Autopsy of Einstein’s success: His brain was not the hero

Asif Inzamam
Jul 24, 2017 · 7 min read

18 April 1955. On a spring morning, photojournalist Ralph Morse got a call from the LIFE magazine’s editor –

“Einstein had died”

Hanging up the phone, Morse drove 90 miles to Princeton with his camera and a bottle of scotch.

Obviously, there was an army of photographers, in the hospital & near the house. So, Morse decided to check where the most famous scientist of modern times exercised his neurons during his last years — “Institute for Advanced Studies”. There the sleepy photographer captured the most defining image of Einstein’s workaholic life — His wooden working desk.

Ralph Morse — The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

While he was capturing the messy working table with heap of papers on it and a blackboard behind, ridden with complex equations chalked on it, Thomas Stoltz Harvey, the infamous physician who performed Einstein’s autopsy, was probably cutting his brain into pieces (You are free to be horrified) and preserving it for which later his excuse was to understand the man’s sheer genius.

Today when I think about that morning, I feel amazed by the fact that how two opposing concepts about the greatest scientist till date was forming at the same time in the hands of two craziest individual present there. Morse captured the human Einstein — hardworking, passionate, messy. On the other hand, Harvey unlocked the door of dehumanizing Einstein, striking the first stroke in the painting that swapped the man away from humanity.

Though the dehumanization of Einstein had started long before his death. By then, he had bagged a noble, his baffling theories concerning relativity were proven right, his bizarre equation of transforming mass into energy was confirmed by Hiroshima & Nagasaki, he was about to deliver a theory that was supposed to answer every question about the universe.

Besides, his past was decorated with struggle, rejection, poverty and contempt. Later as a winner he appeared as the symbol of hope to people who were tired being rejected in their utilitarian life.

How can such a man be a mere human!

Humans are full of fallacy and defeat, devoid of luck and miracles, most importantly humans are dumb.

Einstein needed to be turned into something else — a myth, a symbol, a god.

Thomas Stoltz Harvey flagged the way. He stole (You are reading it right) Einstein’s brain during the autopsy and did hell what he wanted to do with it for the next thirty years (I know it’s long) before eventually publishing a study. He also happened to send small specimens (of the brain) to interested scientists for research purposes. We can guess how hard they tried to find something to prove that Einstein was not a human like us, at least a superhuman but not human. Some of them claimed to have found “it” but with irrelevant and insignificant data (Yes scientists manipulate too).

They crawled 500 yards of shit but unlike Andy didn’t reach to freedom.

The truth is Einstein was a human being like us, but somehow, he has turned into a comforting symbol of validating our incapability. We shrug shoulder and say “How can I do it. I am not blessed as Einstein” and get used to move on with challenges unmet, success non-achieved.

I, myself used to belief the same way. Then few days back I found him saying –

It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and respect from my fellows through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the one or two ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle.

One can feel the honesty embedded within the statement. It changed my perspective of life and the way I thought about my abilities. I re-looked upon the life of Einstein and found him as a human, full of struggle, indecision, confusion and limitations like me. Then, perplexed by my findings, I tried to mark the difference in his actions that made him stand apart from me and millions other.

This is what I’ve found.

Swim against the stream

“What? Didn’t he fail in math at school?”

Well, to disappoint you further he did not. Rather he himself said that he mastered integral and differential calculus by the age of 15. It’s true his grades were not outstanding. But that’s because he was learning extracurricular as complex as Calculus for which no one was evaluating him or grading him.

Unlike me, he dared to challenge the system and fight against it. Obviously, he suffered from the mockery of others only that didn’t stop him from pursuing his dreams. Recalling his troubles, he states

my teachers, who disliked me for my independence and passed me over when they wanted assistants. I must admit that I was somewhat less of a model student

We are glad that he isn’t.

Never limited by situations

Pretty much like me. My dream is to become a fiction writer and I have a marketing job (No they are not challenging) which consumes most of my day. I am left with a limited time in which I don’t get to read or write much. Quite naturally I am preparing to give up.

But Einstein didn’t. During that petty job, with some help of his wife (Yeah, he needed help too), he completed some of his greatest works which in turn handed him the assistantship and the staircase to fame and success.

Source: Business insider

What made him superior was his uncompromising tenacity to achieve what he desired. I am comfortable in thinking that my job is hindering my pursuit of dream and sighing on my ill fate before comfortably going to sleep everyday. On the other hand, Einstein took on the hindrance and crashed his way through it to success.

Confident as tiger

The later success often veiled his preliminary struggles which he overcame with his concrete trust in himself something we don’t have for ourselves.

Why would the world believe you if you don’t believe in yourself?

Loved his dream

He marked in one of his letters to his son

This is the best way to learn much with joy, so that one is not aware of the time passing. I am often so absorbed in my work, that I forget lunch-time

For me, even a burger now can distract me from writing this story. But Einstein was distracted by nothing, not even by the basic needs like eating, travelling, oversleeping on holidays or entertaining himself with meaningless human actions. Hell, he would have made a good Sherlock.

Work-fighter

He used a simple technique to overcome the obstacles. A technique that always helped him in his tough times. He started working more. He worked so hard that his hairs turned gray, even his marriage was affected. But Einstein did find the equation and changed our way of thinking with Gravity. How we give up and accept the defeat defines our difference with Einstein.

Freethinker? Rather Free learner

Knowledge that is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

Einstein believed the same. He learned without any sense of duty or necessity. He learned because he enjoyed. It was the only thing that gave him pleasure. Quite naturally he hated schooling which to date is more focused on teaching manners and discipline.

Einstein hated any kind of restriction to free human will. He once said about the military system

A man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed

Einstein was a mere human. Probably the smartest human. Because he understood how freewill, stubbornness, hard-work & confidence can lay the road to success. But don’t be mistaken, success was not his primary goal rather enjoyment of chasing it. We get so frustrated upon failures & obstacles that we often forget to get up and move towards our dream. Einstein never did that.

Don’t worry he shared his mantra -

Schopenhauer’s saying, that “a man can do as he will, but not will as he will,” has been an inspiration to me since my youth up, and a continual consolation and unfailing well-spring of patience in the face of the hardships of life.

The Ascent

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Asif Inzamam

Written by

Reader between the lines of science, philosophy, movies, history & polictics

The Ascent

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