In addition to listing mid-20th century state-of-the-art techniques (tissue blocks permitting sections perpendicular to the cortical surface, Nissl staining of neuronal and glial cell bodies, and Weigert staining of myelinated axons connecting the neurons), Harvey’s dog-eared and underlined copy of this book included a healthy dose of skepticism about previous cerebral “mapmakers… impossible to check have been accepted by physiologists as a divine authority and a vast superstructure has been built on this shaky foundation.” 2 Directing the dissection, Harvey relied on the neuroanatomical guidelines in Percival Bailey and Gerhardt von Bonin’s The Isocortex of Man.
The Berlin-trained Keller cut Einstein’s hemispheres into 240 blocks, which were embedded in celloidin. Then he carried the brain across the Delaware River to the University of Pennsylvania, where he enlisted the expertise of Marta Keller, the pathology technician of Fritz Lewy, Harvey’s deceased mentor and the discoverer of the specific neuropathological changes of Parkinson’s disease. He made exact measurements directly from the brain and took calibrated photographs with his Exakta 35mm camera. The 43-year-old Princeton pathologist rebuffed their overtures and began to prepare the brain for study. Webb Haymaker and other eminences grises of American neuropathology to relinquish the brain. While the brain was being preserved, Harvey was summoned to a conference at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, DC, and was sorely importuned by Dr.
Harvey was not alone in his ambition to investigate Einstein’s brain with scientific rigor.
The front page of the April 19, 1955, The New York Times announced “…the removal, for scientific study, of…the brain that worked out the theory of relativity and made possible the development of nuclear fission.” Einstein’s family questioned this decision, but Harvey persuaded them of the critical importance of further study. He filled the carotid arteries with a preservative solution and suspended the brain in the same chemical. Fulton, and Harry Zimmerman, saw a unique opportunity in studying Einstein’s brain. What became of the brain of the man hailed as the “embodiment of pure intellect” and “person of the century” by TIME magazine? Harvey, a Yale-trained pathologist who had worked with such neuroscientific luminaries as Harvey Cushing, John F. To this day no one knows where Albert Einstein’s ashes lie.
The viscera were returned to the body, which was cremated in Trenton.
#KNOWLEDGE BASE FIELD GENIUS FULL#
Thomas Harvey (with Einstein’s executor, Otto Nathan, in attendance) performed the autopsy, which revealed “an abdomen full of blood” from the fatal breach of Einstein’s aorta.1 The brain and other internal organs were removed for gross inspection. I will do it elegantly.” On April 18, following a few words in German and two last breaths, Einstein died at age 76. In the hospital he spoke with his son, Hans Albert, often declined morphine, called for writing materials, and announced, “It is time to go. Two days later he was moved from his house at 112 Mercer Street to Princeton Hospital. The death watch for Albert Einstein began with his collapse from a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm on April 13, 1955.
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