgud bzhi'i nang gi 'khrungs dpe re zhig 'A Selection of Substances used for the Production of Medicine based on the Teaching of the four (medical) Tantras Published: - Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Browsers inter­est­ed in dip­ping a toe into the stream of images may try out the gal­leries list­ed on the Images home­page. The “Olympic Sports” gallery offers an 1829 engrav­ing of the famous con­joined twins Chang and Eng hold­ing bad­minton rack­ets, and an 1870 illus­tra­tion of rec­om­mend­ed ring exer­cis­es for lady gym­nasts. The “Witch­craft” col­lec­tion (under the “Favourites” tab) con­tains many illus­tra­tions from his­tor­i­cal books cov­er­ing witch­craft in Europe and the Amer­i­can colonies, along with a more sur­pris­ing 19th-cen­tu­ry Malayan black-mag­ic charm.

Rights-man­aged images are marked as such in the thumb­nail results that appear after a search. Although the archive requires you to enter a CAPTCHA to access the free images, you can select sev­er­al thumb­nails on the search-results page in order to bulk-down­load files for many images at the same time. The sam­ple files I request­ed arrived on my desk­top at 300 dpi.

The image above is an illus­tra­tion of a mechan­i­cal hand from 1564.

h/t @kirstinbutler

Rebec­ca Onion is a writer and aca­d­e­m­ic liv­ing in Philadel­phia. She runs Slate.com’s his­to­ry blog, The Vault. Fol­low her on Twit­ter: @rebeccaonion. 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

The Get­ty Puts 4600 Art Images Into the Pub­lic Domain (and There’s More to Come)

The Nation­al Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Art­work Freely Avail­able Online

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176 Big Thinkers Answer the Question: What Scientific Idea is Ready to Be Dead and Buried?

in Science | January 19th, 2014

bigquestion21-It’s a new year, which means it’s time for the Edge.org to pose its annu­al ques­tion to some of the world’s finest minds. The 2014 edi­tion asks the ques­tion, “What Sci­en­tif­ic Idea is Ready for Retire­ment?” The ques­tion came pref­aced by this thought:

Sci­ence advances by dis­cov­er­ing new things and devel­op­ing new ideas. Few tru­ly new ideas are devel­oped with­out aban­don­ing old ones first. As the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Max Planck (1858–1947) not­ed, “A new sci­en­tif­ic truth does not tri­umph by con­vinc­ing its oppo­nents and mak­ing them see the light, but rather because its oppo­nents even­tu­al­ly die, and a new gen­er­a­tion grows up that is famil­iar with it.” In oth­er words, sci­ence advances by a series of funer­als. Why wait that long?

So what estab­lished sci­en­tif­ic idea is ready to be moved aside so that sci­ence can advance? The replies — 176 in total — fea­ture thoughts by Steven Pinker, Kevin Kel­ly, Sher­ry Turkle, Robert Sapol­sky, and Daniel Den­nett, among oth­ers. If you’re will­ing to ven­ture down the rab­bit hole, you can access the com­plete col­lec­tion of respons­es here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steven Pinker Explains the Neu­ro­science of Swear­ing (NSFW)

Philoso­pher Daniel Den­nett Presents Sev­en Tools For Crit­i­cal Think­ing

New Ani­ma­tion Explains Sher­ry Turkle’s The­o­ries on Why Social Media Makes Us Lone­ly

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Watch Morgan Spurlock’s Documentary on the 15-Year-Old Who Invented a New Way to Detect Early Stage Pancreatic Cancer

in Biology, Science | January 13th, 2014

If you believe, as Whit­ney Hous­ton once did, that chil­dren are our future, you’ll be grat­i­fied by the work of Jack Andra­ka, age 15.

Describ­ing him as a kid with a pas­sion for sci­ence is an under­state­ment on par with call­ing Mr. Peabody a car­toon dog.

Not that I’ve got a crys­tal ball or any­thing, but let’s just say if you or your loved one come down with pan­cre­at­ic can­cer a decade from now, you’ll be very glad this young man—the 2012 grand prize win­ner of the Intel Inter­na­tion­al Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing Fair, as well as the Smith­son­ian Amer­i­can Inge­nu­ity Award—did­n’t squan­der his fresh­man year’s extracur­ric­u­lar hours on sports and glee club.

Instead, he became the “can­cer paper boy.” His men­tor, Johns Hop­kins pathol­o­gist and researcher, Anir­ban Maitra floats com­par­isons to Edi­son. As Mor­gan Spur­lock points out in his show doc­u­men­tary on Andra­ka — You Don’t Know Jack (above) — many of Ein­stein’s dis­cov­er­ies were made before he stuck his tongue out beneath that white mane.

Spurred on in part by the death of a fam­i­ly friend, Jack, then 14, devel­oped an inex­pen­sive pro­ce­dure that can diag­nose the pres­ence of the noto­ri­ous­ly stealthy can­cer of the pan­creas while treat­ment is still an option. Through tri­al and error, he devel­oped an absorbent fil­ter paper dip­stick that helps mea­sure the elec­tri­cal sig­nal of a nan­otube net­work laced with anti­bod­ies spe­cif­ic to the pro­tein mesothe­lin, after a sixth of a drop of blood has been intro­duced.

As a the­ater major, I fear I may not be sum­ma­riz­ing the sci­ence with suf­fi­cient accu­ra­cy. The Smith­son­ian pub­lished an arti­cle describ­ing Jack­’s process in detail.  While I don’t know much about pan­cre­at­ic func­tion, can­cer­ous or oth­er­wise, I do know enough to have deep respect for Jack­’s sup­port­ive par­ents, and Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty, the only insti­tu­tion (of 200 con­tact­ed) to respond in the affir­ma­tive when the then-14-year ‑old got in touch, seek­ing lab space. (Host­ing the Cen­ter for Tal­ent­ed Youth may have primed them for such queries.) If this sci­ence thing does­n’t work out, Jack could total­ly make a go of it as a pub­li­cist. He’s got the tenac­i­ty.

Again, it’ll take anoth­er ten years or so before the fruits of Jack­’s labors can be part of main­stream med­ical prac­tice, but it does give one hope for the future. Some paper boy!

This lit­tle Spur­lock film will be added to the Doc­u­men­tary sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Micro­scop­ic Bat­tle­field: Watch as a Killer T Cell Attacks a Can­cer Cell

Can­cer Patients’ Extreme Makeovers Let Them To For­get Their Ill­ness ‘If Only For A Sec­ond’

Come­di­an Tig Notaro’s “Tru­ly Great” Can­cer Stand-up Set Now Avail­able on Louis C.K.’s Web­site

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author and  Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky, an award-win­ning, hand­writ­ten zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Benjamin Bratton Explains “What’s Wrong with TED Talks?” and Why They’re a “Recipe for Civilizational Disaster”

in Science, TED Talks | January 7th, 2014

TED Talks — they give your “dis­cov­ery-seek­ing brain a lit­tle hit of dopamine;” make you “feel part of a curi­ous, engaged, enlight­ened, and tech-savvy tribe;” almost giv­ing you the sen­sa­tion that you’re attend­ing a “new Har­vard.” That was the hype around TED Talks a few years ago. Since then, the buzz around TED has mer­ci­ful­ly died down, and the orga­ni­za­tion has gone on, stag­ing its con­fer­ences around the globe. It’s been a while since we’ve fea­tured a TED Talk whose ideas seem worth spread­ing. But today we have one for you. Intrigu­ing­ly, it’s called “What’s Wrong with TED Talks?” It was pre­sent­ed by Ben­jamin Brat­ton, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Visu­al Arts at UCSD, at none oth­er than TEDxSanDiego 2013. Brat­ton makes his case (above) in 11 min­utes — well with­in the 18 allot­ted min­utes — by argu­ing that TED does­n’t just help pop­u­lar­ize ideas. Instead, it changes and cheap­ens the agen­da for sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy and tech­nol­o­gy in Amer­i­ca. He begins to frame the prob­lem by telling a sto­ry:

I was at a pre­sen­ta­tion that a friend, an astro­physi­cist, gave to a poten­tial donor. I thought the pre­sen­ta­tion was lucid and com­pelling.… After the talk the spon­sor said to him, “you know what, I’m gonna pass because I just don’t feel inspired …you should be more like Mal­colm Glad­well.”

Think about it: an actu­al sci­en­tist who pro­duces actu­al knowl­edge should be more like a jour­nal­ist who recy­cles fake insights! This is beyond pop­u­lar­iza­tion. This is tak­ing some­thing with val­ue and sub­stance and cor­ing it out so that it can be swal­lowed with­out chew­ing. This is not the solu­tion to our most fright­en­ing prob­lems – rather this is one of our most fright­en­ing prob­lems.

Brat­ton then con­cludes, “astro­physics run on the mod­el of Amer­i­can Idol is a recipe for civ­i­liza­tion­al dis­as­ter.” If “our best and bright­est waste their time – and the audi­ence’s time – danc­ing like infomer­cial hosts,” the cost will be too high, and our most dif­fi­cult prob­lems won’t get solved.

In watch­ing Brat­ton’s talk, I found myself agree­ing with many things. Sure, TED Talks are often “a com­bi­na­tion of epiphany and per­son­al tes­ti­mo­ny … through which the speak­er shares a per­son­al jour­ney of insight and real­iza­tion, its tri­umphs and tribu­la­tions.” Yes, the talks offer view­ers a pre­dictably “vic­ar­i­ous insight, a fleet­ing moment of won­der, an inkling that maybe it’s all going to work out after all.” Maybe TED Talks some­times pro­vide noth­ing more than “mid­dle­brow megachurch info­tain­ment.” But is TED real­ly chang­ing the agen­da for sci­en­tists, tech­nol­o­gists and philoso­phers? Are schol­ars actu­al­ly choos­ing their intel­lec­tu­al projects based on any­thing hav­ing to do with TED (or TED-inspired ways of think­ing)? Is some­one at the NIH dol­ing out mon­ey based on whether a project will even­tu­al­ly yield 15 good min­utes of diver­sion and enter­tain­ment? Short of empir­i­cal evi­dence that actu­al­ly applies to TED (the anec­dote above does­n’t), it feels like Brat­ton is giv­ing TED way too much cred­it. Maybe TED mat­ters on YouTube. But let’s get real, its pull large­ly starts and ends there. You can read a com­plete tran­script of Brat­ton’s talk here.

via The Guardian

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Albert Einstein Imposes on His First Wife a Cruel List of Marital Demands

in Letters, Physics, Science | December 30th, 2013

Albert Ein­stein pas­sion­ate­ly wooed his first wife Mil­e­va Mar­ic, against his family’s wish­es, and the two had a tur­bu­lent but intel­lec­tu­al­ly rich rela­tion­ship that they record­ed for pos­ter­i­ty in their let­ters. Ein­stein and Maric’s love let­ters have inspired the short film above, My Lit­tle Witch (in Ser­bian, I believe, with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles) and sev­er­al crit­i­cal re-eval­u­a­tions of Einstein’s life and Mar­ic’s influ­ence on his ear­ly thought. Some his­to­ri­ans have even sug­gest­ed that Maric—who was also trained in physics—made con­tri­bu­tions to Einstein’s ear­ly work, a claim hot­ly dis­put­ed and, it seems, poor­ly sub­stan­ti­at­ed.

The letters—written between 1897 and 1903 and only dis­cov­ered in 1987—reveal a wealth of pre­vi­ous­ly unknown detail about Mar­ic and the mar­riage. While the con­tro­ver­sy over Mar­ic’s influ­ence on Ein­stein’s the­o­ries raged among aca­d­e­mics and view­ers of PBS’s con­tro­ver­sial doc­u­men­tary, Einstein’s Wife, a scan­dalous per­son­al item in the let­ters got much bet­ter press. As Ein­stein and Mileva’s rela­tion­ship dete­ri­o­rat­ed, and they attempt­ed to scotch tape it togeth­er for the sake of their chil­dren, the avun­cu­lar paci­fist wrote a chill­ing list of “con­di­tions,” in out­line form, that his wife must accept upon his return. Lists of Note tran­scribes them from Wal­ter Isaacson’s biog­ra­phy Ein­stein: His Life and Uni­verse:

CONDITIONS

A. You will make sure:

1. that my clothes and laun­dry are kept in good order;
2. that I will receive my three meals reg­u­lar­ly in my room;
3. that my bed­room and study are kept neat, and espe­cial­ly that my desk is left for my use only.

B. You will renounce all per­son­al rela­tions with me inso­far as they are not com­plete­ly nec­es­sary for social rea­sons. Specif­i­cal­ly, You will forego:

1. my sit­ting at home with you;
2. my going out or trav­el­ling with you.

C. You will obey the fol­low­ing points in your rela­tions with me:

1. you will not expect any inti­ma­cy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;
2. you will stop talk­ing to me if I request it;
3. you will leave my bed­room or study imme­di­ate­ly with­out protest if I request it.

D. You will under­take not to belit­tle me in front of our chil­dren, either through words or behav­ior.

While it may be unfair to judge anyone’s total char­ac­ter by its most glar­ing defects, there’s no way to read this with­out shud­der­ing. Although Ein­stein tried to pre­serve the mar­riage, once they sep­a­rat­ed for good, he did not lament Mil­e­va’s loss for long. Man­jit Kumar tells us in Quan­tum: Ein­stein Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Real­i­ty that although “Mil­e­va agreed to his demands and Ein­stein returned”

[I]t could not last. At the end of July, after just three months in Berlin, Mil­e­va and the boys went back to Zurich. As he stood on the plat­form wav­ing good­bye, Ein­stein wept, if not for Mil­e­va and the mem­o­ries of what had been, then for his two depart­ing sons. But with­in a mat­ter of weeks he was hap­pi­ly enjoy­ing liv­ing alone “in my large apart­ment in undi­min­ished tran­quil­i­ty.”

Ein­stein prized his soli­tude great­ly. Anoth­er remark shows his dif­fi­cul­ty with per­son­al rela­tion­ships. While he even­tu­al­ly fell in love with his cousin Elsa and final­ly divorced Mav­ic to mar­ry her in 1919, that mar­riage too was trou­bled. Elsa died in 1936 soon after the cou­ple moved to the U.S. Not long after her death, Ein­stein would write, “I have got­ten used extreme­ly well to life here. I live like a bear in my den…. This bear­ish­ness has been fur­ther enhanced by the death of my woman com­rade, who was bet­ter with oth­er peo­ple than I am.”

Einstein’s per­son­al fail­ings might pass by with­out much com­ment if had not, like his hero Gand­hi, been ele­vat­ed to the sta­tus of a “sec­u­lar saint.” Yet, it is also the per­son­al incon­sis­ten­cies, the weak­ness­es and pet­ty, even incred­i­bly cal­lous moments, that make so many famous fig­ures’ lives com­pelling, if also con­fus­ing. As Ein­stein schol­ar John Stachel says, “Too much of an idol was made of Ein­stein. He’s not an idol—he’s a human, and that’s much more inter­est­ing.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten as Albert Ein­stein Reads ‘The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence’ (1941)

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

Ein­stein Doc­u­men­tary Offers A Reveal­ing Por­trait of the Great 20th Cen­tu­ry Sci­en­tist

Albert Ein­stein Express­es His Admi­ra­tion for Mahat­ma Gand­hi, in Let­ter and Audio

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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