Einstein's better half?

A group of historians are challenging the traditional view of the young Einstein and his first wife, based on recently released letters.

Most Einstein biographers have dismissed his first wife, Mileva Maric Einstein, as "a loomy, laconic and distrustful character." But, in fact, Mileva was a mathematician and physicist in her own right, who studied with Einstein as a fellow student at the prestigious Swiss Federal Polytechnical Institute in Zurich (she passed the entrance exam which Albert himself flunked, although he was admitted later without it).

According to one reading of letters recently published after a 30-year delay and legal tangling, Einstein regarded his wife as an equal and a collaborator, referring to "our theory" and "our work." One letter from Albert, written in 1901, states: "How happy and proud I will be when the two of us together will have brought our work on the relative motion to a victorious conclusion."

Evan Harris Walker, a research physicist, became interested in the issue when he read a biography which downplayed Mileva's scientific prowess, while noting that Albert did agree to give Mileva the proceeds of any Nobel prize he might eventually win. Based on the new correspondent, Walker presented his claims at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They were not well-received.

--Based on the article "Eintein's Better?" by William Booth of The Washington Post; printed in the Ann Arbor News, March 8, 1990.