The world that we live in today is a very strange place. People of wonderful intelligence can and regularly will carry out strange decisions. Among the strangest decisions we have ever heard about, though, revolves around the death of Albert Einstein. As you no doubt know, Einstein is regarded as one of the greatest minds of modern history. He was an essential individual within the scientific community, and his death was felt strongly by many who have worked with and/or been inspired by the man himself.
However, such was his intellect, many felt that his mind should not simply be allowed to rot away as other brains would. When Einstein died, then, the pathologist who was on call at the time made a very particular decision. Thomas Harvey was in charge of the Princeton Hospital where Einstein passed away. In an instant, a decision was made: Einstein’s outstanding brain would be removed from his body and preserved.
Harvey took the brain from the body of Einstein, diced it up into 240 different pieces, and stored them in his basement. Naturally, this was not done without any permission from the hospital, the professionals involved, or the family of the great scientist himself. When it was discovered, it caused great controversy.
Eventually, Harvey was forced into handing large parts of the brain back – he provided Dr. Elliott Krauss with a piece in 1998. This was analyzed, and it was found that Einstein had a much higher count of glial cells than the average male brain.
Harvey’s heirs eventually transferred all of the remaining pieces of the brain to the National Museum of Health and Medicine, as well as numerous photographs of the whole brain. Harvey himself gave a 2005 interview regarding the history of the brain. Sadly, in 2007, Harvey himself passed on.
While it might be hard to understand such action to the average person, given the celebrity of Einstein in the scientific community it is easy to see a fellow scientist getting carried away. Preserving the thoughts and analysis of Einstein has been a priority ever since he passed on – for years, though, few could have possibly imagined that his actual brain had been kept.
As one of the great minds of our time, it is odd to think that Einstein’s brain essentially became a toy for someone to slice up and play around with.