I am a physicist and the author of two books on the history of science. I’m writing to express my appreciation for Tribune science reporter Ronald Kotulak’s “The Einstein Century: Miracle year; It still staggers the mind: 5 papers in 6 months that would unlock some of the mystery of the universe and change our lives forever” (News, March 27). While the article concentrates on Albert Einstein’s science rather than his personal life, his personal life is also important and interesting and relevant.
This article points out that during his miracle year of 1905, when he published five revolutionary papers, Einstein was a failed thesis student struggling to support his young family as a patent office clerk in Switzerland. But we know more than that about the background and context of this period since the publication of the love letters that Einstein exchanged during his college years with his classmate, sweetheart and future wife, Mileva Maric. One interesting fact is that Einstein’s wife was a physicist like her husband. Those early love letters show that the two physics students discussed their work and planned to conduct research together.
Mileva was engaged to and then married to Einstein throughout the most productive years of his career, the years associated with the important work and publication of the momentous discoveries for which we now celebrate Albert Einstein. Some scientists and historians believe that Mileva must have been involved to some extent in these great discoveries, at the very least as a participant in discussions of the ideas and perhaps more substantively, even though she was not included as a co-author on the published papers. Let’s remember Mileva Einstein as well as Albert Einstein during the anniversary of Einstein’s miracle year.
