Thread by @MonicaBeletsky

Mileva Maric was the only woman in the physics program w Einstein. She failed her exams a few weeks after discovering she was pregnant and then dropped out. They both were working on 2 papers each. A few years later he published 4 papers that became known as a miracle. No

physicist has had as strong a year in history. Their marriage suffered but she would not grant a divorce- until he promised Mileva the entire Nobel Prize if he were to win it. In 1922, he won for his work of the 1905 “miracle year.” In their love letters, Einstein refers to her

having the “better topic” and “our work” on relative motion. John Statchel, the Einstein expert who almost single handedly erased academic open mindedness to believing in a co-authorship history took down the theory by insisting Einstein gave Maric too much credit bc he was in

Love. 🙄 I should add that Einstein kept over 10,000 pieces of paper and ephemera of his work and correspondence but the original manuscript for the first theory of relativity is inexplicably missing. After their divorce, he never topped his achievements during their marriage.

I wrote a screenplay about Mileva called EQUALS that will prob never get made but I spent 3 years researching/writing about her and Einstein and her story will always stay with me. #WomenScienceDay #WomenInScience

#WomenInScienceDay

And yeah, one of the papers is the E=MC^2 one.

Oops! I wrote the thread off the top of my head. I double checked the Einstein library website. It’s >80k saved items.

Oy. Some of the science-guy mansplainy crowd are frustrated I didn’t say she failed her exams once before the pregnancy & then after. She did! (It’s in the script.) This has been used against a co-authorship theory for yrs. The 1st time she failed she was wrapped up in research

And Einstein’s mom wouldn’t approve an engagement. They were rebelling against the syllabus and I imagine she hadnt studied hard enough. The 2nd time, she was pregnant, about to show, and unmarried, her career hopes slipping from her fingers. A professor noted on her transcript a

Disciplinary or conduct issue so it’s unclear if she failed one of the exams bc of her answers or their judgement of her behavior. I got a C in freshmen writing and I’m now a pro writer. I spent most of college making plays and almost failed astronomy. I see no correlation bw

exams and having good ideas. We know how bright she had to be to get in. We also know Einstein chose to hang out w her and work w her over everyone else. So you can choose to believe her exam results mean she couldn’t have been brilliant enough to co-author the papers or

you can see why they could both be true.

Some folks asked me to prove the miracle year manuscripts are missing. I've scoured the Princeton Einstein archive & Collected Papers of Einstein & cannot find an image or reference to the original 1905 manuscripts he submitted to the Annalen de Physik. I would be mortified to

mislead anyone & probably few would be more thrilled to see them than me. So today I took a step I never thought to do before -- I emailed the Hebrew University Einstein archive in Jerusalem to see if they have them. I found a citation

of manuscripts that fall across 1905 and I've requested to specifically see the original manuscripts of Einstein's 1905 miracle papers. I will keep you posted. I saw one yellowed, tiny, fuzzy image on the site but when you click it says 'not avail to the public.'

Here's an article by a lead Einstein scholar who argues against a co-authorship theory. His writing was sent to me by another Einstein expert (Stachel) when we were in touch. esterson.org/einsteinwife2.… Even Esterson takes pains to explain what someone may or may not have seen on the

original manuscripts. It's clear from context he has not seen them either.

But if anyone can find them, I'd love to be proven wrong.

Update: so far archivist @ Einstein collection @ HebrewU cannot locate them nor the Annalen der Physik who published them. Reaching out to Einstein Papers project at California Institute of technology and Princeton. If not there either, I assume they didn’t survive. Open to ideas

I have an update! After seeking an answer with an expert at the Einstein Archive at Hebrew U. & the the Berlin journal (Annalen der Physik) that published the miracle papers, I was able to ask the Director of the Einstein Center through a friend. I asked if Einstein's manuscripts

for the annus mirabilis papers survived. He informally confirmed they are missing. He replied, "No, they did not."

In other words, >80,000 dcuments of his were saved and archived, but all four of the original manuscripts for his 1905 miracle papers, four of the most revolutionary science papers of all time, that he submitted for publication, are gone.

We discussed Mileva Einstein on this podcast episode of @GuiltFemPod podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the…