Also, the only way she would give him a divorce is by him offering her the Nobel Prize money he knew he would one day win for his work in physics. She took a gamble and gave him the divorce.
Presumably they got divorced so that Albert would be able to marry his second wife that he had been in a relationship with for a while at that point.
His second wife also happened to be his first cousin. Interestingly, they shared the "Einstein" surname (their fathers were also first cousins) and would have shared it at the time they married, but Elsa had already married and divorced by that point.
If their fathers were first cousins, wouldn't that make them second cousins?
Not necessarily; their mothers were sisters, and their fathers were cousins on their father's side (so both Albert and Elsa had the surname "Einstein").
Funny that when we think of inbreeding we think of low IQ as one of the common characteristics.
Albert Einstein was not himself imbred. His mother and father were not related before marriage.
I think Hitler falls into the category too - I seem to recall that his parents were distant cousins.
The actual consequences of inbreeding are overblown by most. First cousins have a 12.5 percent chance of passing on a set of recessive gene expressions, which is about the same chance as an ordinary mother in her 40s.
This doesn't seem too out of character for Einstein when you think about it. Great scientists are't married to their ideas. As soon as a better theory comes along, it is reasonable for a scientist to abandon the previous theory for the newer one. Once he found a better wife, he dumped here for a better one. Great scientists don't just do science when they're in their laboratory. Great scientists rewire their entire brain to think of everything scientifically.