The Life of Einstein's First Wife
blogs.scientificamerican.com
blogs.scientificamerican.com
Why did Mileva remain silent? Being reserved and self-effaced, she did not seek honors or public attention.
She was failed and denied a degree in spite of having better grades than Albert, probably solely because she was a woman. Albert was probably blocked from employment positions he wanted by the same professor that failed her, possibly because he was treating a woman like his equal.
This reads to me like they coped as best they could with a world that absolutely wouldn't accept a woman as a serious scientist and even with trying to be self effacing, etc, they both paid a high price -- such a high price, it likely destroyed their marriage.
(edited to correct a typo)
I'm merely explaining what informs my point of view to someone whose handle was about 30 minutes old when I replied to it on the assumption that they have no idea what my background is.
It would make it speculation by someone with a stronger bias towards a specific explanation due to their personal experiences.
It's frustrating but not exactly surprising that this is rapidly turning into a dismissive pile on.
or maybe the sex/gender of the user is not relevant to the reason for the downvotes?
and maybe even refraining from downvoting a post b/c that user is a woman is itself sexist?
You're not supposed to say that, or treat women as equals -- in that you equally troll them / equally openly disagree / become equally aggresive / or equally "well actually" them as you'd do for any fellow nerd...
Equality somehow means "treat women equal, but different".
For example "well actually" it's something a nerd does to another nerd all the time. If you do it to woman though, it's "mansplaining" and its sexist...
Without knowing all the details, the respectful thing to do is keep your (dismissive) speculation about my life to yourself.
What?
My previous handle is Mz. It hit the leader board in October 2017. About six weeks later, I changed my handle to this one.
As far as I know, I am the only member who posts as openly female who has spent time on the leader board.
I can empathize with her because I was one of the top three students of my graduating class and had the highest SAT scores of my class. I was STAR student and a National Merit Scholarship winner.
I was inducted into Mu Alpha Theta, a college-level math honor society, at age 16 in eleventh grade, the earliest you can be inducted. At age 15, I was state alternate for the Governor's Honors Program, a residential gifted summer enrichment program. That means only two other people outperformed me in the entire state of Georgia on a topic I sort of picked randomly out of a hat because I was a well-rounded student and didn't have any particular area of obvious strength like most candidates.
But more to the point, I have a form of cystic fibrosis and I have been getting myself well for nearly two decades while the entire world calls me crazy and a teller of tall tales and a liar and throws me off of one forum after another which is why I don't cite it more often as a reason I can empathize with someone like Mileva Einstein. I much more often compare myself to Semmelweis and talk about trying hard to not end up locked up in an insane asylum and beaten to death for the crime of thinking I know something medically useful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
What I know really ought to qualify me for something like the Nobel Prize in Medicine. But I'm not holding my breath. I'm not likely to ever get any recognition for my accomplishments. The dismissive nonsense in this thread is very much the norm, unfortunately.
Sure, whenever anything you say is dismissed, it must be because you are a woman. Not because you didn't provide any evidence at all to make your case. Also, women don't have to provide evidence, I guess, they just know things and have to be believed.
Example: it’s is less difficult to prove: “there are no purple antenna sprouting aliens in farmer bob’s field”
Vs
“There are no aliens”
Can you give an example of that, b/c I for one would see anyone boasting about that as not getting a positive reaction.
I'm trying to walk away from this discussion at this point. I haven't had enough sleep and I've been on HN over eleven years and the degree to which I still get treated like "Shut up woman, there is no sexism here!" is a point of personal aggravation and there is no good means to combat it.
Ideally, someone else should be telling people "She's probably the only woman to have ever spent time on the leader board and a respected and valued member of the community" or someone else should be telling people "She kicks ass. This is a list of her accomplishments." That's generally how respected men get treated.
But that's not happening and I end up feeling like I have no real choice but to defend myself at times, knowing that will also go badly and be used against me as evidence that I'm not actually important or respectable or smart and so on.
That's the essence of sexism. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. There simply are no good answers for me. They don't exist and trying to find them gets a lot of abuse heaped upon me.
I was openly homeless on HN for nearly six years. I remain dirt poor. I continue to get treated like I'm a loon who has no basis to claim any kind of competence at all.
And if I say that is evidence of sexism, well, that's just more "evidence" I'm some crank.
Anyway, I haven't had enough sleep. I have had more than I care to have of this type of conversation for today. I'm trying to walk away.
May I offer some context for what appears to be general push-back to your argument.
There are some incredible contributors to this forum who are women that I respect a lot, despite that they actually have quite low HN karma, devaboone for example. The only thing that causes respect in most eyes is the actual quality of discourse, the content itself. When I see a high karma, the only conclusion anyone draws is that this is someone who spends a lot of time on this site, which is just fine. But anyone here can have a high karma if they want to spend that time, and merely spending that time is not in and of itself a source of interest. What is definitely not interesting is talking about the karma score itself and whether or not someone is on some list of frequent users.
Repeating parent... Do you have an example? Like a link.
You rarely would say "He has accumulated lot of good karma by doing good, I better see what he has to say". On HN, its a different story.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1068454
Karma is used as part of the YC-applicant vetting process.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=454022
Hey, thanks a lot for the feedback. Now I understand why you have 40k karma ;)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1758794
Most high-karma people on HN (like, 5k+) get there by being thoughtful.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1757388
Those are all old comments. Probably not a coincidence because as stated previously when I began pointing out the double standard -- that men would praise each other for having high karma here but nothing I do is ever good enough and I get attacked for trying to assert that I deserve to be treated better -- then people began saying that less rather than, you know, decide to treat me better.
> And if I say that is evidence of sexism, well, that's just more "evidence" I'm some crank.
You claimed in the thread that you were deserving of the Nobel prize in medicine. If people are treating you like a crank and you are making claims like that, that is pretty far from "no basis to claim any kind of competence at all." That one seems to be a claim of supreme competence.
These days I use throwaway accounts because of the increasing censorship and to force myself to ignore the karma system.
I think karma does affect the algorithm that decides if you get flagged or banned, or at least alerts the mods. May just be the short time votes on specific comments, though.
Is there a meta hackernews where this kind of thing is discussed? I’ve been here for years and this is the strangest conversation I’ve seen, like other people are stepping out in front to let people know you’re legit because you mention your gender identity and have lots of upvotes on a leaderboard and I’m like wwwhat? Have I been using hackernews wrong?
I would be interested to know why you feel you are entitled to a 'two-career' lifestyle. That you are not is a choice you made, unless you can give the name of the person who pointed a gun to your head to prove otherwise. If you are unhappy with your choices, take responsibility and make amends.
> possibly because he was treating a woman like his equal
This for example is complete speculation. Him being Jew and him being undisciplined (his bad grades in math were totally due to that) had likely to do with it a lot more.
Einstein never had bad grades in math, that’s a myth.
Fwiw, the [hacker news guidelines](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) ask that you avoid commenting on voting (like this one).
> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
This pattern - posting something controversial and breaking the rules - and then blaming it on people not liking the controversial thing you said - is not uncommon. Indeed, I frequently see comments to the effect of "See Trump was right about the tech companies being monopolies but people here will downvote me because they hate Trump" sitting at the bottom of every thread when I enable "showdead".
In sum - if you want to get more votes (as you apparently care about votes) and for people to give your ideas more consideration - consider not self-sabotaging by pairing your ideas with a rule breaking comment.
Fwiw, this is the third time I've seen you bring up your rank on the HN leaderboard. It's also the third time I've heard of the HN leaderboard. I'm not sure if somebody being ranked on HN makes me more or less likely to consider their argument - probably less, because it means they spend too much time on social media - but it's not a strong effect in any case. Simply put - does literally anybody care about that leaderboard besides you?
My understanding of the article is that they were aware and, thus, Mileva made the rational decision to boost her husband's career at the expense of her own career.
Albert: "I need my wife. She solves for me all my mathematical problems."
Mileva: "Before our departure, we finished an important scientific work which will make my husband known around the world."
To me, that sounds like a rational plan to make him famous by letting him pretend to also possess the skills that in reality his wife provides. Plus, we now know in hindsight that it worked.
And obviously, a groundbreaking work attributed to only one person seems even more impressive than if it was attributed to a team.
EDIT: It also appears to me that Mileva was smart enough to recognize the value of her assistance: "In 1919, she agreed to divorce, with a clause stating that if Albert ever received the Nobel Prize, she would get the money. When she did, she bought two small apartment buildings [..]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Blixen
Colette (28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954) initially ghost wrote for her husband and when they split she ended up dirt poor because he owned all the copyrights in his name and she had no claim to any of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colette
These are people from around the same time frame. Sexism was a much bigger problem at that time than it is today and it remains alive and well.
Edit: See, for example:
Homme de Plume: What I Learned Sending My Novel Out Under a Male Name
https://jezebel.com/homme-de-plume-what-i-learned-sending-my...
As for that destroying their marriage, it seems that she got pregnant from another man, while he had multiple affairs, so I wonder if they were ever strongly physically attracted to each other. To me, it seems more likely that they were mentally best friends, but physically craved others.
I kind of dislike your Jezebel link because in my opinion, their goal is mostly to spread hate as opposed to improving the situation. So I'd wager that their experiment was skewed to produce the intended result.
I mean even the magazine's name is provocation aimed at conservative christian men: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+2%3A...
Plus, they haven't been exactly balanced on gender issues in the past ;)
"Men are in crisis. The successes of women in the workplace have caused them confusion [..]. They’re becoming radicalized [..] romantic rejection [..] mass murder." https://theattic.jezebel.com/the-paradox-of-how-to-feminism-...
That doesn't contradict anything I've said. If anything, it supports my position.
As for that destroying their marriage, it seems that she got pregnant from another man,
He married her after she had that child. To my mind that seems to be fairly strong evidence that they had a powerful bond that overcame many obstacles that would have prevented most people from ever even getting married.
I don't typically read Jezebel, largely due to the criticisms you cite. But the piece I posted is backed up by data and strikes me as reasonable and even-handed.
I don't think it was engineered by the publication. It seems to have been some one off thing by some random female author who got frustrated with her efforts to get published.
There's usually an age disparity in sexual relationships [1] and I would argue that this is because men in general prefer slightly younger women. The fact that Mileva was born 4 years before Albert already makes their relationship highly uncommon (around 1 out of 30 couples).
So maybe Albert married her because she was reliably, intelligent, and had a great character. But that doesn't mean that she had to be in line with his sexual preferences, which then would make it likely that they'll eventually get bored of each other.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_disparity_in_sexual_relati...
It takes two to tango. Your assumption de facto dismisses the choice of the woman in the relationship, as if her opinion is irrelevant.
I think there are multiple factors involved in that trend, one of which is that women tend to be more socially savvy than men. I think women tend to prefer men who are a little older because, on average, a man needs to be a little older to have a similar level of social savvy and this is a critical detail for a personal relationship.
There are other things in your comment that I don't agree with. But I don't care to elaborate, so this is where we get to "agree to disagree" I guess.
Thank you for actually discussing the details of the article with me.
I was just focusing on Albert's side of the equation, because he was the one that ended the marriage by switching sexual partners.
And yes, that was a good discussion. Thank you, too :)
Bias, She Wrote: The Gender Balance of The New York Times Best Seller list https://pudding.cool/2017/06/best-sellers/
There seems to have been an inflection point in the 1990s, which the author posits is due to the rise of MFA degrees (2/3rds granted to women). Commercially, the gender ratio seems to have approached parity overall, even if in specific categories the large imbalances exists (owing to various factors, some self-selection effect exists). Even though commercial success seems to be at parity, the author posits that the publishing industry lags behind in reflecting this and that there remains a funnel bias in the industry (from critics to publishers).
This is a good explanation for her actions while they were married. But it doesn’t explain why she continued to be withdrawn following their divorce. It could have simply been inertia. But there was likely an element of exhaustion from the sexism referenced elsewhere at play.
I don’t think the article’s humility argument sways me. But a combination of your hypothesis for her choice and Doreen’s sexism hypothesis for her sticking with it makes sense.
Being poor might also be a reason for said ‘inertia’. One has to run faster to stay in the same place..chasing someone to retrieve what was stolen from you is unlikely.
[..] Mileva moved back to Zurich with her two sons on 29 July 1914. In 1919, she agreed to divorce, with a clause stating that if Albert ever received the Nobel Prize, she would get the money. When she did, she bought two small apartment buildings and lived poorly from their income. Her son, Eduard stayed frequently in a sanatorium. He later developed schizophrenia and was eventually internalised. Due to these medical expenses, Mileva struggled financially all her life and eventually lost both buildings. She survived by giving private lessons and on the alimony Albert sent, albeit irregularly.[..]
Wouldn’t Marie Curie’s Nobel Prize present a counterfactual to the absolutism of this claim?
“At first the committee had intended to honour only Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, but a committee member and advocate for women scientists, Swedish mathematician Magnus Gösta Mittag-Leffler, alerted Pierre to the situation, and after his complaint, Marie's name was added to the nomination.[45] Marie Curie was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize.[24”
It was a really huge uphill battle for her from the beginning. For example, in defiance of laws against women getting an education, she attended a secret university for women.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-secret-polish-univ...
Mileva Einstein had unprecedented support and was initially admitted to an all boys school thanks in part to family backing, but later tried repeatedly to complete her degree and was denied a degree and finally gave up.
I will suggest that Marie Curie ended up with more recognition in part because she had to go to school secretly in defiance of the law. Mileva Einstein began with a really remarkable and unusual degree of family support for her interests and aspirations and this may have left her ill-prepared for dealing effectively with an openly hostile sexist social climate.
It also possibly made her more of a target because she was performing a full frontal assault on sexism instead of quietly doing an end run around the issue. That tends to get a lot more push back.
To this day, the #MeToo movement suggests most women with serious careers pay a rather high price in terms of having to face constant sexual harassment and even sexual assault. There would have been far less support at that time than there is now and women generally tend to express the idea that there is far too little now.
In my own life, where I have persisted in the face of an uphill battle it has consistently been a situation where I felt like I had no real choice. I felt backed into a corner and like this -- whatever "this" was -- was the least-worst option available to me or the only option.
I believe that one of the things that accounts for poorer performance/outcomes (career-wise) for women is that when women have options -- like letting their husband provide for them while they raise their children and pursue their interests in a more hobby-like fashion -- they tend to take them. Taking a stand tends to come at a high price. Many people simply choose to not pay that price if they have any way out, even if it means letting their career dreams die as a consequence of trying to protect themselves.
I don't think most people breaking barriers are really people who just want to take a stand and make a statement and make a difference. I think most of them are like me: Someone who has some ability to outperform others in some metrics whose situation doesn't readily give them a way out of the confrontation with society.
I don't think anyone should be sitting in judgment of Mileva for wanting to try to support her husband's career and eschew credit for herself in some vain attempt to try to get a comfortable life that didn't really materialize.
And I think it is ugly behavior when people act like "Well, she made a choice and didn't want it badly enough" or something like that (as is all too often the way this gets framed).
It's kind of like that scene in Good Will Hunting where he talks about his abusive father laying out three things and giving him a "choice" as to which one he wants to be beaten with. In a sick system, most people are trying desperately to find some way to say "Well, I really don't want to be beaten at all." while the world looks on and says, more or less, "You chose to be beaten because you answered the abusive question as to which instrument you would like to be beaten with."
To my mind, that's the crux of a sick system and it underlies an awful lot of social ills, such as sexism, racism and homophobia.
If you are "the wrong kind of person," the world simply doesn't give you the option to have nice things. It insists that you must choose between these various ugly options and then acts like you have no right to complain about your suffering "because you made this choice."
Sometimes, people are some combination of talented and lucky and manage to quietly have a nice life anyway, in spite of being "the wrong kind of person." But that tends to not go hand-in-hand with breaking social barriers and becoming extremely prominent in your field. People who become extremely prominent in spite of being "the wrong kind of person" tend to pay a price for it beyond the usual price for success.
Marić's academic career was disrupted in 1901 when she became pregnant by Einstein. When three months pregnant, she resat the diploma examination, but failed for the second time without improving her grade.
Well worth watching. Mileva was a talented physicist and mathematician, contributed significantly to Einstein's early success, gave him three children and Albert dumped her for his cousin.
He supported Mileva and the children from that marriage throughout his life. Everybody has flaws.
History has largely forgotten her, these days she would have gotten far more credit for her contributions to their scientific work.
It's huge. For the first 2 billion years of the history of Earth, life was unicellular. The only type of cell in existence was prokaryote. The atmosphere contained no oxygen.
Then there was 1 billion years of history in which Earth's atmosphere changed. At the end of that billion years, two main differences were apparent. Firstly, the atmosphere was comprised of 21% oxygen. Secondly, life on Earth was comprised of two different types of cells - prokaryotes, and eukaryotes.
Eukaryotic cells are 100 times larger than prokaryotes. Unlike prokaryotes, they form multi-cellular organisms. Everything you see around you with your eyes, and every living thing you ever watched David Attenborough talk about on TV are comprised of Eukaryotic cells.
Endosymbiosis is the explanation of how Eukaryotic life came to exist.
If endosymbiosis were popularly understood, society might better understand and acknowledge the connectedness of life on Earth. Instead of humans treating the planet as their own kingdom and garbage dump, they might develop a more harmonious, respectful relationship with the natural world. That might lead to greater prospects for sustainability of the planet and of humans.
By the way, I don't think that's even close to the same thing. Every biologist and biochemist knows about Margulis, because of her work.
Looks like they were only married for around 8 years (1957 to 1965), so they divorced before he was really famous. Maybe that's why it's not more widely known?
Sadly, in her later years she became a bit too persistent with it, trying to apply it in cases where it clearly wasn't happening. The notorious example is this 2009 paper, now retracted: https://www.pnas.org/content/106/47/19901
https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-fraud-who-worked-with-einstein-5...
But she says herself that their work will make him famous. So clearly she believed his ideas were the foundation.
She was never allowed to actually work in physics.
You don't actually need permission to work in physics. Didn't Einstein also write his seminal papers while he was working at the patent office?
Also from that example, it seems that three times more male students than female students failed their exam. Doesn't really prove sexist discrimination, especially with the first example where she got the good grade and Einstein the bad one.
That is fascinatingly manipulative way to frame situation in which all female are kicked, at least one having great results and being failed only in the most subjective part of it.
She got better results then him in most objective parts and got kicked in most subjective part. Him failing to solve exercises does not prove she was not discriminated.
People fail exams all the time, for a variety of reasons. Every now and then here on HN there is a big discussion on how job interviews shouldn't have whiteboard coding sessions.
Maybe she was such a person who can't do live whiteboard coding. Oral exams are something like that. Then the system is perhaps bad, but it doesn't sexism was the cause.
Also usually oral exams involve more than one interviewer.
And I think it is fascinatingly manipulative to frame it as "all female are kicked", if there was only one female to begin with.
(Note: it is of course possible that sexism was the cause, but it can't be inferred from the information given. BBC sure wants to suggest it, though)
It is preposterous to claim that the way these tests went is not an instance of sexism. His college teachers did not seen prodigy in him at all.
> (Note: it is of course possible that sexism was the cause, but it can't be inferred from the information given. BBC sure wants to suggest it, though)
It absolutely can be inferred. Moreover, it can be safely guessed that if she was rebelling the way he did, she would get even less of benefit of doubt.
Einstein had good ideas later and success. But at the college, most of his peers had better results then him.
So given the magnitude of his ideas, if she really had helped develop them she would have also become famous. I mean, she is famous now.
And these are personal letters but apparently no mention of "our" ideas or credit due to her even in their personal correspondence. He did definitely need her to make a reputation, but the ideas were his.
Let me suggest you not judge him too harshly. There is only so much one man can do to stand down the sexist, misogynistic crap of the entire world.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I guess the submitter dropped the 'forgotten' as it could be considered clickbait with it.
He sent her a letter with a list of demands to stay married:
http://www.openculture.com/2013/12/albert-einstein-imposes-o...
A. You will make sure:
1. that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order; 2. that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room; 3. that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.
B. You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego:
1. my sitting at home with you; 2. my going out or travelling with you.
C. You will obey the following points in your relations with me:
1. you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way; 2. you will stop talking to me if I request it; 3. you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.
D. You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior.
I suspect Mileva was probably on the spectrum and/or didn’t have had a high social IQ. One needs high survival skills to be female. She wasn’t designed fo it.
Women who are not surrounded/supported by their ‘sisterhood’ or female ‘tribe’ often get exploited by men. Female input and advice will save a lot of loss and damage. Because. Experience. Other women know. They share. They talk. They gossip. Guidance. There is an evolutionary advantage to gossip and chat. That’s how female wisdom goes viral. It worked in the pre social media era. I am always suspicious of men who try to isolate their girl from female company. That’s a warning sign. I have never been wrong w/this assessment.
Children are a burden. Women should be taught not to have children without a supportive man who cannot be a father for life. Because it’s a responsibility for life.
Single parenthood is not a badge of honor. We should not celebrate it as a society. Or rather, we should not glorify single parenthood. I suppose there is obviously something to celebrate about children. But the experience of creating something is different from the value of the creation. Would be parents should understand the gravity of the task and responsibility in front of them.
Raising children is the most difficult thing to do .. even in partnerships never mind as a single parent. I honestly don’t understand why people are eager to have children. Sometimes more than they can afford wrt time and money and effort. It’s not for everyone. There is no shame or guilt in living and enjoying life as an individual.
Had Mileva Einstein not had the parenting responsibility and burden, she would have blossomed as the scientist she was obviously meant to be...the female uterus is severely undervalued. As is the value of progeny.. by men.. it is the vessel for half their genetic material and their only way to leave a meaningful biological legacy. So until we can grow little humans in pods, women must make men pay their due for carrying their genetic material and delivering it as viable life forms or deny them the opportunity to leave behind a genetic legacy.
It's pretty much all human culture. It's probably a trait inherited from our pre-human ancestors. After all, our closest primate, the chimps, also have male dominant social order.
> Women who are not surrounded/supported by their ‘sisterhood’ or female ‘tribe’ often get exploited by men.
Oh boy here we go again. Sure there are exploitation by men, but the vast majority of exploitation of women are by other women. There is no magical "sisterhood".
> Experience. Other women know. They share. They talk. They gossip. Guidance.
Or gossip, exclusion, rumors, destroying reputations, bullying, etc. Eating disorder, self-image issues, cutting, self-harm, etc are mostly female on female violence.
> I am always suspicious of men who try to isolate their girl from female company.
Female company? No. You should be suspicious of men or women who try to isolate a girl or a boy from their parents/siblings/friends. Most women recruited for prostitution, cults, MLMs, etc are by "female company".
> Children are a burden.
They are a responsibility.
> the female uterus is severely undervalued.
As opposed to the male uterus?
> As is the value of progeny.. by men.. it is the vessel for half their genetic material and their only way to leave a meaningful biological legacy.
Seems more like you are devaluing the value of men?
> So until we can grow little humans in pods, women must make men pay their due for carrying their genetic material and delivering it as viable life forms or deny them the opportunity to leave behind a genetic legacy.
You are essentially saying women's only value is procreation. So if we can grow little humans in a pod, wouldn't women have no value then?
Also, men protect the women, provide shelter, food, etc. You make it seem like women do all the work. Stop basing your reality off of silly netflix series.
Honestly, what's the difference between people like you and white supremacists. Just change race with gender and I don't see a difference. Of course this kind of flamewar and disinformation nonsense is welcomed all over social media.
You are correct. I will end this potential flame war by not engaging.
No. Read the end more carefully. But why bother because you and I know what you are.
> You are correct.
Thank you.
> I will end this potential flame war by not engaging.
It would have been better if you didn't start the flamewar in the first place. And don't say you are not engaging by engaging. Live and learn.
I want to try again.
Her sacrifices and contributions should have been recognised.
There are a quite a few odd facts that became quite difficult to ignore though (the article has the original quotes / sources on some of them):
* There are plenty of letters from Einstein to Minerva discussing love and physics in historical record, but all but 10 letters from Minerva to Einstein are lost. It is unknown why they are lost. Without these personal writings it is difficult to assess whether her depth of knowledge and love for physics was on a similar level.
* Their relatives and children claim they always sat at the table together in the evening, discussing physics and working.
* She gave up her authorship contribution for an engineering project before for Albert, claiming "we are one, Einstein".
* Several references to 'our work' in various letters.
* Three of the 1905 papers originally had the author Einstein-Marity, a typical double name women adopt after marriage. It is unknown why. (Maybe Einstein wanted her to get recognition though?)
* There are some differences in how mathematical notation is used in the 1905 papers, and how much detail is given for the steps.
* Her divorce agreement stated that she would get the Nobel prize money. The amount was pretty much making her rich back then, which is an excellent situation to be in for a struggling single mother who might want to stay in Switzerland and not go back to Serbia. Some more details here: https://www.einstein-website.de/z_information/nobelprizemone...
* Minerva did not work in physics after she got pregnant. (The article states how she couldn't get through the academic system.) Though, Einstein, while still a productive physicist, never had an as successful year as 1905 again.
* She had better grades, Einstein copied her maths lecture notes, and you’ve got to say that you have to have quite a bit of endurance, intelligence and a thick skin to go from Serbia to ETH to study physics as a girl at that time. Not trying to devalue Einstein here, but it definitely took quite a bit more from her than for a boy at that time.
On the other hand, Einstein seemed to respect female scientists as evident in the letter to Curie, and might not have agreed to let her trade recognition for money if her contribution was real. In their honeymoon phase he also clearly saw Minerva as an equal (not so much later on, there is an awful letter by him setting rules for her as a housewife, but their marriage clearly was in pieces at that time.)
I’ve been following this case for a while and wish we could collect all neutral evidence (letters etc.) in original (german) form, similar to what the article already did.
There is a chance that the true story is that a couple that loved physics collaborated in 1905 and revolutionized the subject. I would love this conclusion.
Although, the big lesson I learned from this is Einstein cheated, and that caused the collapse. Solutions could be resisting urges or open relationships (although I have doubts).
Anyway, my wife has contributed or provoked ideas, editing, and real life implementation of the ideas. She didn't get interviewed.
I'm not famous (yet), I was a B+ student, I feel normal. But over the years strangers greeting me. IRL, or strangers being dissapointed in a personal political opinion, or the interviews make me realize it might happen.
I don't want to destroy the family I love.
Maybe it would be easy to work in an office environment but sitting exams is a whole diff ball game post partum.
The reduction in memory after birth you refer to could easily be caused by the sleep deprivation that comes with a newborn child. Take a look at the studies that claim otherwise and you'll see that they did not compare the women against themselves before birth, but instead compared their IQ to the general population. They also did not have a control group of women who put the baby up for adoption after giving birth.
[1] showed that baby brain is a myth, except for very late pregnancies. Even then, there was only a reduction in one out of the four cognitive capabilities they tested.
The study which found changes in women's brains after giving birth also did not find a reduction in IQ. [2]
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pregnancy-causes-...
[..] A study published Monday in Nature Neuroscience reveals that during pregnancy women undergo significant brain remodeling that persists for at least two years after birth. The study also offers preliminary evidence that this remodeling may play a role in helping women transition into motherhood.[..]
[..] The researchers found that the new mothers experienced gray matter reductions that lasted for at least two years after birth. This loss, however, is not necessarily a bad thing (according to Hoekzema, “the localization was quite remarkable”); it occurred in brain regions involved in social cognition, particularly in the network dedicated to theory of mind, which helps us think about what is going on in someone else’s mind—regions that had the strongest response when mothers looked at photos of their infants. These brain changes could also be used to predict how mothers scored on the attachment scale. In fact, researchers were able to use a computer algorithm to identify which women were new mothers based solely on their patterns of gray matter loss. Gray matter loss was not seen in new fathers or nonparents. It is not entirely clear why women lose gray matter during pregnancy, but Hoekzema thinks it may be because their brains are becoming more specialized in ways that will help them adapt to motherhood and respond to the needs of their babies. The study offers some preliminary evidence to support this idea. Whereas the present study focuses primarily on documenting brain changes during pregnancy, she expects follow-up work to tackle more applied questions such as how brain changes relate to postpartum depression or attachment difficulties between mother and child.[..]
Trying to prove that post partum neurological changes don’t occur in women is NOT helpful to mothers and women in general. Or to our species. The insane pressures of ‘being all that’ is so damaging to women that I fear that the social damage we have caused will take decades to fix without creating further damage.(yes, I mentioned it thrice)
Women are not inferior to men. Just so, women are not equal to men in every way either. It’s just daft to imagine that motherhood doesn’t change women physically, emotionally, instinctively and intellectually.
Without doubt, you are looking at a superbly evolved creature and it doesn’t take much to be ‘equal to men’. Such a low standard, if you ask me. The greatest lie perpetuated by feminists is that women can and should be equal to men.
From puberty to motherhood to post menopausal stage in life, women keep evolving. Why? Because hormones. All life starts as female. Female is default. One of the mutations ended up as the male of the species.
At no time was ‘work’ or brawn or muscles or physical strength or ability to code or amass is wealth considered the pinnacle of human achievement. In fact, men have all this sharpened SO they can facilitate the well being of the female of the species in order to perpetuate the species.
Virus and bacteria are better than us when it comes to survival rate. One meteor can wipe us out. True evolution is our adaptation to survival. To deny the gifts women possess purely by virtue of their hormones is the tragedy of it all. The species survival doesn’t not depend on one gender or one group of people or any one skill set but the evolution of the species to naturally select survival and to thrive.
ETA: 100 years ago, the way to make a living was..say..coal mining. As opposed to coding now. Would women still claim equal opportunity to work if the way to make a living was ‘Menhir Tossing’(I made that up) in the future?
Every time the world shifts, women find themselves ‘being left behind’. But evolution doesn’t happen at the same periodicity as technological changes or climate change or whatever pressure pushes human beings to alter their ways of life and resource collecting.
The way we live is all about resource and resource collection and scarcity. When the definition of ‘work’ changes and gender equality is tied to ‘work’, then gender equality will always be a moving target. That ..’that’ being economic equality or work place equality’ , even though those are temporal irritants too...is a highly irrational way to deal with the real problem of sexism.
It's substance consists fully of vague diatribes about why Mileva didn't get credit for general relativity, asking vague, emotional questions that can easily be construed as accusations without providing new information or answers.
It is, by definition, trite and spin and poisons the news feed of HN. If it's a slow news day, it's a slow news day.
This reminds me of slashdot back in the early 2010's after Cowboy McNeal sold it off to I think it was Dice. Every day there was minimum 1-2 SJW Agenda pieces; initially they were recieved warmly but as the material got more and more radical over time, the community realized what was going on and turned extremely vitriolic. Then they drew an unbelievable amount of automated bot spam and even people with old accounts became hostile and left. Towards the end, they got sneakier and sneakier about the agenda pieces; you'd see one about an obvious feminist topic draw ire and a tremendous amount of vitriol, then another about "How do I help my daughter learn STEM\Electronics". Articles like the ladder became more common and people began ignoring them. Eventually the community left and all you had were a bunch of hateful people left. BizX stopped posting those pieces after buying the site a few years backl; They have a different agenda mostly inline with their financial portfolio.
I remember when the site had minimum 300-400 responses per article, many of which were tremendously useful, with some articles hitting 1000-2000 and it did that on every article. Today they're lucky to hit 100 and most of that, these days, looks like astroturf.