Mileva Marić

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Mileva Marić, 1896

Mileva Marić ( Cyrillic  Милева Марић ; occasionally, especially on official documents, also in the Hungarian spelling Mileva Marity; *  December 19, 1875 in Titel , Kingdom of Hungary , Austria-Hungary , today Vojvodina , Serbia ; †  August 4, 1948 in Zurich , Switzerland ) was a Serbian physicist . Marić was the first Serbian and one of the first women to study mathematics and physics. She was Albert Einstein's fellow student at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich and his first wife.

Life

Marić came from a wealthy Serbian family from Vojvodina , which at that time belonged to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. She was strongly encouraged in her education by her father, who had recognized her intellectual abilities, and first attended the Serbian Girls' School in Novi Sad , then the Realschule and the Royal Serbian Gymnasium in Šabac . When her family moved to Zagreb , she switched to the grammar school there. Later, she continued her studies in Switzerland at the Higher School for Girls of Zurich continued and finally put in Bern the maturity from.

She enrolled at the University of Zurich to study medicine , but after one semester switched to the Eidgenössische Polytechnikum , the later Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH), where in 1896 she was the only woman in her class to study mathematics and physics . enrolled and attended the same lectures as Albert Einstein, with whom she soon became close friends. In the winter semester of 1897/98 she studied at the University of Heidelberg and returned to the Polytechnic in April 1898. In 1899 she passed the first exam, while she failed the diploma exam the following year. In 1901 she became pregnant by Einstein. She repeated the diploma examination, three months pregnant, but failed the second time.

Mileva Einstein-Marić's house at Huttenstrasse 62 in Zurich

In 1902, Marić and Einstein's illegitimate daughter, called Lieserl , was born in Vojvodina, where Marić's family lived. Nothing is known about the fate of the child; it either fell ill and died in 1903 or was put up for adoption.

In 1903 Marić and Einstein married against Einstein's mother in Bern, and in 1904 she gave birth to their son Hans Albert . Between 1905 and 1912 Marić followed Einstein to Zurich, Prague and back to Zurich, where she gave birth to her second son Eduard in 1910.

From 1912 Einstein had a secret correspondence with his later second wife Elsa . In 1914, Einstein and Marić separated and moved back to Zurich with their sons from Berlin, where they had lived with Einstein for a few months. From Berlin Einstein tried in 1915 and again in 1918 to persuade Mileva to divorce, among other things with the promise that he would give her the prize money if he received the Nobel Prize. The marriage was divorced on February 14, 1919 because of "natural intolerance" at the Zurich District Court .

Marić and her sons subsequently lived in modest circumstances. When Einstein received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922 for “services in the field of theoretical physics”, which she was awarded in 1921, she received the prize money according to the divorce agreement with which she acquired a property at Huttenstrasse 62 in the Oberstrass district in Zurich . The treatment of her son Eduard, who had schizophrenia, devoured a large part of the sum. Marić looked after her son Eduard until she died alone in a private clinic in Zurich in 1948. She was buried in the so-called Yugoslav grave , a common grave of exiled Yugoslavs in the Nordheim cemetery in Zurich. The Serbian Diaspora Ministry later had a memorial stone with a portrait placed on the spot.

Scientific work

Albert and Mileva Einstein, 1912
In the middle, so-called Einsteinhaus at Kramgasse 49 in Bern, Albert and Mileva Einstein lived on the 2nd floor from 1903 to 1905

As far as is known today, Marić did not leave any scientific work of his own. Since the publication of the first volume of the "Collected Papers of Albert Einstein" in 1987 and the correspondence between her and Einstein from 1897 to 1903, published in 1992, there has been occasional speculation about the extent of her contribution to Einstein's work, especially those of the miracle year 1905. According to which she must be regarded as a co-author or even as the actual author of Einstein's early writings, were put forward by Senta Trömel-Plötz and the physicist Evan Harris Walker , among others . Both are based in part on the Marić biography of Desanka Trbuhović-Gjurić. Further criticism of the alleged insufficient consideration of the qualifications and achievements of Marić in earlier biographies was also expressed, in particular from the feminist side. The proponents of the thesis that Marić contributed substantially to Einstein's work are essentially based on the Russian physicist Abram F. Joffe , who wrote in 1955 that the name of the author of the three famous original manuscripts from 1905 that have disappeared was "Einstein-Marity". Joffe, who was Conrad Röntgen's assistant in 1905 , who in turn had to review the essays submitted to the Annalen der Physik, said that it was customary in Switzerland for married men to use the maiden name of their wives - Marity was the name that Marić used Documents led - add to your name, but this is not the case. There is also evidence that Marić continued to work closely with Einstein after 1905; For example, seven pages of Einstein's handwritten lecture notes on analytical mechanics from 1910 are in Marić's handwriting. Often reference is also made to the correspondence between Einstein and Marić, in which Einstein repeatedly speaks of “our work” , as well as the fact that Einstein donated the prize money for the Nobel Prize to his divorced wife in Zurich.

These and other interpretations and claims have been contradicted by physicists and science historians such as John Stachel , Abraham Pais , Gerald Holton , Armin Hermann and Alberto A. Martinez. In their opinion, the available sources do not allow the conclusion that Marić played a significant part in Einstein's work. In her eyes, she only fulfilled the function of a “soundboard” for Einstein's ideas by supporting him through critical listening and competent questioning of his statements, similar to his friend Michele Besso .

Honors

Grave in Zurich
Bust in Novi Sad

In 2005, Mileva Marić in Zurich was honored by the ETH and the Gesellschaft zu Fraumünster as a “co-developer of the theory of relativity”, and a plaque was put up at Huttenstrasse 62, her residence in Zurich, to commemorate her. 60 years after her death, a memorial plaque was also placed on the house of the former Eos clinic at Carmenstrasse 18 in Zurich, where Marić died, and in June 2009 another followed in the Nordheim cemetery, Marić's final resting place.

Memorial plaque Huttenstrasse 62:

"MILEVA EINSTEIN-MARIC

1875 - 1948 student of physics at the Polykum (later ETH) in Zurich, co-developer of the theory of relativity, wife of Albert Einstein, mother of his three children

Mileva Maric was born in Serbian and studied physics and mathematics at the Polykum with Albert Einstein. After the birth of their daughter, she married Albert Einstein in 1903. In March 1901 he wrote to her: "How happy and proud I will be when we both have successfully completed our work on the relative movement!" Mileva Einstein, divorced since 1919, was able to buy this house with Einstein's Nobel Prize money. In 1948 she died quietly in Zurich.

Honored by the Society of Fraumünster Zurich 2005 "

Busts of Marić can be seen in Novi Sad and other villages in Vojvodina, and a school was named after her in her native town. Her life was also processed literarily, for example in the novel Mileva Marić Ajnštajn by Dragana Bukumirović from 1995, in the drama Mileva Ajnštajn by Vida Ognjenović from 1998, as well as in the novels Mileva Einstein or The Theory of Loneliness by Slavenka Drakulić , Berlin 2018, and The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict from 2016.

literature

  • Abraham Pais : Einstein Lived Here . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1994, ISBN 0-19-853994-0 (English)
  • Albrecht Fölsing : No “mother of the theory of relativity” . In: Die Zeit , No. 47/1990
  • Allen Esterson: Einstein's wife - the real story of Mileva Einstein-Maric , Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2019, ISBN 978-0-262-03961-1
  • Monika Bankowski-Züllig: Maric, Mileva. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  • Barbara Bürki: Nice and bitter days. Mileva Einstein-Marić . Albert Einstein Society, Bern 2007, ISBN 978-3-9523009-3-0 .
  • Charles S. Chiu: Women in the Shadow . Jugend und Volk, Vienna 1994 ISBN 3-224-17669-5 (English: Peter Lang, New York 2008, ISBN 978-0-8204-8856-1 )
  • Desanka Trbuhović-Gjurić: In the shadow of Albert Einstein. The tragic life of Mileva Einstein-Marić . Paul Haupt, Bern, 5th edition 1988, ISBN 3-258-04700-6 .
  • Anne-Kathrin Kilg-Meyer: How Mileva Einstein secured Albert's Nobel Prize , Elisabeth Sandmann Verlag, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-945543-02-3 .
  • Dord Krstić: Mileva & Albert Einstein. Their love and scientific collaboration . Didakta, Radovljica 2004, ISBN 961-6530-08-9 (English)
  • Dragana Bukumirović: Mileva Marić Ajnštajn . Narodna Knjiga-Alfa, Belgrade 1995 (Serbian)
  • Gerald Holton : Einstein, History, and Other Passions . American Institute of Physics, Woodbury, New York 1996, ISBN 1-56396-333-7 (English)
  • Inge Stephan: "I believe that a woman can have a career like a man". The life of Mileva Marić-Einstein (1875–1947) In: Inge Stephan: The fate of the gifted woman in the shadow of famous men . Kreuz Verlag, Stuttgart, 4th edition 1990, ISBN 3-7831-0987-6 .
  • John Stachel : Einstein from 'B' to 'Z' . Birkhäuser, Boston 2002, ISBN 3-7643-4143-2 (English)
  • John Stachel et al. (Ed.): The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein . Volume 1. The Early Years, 1879–1902 , Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 1987, ISBN 0-691-08407-6 (English)
  • John Stachel: Albert Einstein and Mileva Marić: A Colloboration That Failed to Develop . In: Helena M. Pycior et al. (Ed.): Creative couples in the sciences . Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick 1996, ISBN 0-8135-2187-4 (English)
  • Jürgen Renn and Robert Schulmann (eds.): I kiss you orally on Sunday. The love letters 1897–1903 / Albert Einstein, Mileva Marić . Piper, Munich 1994 (English 1992) ISBN 3-492-03644-9 .
  • Michele Zackheim: Einstein's daughter. The search for Lieserl . Riverhead Books, New York 1999, ISBN 1-57322-127-9 .
  • Milan Popović (Ed.): In Albert's shadow. The life and letters of Mileva Marić, Einstein's first wife . Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2003, ISBN 0-8018-7856-X (English)
  • Senta Trömel-Plötz: Mileva Einstein-Maric: The woman who did Einstein's mathematics. In: Index on Censorship. 19, 1990, p. 33, doi: 10.1080 / 03064229008534960 . (English)
  • Ulla Fölsing: Mileva Maric . In: Ulla Fölsing: Nobel women. Portrait of women scientists . CH Beck, Munich, 4th expanded edition 2001, ISBN 3-406-47581-7
  • Vida Ognjenović: Mileva Ajnštajn. Drama u dva dela . Stubovi Kulture, Biblioteka Minut, Belgrade 1998 (Serbian)
  • Christof Rieber: Albert Einstein. Biography of a nonconformist. Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Ostfildern 2018, ISBN 978-3-7995-1281-7
  • Allen Esterson, David C. Cassidy (with contribution by Ruth Sime ): Einstein`s wife, the real story of Mileva Einstein-Maric , MIT Press 2019

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Property Huttenstrasse 62, Zurich: Oberstrassweg, Post 21, Mileva Einstein . Information and memorial plaque by the Zurich women's guild, the “ Gesellschaft zu Fraumünster ”, installed in 2005.
  2. ↑ Thomas Huonker : Diagnosis: “Morally defective” castration, sterilization and “racial hygiene” in the service of Swiss social policy and psychiatry 1890–1970 (PDF) Zurich 2003, p. 204. Accessed October 31, 2009
  3. ↑ Robert Dünki, Anna Pia Maissen: «... so that the sad existence of our son is a little better secured» Mileva and Albert Einstein's worries about their son Eduard (1910–1965). The Einstein family and the Zurich City Archives In: Zurich City Archives. Annual report 2007/2008. Retrieved October 31, 2009
  4. ↑ Donald Greyfield: Mileva "Mica" Maric Einstein. In: Find a Grave . January 31, 2004, accessed April 28, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Troemel-Ploetz 1990, pp. 415-432
  6. ↑ Walker 1991
  7. ↑ Gjuric 1983
  8. ↑ Abram F. Joffe: Памяти Алъберта Эйнштейна , Успехи физических наук, срт. 57, 2, 1955 ( Pamyati Alberta Eynshtyna , Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk, 57, 1955). Memory of Albert Einstein , 1955 (Russian)
  9. ↑ Michael Getler: Einstein's Wife: The Relative Motion of 'Facts' PBS Ombudsman; The Ombudsman Column, December 15, 2006. Accessed October 30, 2009
  10. ↑ Dord Krstić: Mileva & Albert Einstein. Their love and scientific collaboration . Didakta, Radovljica 2004, p. 142 (English)
  11. ↑ Stachel 1987, 1996, 2002
  12. ↑ Pais 1994
  13. ↑ Holton 1996
  14. ↑ Armin Hermann: Einstein. The wise man and his century. A biography. Piper, 1994, ISBN 3-492-03477-2 , pp. 115, 124-128
  15. ↑ Martinez 2005
  16. ↑ ETH and Gesellschaft zu Fraumünster, Zurich honor Mileva Einstein-Marić "Co-developer of the theory of relativity" Sechseläuten 2005. Katharina von Salis: Laudation (PDF)
  17. ^ Unveiling and consecration of memorial gravestone dedicated to Mileva Marić Einstein . Republic of Serbia, Ministry for Diaspora, June 14, 2009. Accessed November 4, 2009
  18. ↑ Mrs. Einstein takes the stage . ( Memento of November 2, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) In: Lincolnwood Review , November 7, 2002. Retrieved: November 4, 2009.
  19. ^ German Marieke Heimburger, Frau Einstein , Cologne, Kiepenheuer & Witsch 2018, ISBN 978-3-462-04981-7
personal data
SURNAME Marić, Mileva
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Einstein, Mileva; Марић, Милева (ShS); Marity, Mileva
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Serbian physicist
DATE OF BIRTH December 19, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH title
DATE OF DEATH 4th August 1948
Place of death Zurich