(ORDO NEWS) — On April 18, 1955, Albert Einstein died of an abdominal aortic aneurysm at the age of 76 at Princeton University Medical Center in Plainsboro, New Jersey.
According to his wish, the remains of the legendary physicist were cremated, and his ashes were scattered in an unknown place. Except for only one organ – his brain.
The legendary physicist’s brain was removed by Princeton Hospital pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey. He cut it into 240 blocks and kept most of the surviving fragments in his personal possession for over 40 years.
Today, 170 of the pieces have been returned to Princeton University Medical Center, where they are kept under lock and key.
Another 46 hair-thin sections of Einstein’s brain tissue are exhibited at the Mutter Museum of the History of Medicine in Philadelphia. But the rest just disappeared!
How did Einstein’s brain disappear?
Of course, such a valuable exhibit should have been carefully monitored. How is it that so many fragments just disappeared?
The answer lies in the judgment of Harvey, who believed that there was something physically exceptional in Einstein’s brain and that a proper scientific analysis of the brain could explain his genius.
After the brain was removed and cut into pieces in 1955, Harvey ordered some of the blocks to be cut into 12 more sets of 200 ultra-thin pieces of tissue, each no more than half the width of a human hair.
Without the permission of Einstein’s family, Harvey placed these brain sections on slides and distributed them to an unknown number of researchers who, he hoped, would be able to uncover the genius’s hidden brains.
Harvey personally took many of these samples around the US and parts of Canada, keeping the rest of Einstein’s brain in a jar hidden in a cardboard box in his car.
When his journey with the brain of a genius finally came to an end, the pathologist transferred the remaining blocks of the brain into several jars in his house.
Although he continued to share samples with interested researchers, Harvey retained most of Einstein’s brain until 1998. And only 43 years later, she returned the remains to Princeton University Medical Center.
Today, scientists are only allowed to look at the brain of a genius if they present a very convincing case to the Medical Center.
But could Harvey understand the secret of genius? You will be surprised, but in some way it was! Several studies have been published about the photographs and samples that Harvey distributed.
The work revealed subtle differences in Einstein’s brain structure compared to control groups of non-genius brains, including an extra groove in Einstein’s frontal lobe, the part of the brain associated with working memory and planning.
And also a large concentration of neurons in certain areas was noticed, which probably made it possible to speed up the processing of information.
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