Mileva Maric: The Woman Behind the Theory of Relativity?

By: Alexandria Addesso

The Theory of Relativity is the cornerstone of Albert Einstein’s notoriety as a physicist and one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century. In 1921 Einstein single-handedly won the Nobel Prize for the Theory, no other party was recognized or credited for the work. Yet it has come to light that there may have been a co-author; Mileva Maric.

While Maric is best known for being Einstein's first wife and the mother of three of his children, her great mind was rarely celebrated.

“How happy I am to have found in you an equal creature, one who is equally strong and independent as I am,” said Einstein about Maric in 1900?

The two had attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic together in the VI A department studying mathematics and physics. At the time Maric was the only female student. The two eventually fell in love and married.

The school, and especially the department, was a bonafide “boy’s club”. All the professors were male. While Einstein’s and Maric’s final thesis was on the same subject, heat conduction, Maric’s was said to be much more in-depth whereas Einstein later said that he was uninterested in the topic and thus his work reflected it.

When it came to final examinations, Einstein barely passed with a score of 4.91 and Maric failed with a 4.00. Not being able to retest more than once unlike her classmates, Maric was unable to receive her degree.

She thus gave up on her individual research ventures and wholeheartedly devoted herself to her husband’s work. In 1905 the German physics publication Annalen der Physik, published several articles on the findings of the Theory of Relativity. The articles were all attributed to Einstein solely. Yet 50 years after the publication Dr. Abram Joffe, who testified to seeing the original 1905 manuscript before it was published, came forward saying that he saw the author of the work being attributed to an “Einstein- Marity” (Marity being a German variation of Maric which is a Serbian name).



"For Physics, and especially for the Physics of my generation, that of Einstein's contemporaries, Einstein's entrance into the arena of science is unforgettable. In 1905, three articles appeared in the 'Annalen der Physik', which began three very important branches of 20th Century Physics,” said Joffe. “Those were the theory of Brownian movement, the theory of the photoelectric effect and the theory of relativity. The author of these articles, an unknown person at that time, was a bureaucrat at the Patent Office in Bern, Einstein-Marity (Marity--the maiden name of his wife, which by Swiss custom is added to the husband's family name)."

So the question remains, if Maric co-authored the Theory or even was responsible for much more it than that? In 1913 Einstein had abandoned Maric and two of their sons (their first child died while still an infant), one of which was ill and needed Maric’s constant care. He had left them to be with his cousin Elsa, and it took Maric six years to finally be able to divorce Einstein for his adultery.

When Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921, all the award money went to Maric. Being a single mother of two, it is easy to see why Maric would sacrifice her pride and being praised for her work in exchange for the money that would guarantee stability for her children. Not to mention the difficulty she would have to endure being that she was woman making such a claim.



Yet the greatest possible factor as to why Maric didn’t fight more to be acknowledged for her work, no proof. Other than letters about the work that Einstein and Maric exchanged, the original manuscripts that would prove she was a co-author were destroyed by Einstein. Einstein, Maric, and Joffe being the only ones who attested to seeing them and now they are all far gone.

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The General Theory of Relativity and the “Magnificent Nine” (PART 1)

One hundred years have passed since the General Theory of Relativity was presented by Albert Einstein, at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, Germany, and is still making headlines in all media worldwide and hence the popularity of Mr. Einstein remains as the only figure related to this beautiful theory. The Relativity Theory changed the way we were thinking about space and time, being the precursor of others and more complex theories, but we do not intend to disseminate or technically explain the General Theory of Relativity in this article.

Relativity is one of the most famous scientific theories of the 20th century, but how well does it explain the things we see in our daily lives?
Formulated by Albert Einstein in 1905, the theory of relativity is the notion that the laws of physics are the same everywhere. The theory explains the behavior of objects in space and time, and it can be used to predict everything from the existence of black holes, to light bending due to gravity, to the behavior of the planet Mercury in its orbit.

The theory is deceptively simple. First, there is no "absolute" frame of reference. Every time you measure an object's velocity, or its momentum, or how it experiences time, it's always in relation to something else. Second, the speed of light is the same no matter who measures it or how fast the person measuring it is going. Third, nothing can go faster than light.



The implications of Einstein's most famous theory are profound. If the speed of light is always the same, it means that an astronaut going very fast relative to the Earth will measure the seconds ticking by slower than an Earth bound observer will — time essentially slows down for the astronaut, a phenomenon called time dilation.

Any object in a big gravity field is accelerating, so it will also experience time dilation. Meanwhile, the astronaut's spaceship will experience length contraction, which means that if you took a picture of the spacecraft as it flew by, it would look as though it were "squished" in the direction of motion. To the astronaut on board, however, all would seem normal. In addition, the mass of the spaceship would appear to increase from the point of view of people on Earth.
But you don't necessarily need a spaceship zooming at near the speed of light to see relativistic effects. In fact, there are several instances of relativity that we can see in our daily lives, and even technologies we use today that demonstrate that Einstein was right.

In developing this theory Einstein received help from several and very im
portant people who were tremendous scientist at that time. The help Mr. Einstein received, from those miracle workers, are briefly explained with the intention of pay tribute “the magnificent seven” who expanded and perhaps influenced the conception of the Theory of Relativity. Here are the magnificent nine:

The Mother of the Theory:

Mileva Marić was without doubt the forgotten lady, she received the title of "Mother of the Theory of Relativity". Mileva was born in Titel, Serbia in 1875. She came from an upper middle class family of Sernia, was very educated and because of that quality she was admitted to Zagreb School to continue her high school education, it should be noted that the school was exclusively for boys. In her grades she demonstrated a great excellence in mathematics and physics, allowing her to continue her studies at the University of Zurich, where she later transferred to the Polytechnic in Zurich. During her professional studies at the Polytechnic, she was an excellent student, perhaps one of the best in her class. It was at the Polytechnic of Zurich where she met Albert Einstein, creating a strong friendship that later became a love relationship. Einstein, later, married her.

It is known that Einstein’s parents were opposed to the relationship with Mileva, mainly because of the age differences, she was few years older than him. In reality they opposed it because Einstein and Marić were of different religions and cultural strata. Due to the intense love she felt for Albert, Mileva began to fail in her studies. Finally she failed the final exams, and it was in those moments that found she was expecting a child of Einstein. Marić and Einstein had three children.
Marić was who helped Einstein intensively while he was working in the patent office in Zurich, while she care the children. She reviewed the scientific data of Einstein, suggested proofs, checked his calculations, and copied notes and manuscripts. In one of the letters that Einstein wrote to her, included his first draft and first setbacks of the theory, which it did famous later on.

Delicate circumstances made ​​the relationship, between them, failed to the point of they divorced each other. In a mutual agreement, Einstein promised to give her the money he would receive for the Nobel Prize in physics, even before the announcement, which he did without any complain. The Mother of the Theory, Mrs. Mileva Marić, died in Zurich on August 4, 1948. Official memorial recognition was finally granted in 2005, raising a statue where she lived, and a tombstone in 2009, where she died.

The Genius Mathematician:

Marcel Gossmann was known for his genius in the field of mathematics. He was born on September 7 1879 in Budapest, Hungary, a great friend of Einstein and even his fellow class mate at the Polytechnic of Zurich. At the age of 21 he graduated at the Polytechnic of Zurich, becoming assistant professor of geometry and at the age of 23 earned his PhD at the University of Zurich, with the extraordinary thesis "On the metric properties of the collinear structures," due to his professional excellence in descriptive geometry, becomes professor at the Faculty of Mathematics of the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich.

Due to the deep knowledge in geometry not-Euclidean (Geometry Elliptical) he was who helped Einstein in developing the final step in the development of the General Theory of Relativity, as it was a necessary part of the theory, and he was who helped in the Tensor Theory. The influence was not limited in this field, but also in Differential Calculus. Undoubtedly Einstein was not only influenced by Grossmann in mathematics and theoretical physics, but for the development of the General Theory of Relativity. Even the two of them collaborated to design "The Theory of General Relativity and Gravitational Theory", this role was instrumental in establishing the gravity theory of Einstein. It is known that Einstein missed a lot of classes and Marcel provided him his notes for the exams.

The genius died of multiple sclerosis in September 17, 1936, at the age of 58 years. The Marcel community celebrates each year, his “realistic” contributions to the physics field.

The Romantic Engineer:

Michel Angelo Besso was born on May 25, 1873 in Riesbach Switzerland, family and Jewish descendant. Friend of Einstein since they were studying at the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, where Besso received the degree in Engineering.

Because of his friendship with Einstein, Besso helped him get the job at the patent office in Zurich, where they worked together. There is a version that was Besso who introduced Einstein to Ernst Mach, physicist and philosopher Czech-Austrian who contributed with his number theory as well as in the study of shock waves, Mach was a severe critic of Newton, precursor of the theory holds Einstein's relativity.

As a friend of Einstein spent many hours in the patent office in Zurich, discussing the future theory of relativity. We know of the great imagination and romantic beauty of Besso to his profession.

The great Michael Besso died on March 13, 1955, in Genoa Italy. Einstein, after he learned of the death of Bessso transmitted by an old ex-student, told Besso's family "He departed of this strange world a little ahead of us. This means nothing to me. For all of us, believers of the Physics, the distinction between pass, present and future, is only a stubborn illusion.” At the present it’s in discussion what Einstein wanted to say, some people believe that he was trying to present only a philosophical quote in memory of his old friend.ll in discussion what Einstein wanted to say

The Persistent Astronomer:

Erwin Finlay-Freundlich was the son of a German businessman, E. Philip Freundlich, and his British wife, Ellen Elisabeth Finlayson. He had four brothers and two sisters. Like his brothers he received his primary schooling in Biebrich and completed a classical education at the Dilthey School in the neighboring and larger town of Wiesbaden. After leaving this school in 1903, Freundlich worked at the dockyard in Stettin before beginning a course in naval architecture at the Technical University of Charlottenburg. After a heart condition forced him to discontinue this course for about a year, he decided to begin a new and went to Göttingen to study mathematics, physics, and astronomy. With the exception of the winter semester 1905–1906, which he spent as a student in Leipzig, the rest of his higher education was confined to Göttingen University, from which he obtained his Ph.D. in 1910 with a thesis entitled “Analytic Functions Arbitrary Prescribed With Infinitive Existences of Ranges.”

At the suggestion of his tutor, Felix Klein, Freundlich applied for the post of assistant at the Royal Observatory in Berlin and was appointed on 1 July 1910. In the following year Albert Einstein, having heard that Freundlich was investigating the possibility of gravitational absorption, requested Freundlich’s cooperation in observing the motion of the planet Mercury. Einstein himself had his own reasons for doubting that its position would coincide with that predicted on the basis of Newtonian mechanics. Freundlich’s observations fully confirmed earlier evidence for such a discrepancy, and he insisted on publishing that discovery in 1913,

Friedrich Kottler: The Young and impetuous Physicist

Friedrich Kottler, was born on December 10, 1886, was an Austrian theoretical physicist. He was a Private teacher before he got a professorship in 1923 at the University of Vienna.
In 1938, after the Connection, he lost his Eastman Kodak Research Laboratory.
Besides optics, Kottler's professional pursuits focused on professorship due to his Jewish ancestry. With the help of Albert Einstein and Wolfgang Pauli, he immigrated to America from his hometown of Vienna, Austria, settling in Rochester, New York, where he worked at the theory of relativity. In 1912, he presented a general covariant formulation of the electromagnetic equations, based on the absolute differential calculus, which is also valid within Albert Einstein's General Relativity, before that theory was even developed. In this connection, Kottler worked on the description of accelerations and rotations in relativity. In 1918, Kottler created his own interpretation of general relativity. In 1922, he published the article "Gravitation and Relativity Theory." He died on May 11, 1965 in New York, USA.
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