How Dr. Thomas Harvey stole Einstein's brain
Posted a day ago by Chukwuebuka
After Einstein's death, Dr. Thomas Harvey, who worked at the hospital where Einstein died, took possession of the famed scientist's brain and held onto it for the next forty years, driven by a desire to determine what contributed to Einstein's extraordinary intelligence. .
Dr. Harvey was not the only one interested in revealing the secrets of genius. In the past, scientists had limited ways to study the human brain and its functions, especially in relation to exceptional intelligence. Therefore, they often resorted to analyzing actual brain tissue, as advanced computer technology and imaging techniques were not yet available.
Background story
The extraordinary journey of Einstein's brain began on the evening of April 17, 1955, when the 76-year-old physicist was admitted to Princeton Hospital in Princeton, NJ, with chest pains. Unfortunately, he passed away the next morning due to a ruptured aortic aneurysm.
Dr. Harvey, the pathologist who took Einstein's brain
Thomas Stoltz Harvey, born on October 10, 1912, was an American pathologist. That evening, the doctor on call performed an autopsy on Albert Einstein without permission. He would later say: "I knew we were allowed to do an autopsy, and I assumed we were going to study the brain." Not only did Harvey perform the post-mortem without permission, he also kept Einstein's brain for years after the test.
Albert Einstein's Brain
Einstein's brain weighed 1,230 grams, which fell within the normal range for a human brain. After the autopsy, Dr. Harvey took the preserved brain to a laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, where he spent three months dissecting it.
Dr. Thomas Harvey photographed Einstein's brain before it was divided into 240 parts. Slices were then preserved in celloidin, a common technique used to preserve and study brains.
Dr. Harvey Einstein's brain was cut into different pieces
Dr. Thomas Harvey sent small pieces of Einstein's brain to various doctors and scientists around the world whose work he found interesting. He hand-picked these experts and asked them to report their findings back to him, after which their work would be published so that the world could gain insight into the workings of a genius's brain. He kept two complete sets for his research.
Although no permission was given from Einstein or his family to remove and preserve the brain, the family later learned of the study and gave permission on the condition that the results be published only in scientific journals and not sensitive.
Einstein gave clear instructions regarding his remains, asking that his remains be cremated and the ashes scattered secretly to prevent idolatry. Unfortunately, Dr. Harvey not only took away Einstein's brain, but also removed the physicist's eyeball and gave it to Henry Abrams, Einstein's ophthalmologist. To this day, the eyelashes are kept in a safe deposit box in New York City.
Dr. Harvey was still with pieces of Einstein's brain in later life.
Soon after the autopsy, Dr. Harvey was fired from Princeton Hospital for refusing to hand over the preserved brain specimen.
It is important to note that Dr. Thomas Harvey was not a brain expert, and his knowledge of the brain was limited to detecting disease, decay, or injury in post-mortem examinations. This means he didn't have the expertise or resources to do the brain studies he proposed.
In 1998, Dr. Thomas Harvey gave the remainder of Einstein's brain to Dr. Elliot Krause, a pathologist at the University Medical Center in Princeton.
Dr. Harvey believed he was going to discover something special about Einstein's brain that he had never done before.
Dr. Thomas Harvey died of complications from a stroke on April 5, 2007 at University Medical Center in Princeton.
In 2010, the heirs of Dr. Thomas Harvey transferred all of Albert Einstein's possessions, including the remains of his brain, to the National Museum of Health and Medicine. The collection included 14 photographs of whole brains that had never before been made public because the brain had been fragmented.
All studies found Einstein's brain to be normal. There were no clear indications of anything immediately suggestive of exceptional intelligence or genius
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