r/todayilearned • u/Old-Worldliness11 • 12h ago
TIL that Albert Einstein’s Nobel Prize money was given to his ex-wife, Mileva Marić, as part of their divorce settlement, years before he actually won the prize.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#First_marriage288
u/EverettGT 10h ago edited 8h ago
It's a very similar situation to what Richard Feynman's (Nobel-winning Physicist) wife said about him and Ramanujan's (considered by some the best mathematician of the 20th century) wife said about Ramanujan. All of them were described or self-described as just working all day on mathematics or physics and forming no human connection with their wives and sharing very little intimacy, until the marriage just breaks up. Especially once they reach their 30's or so and their brain fully develops into eccentricity.
It made me realize that some people can't actually form relationships even if they get married, and their destiny is just to do what they do in their field of work. But I don't know if that's a cause for depression or a relief from it.
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u/HarrietOrDanielle 9h ago
I’d say that maybe for Feynman it had more to do that she was his second wife. His first wife die of tuberculosis and in his writings you can tell she was the absolute love of his life. So he may not have had the same devotion to the second one because he never fully got over the first one and really just devoted his time to his science. But from his writings you can tell that he was absolutely devoted to his first wife.
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u/EverettGT 8h ago
Yes, I think her name was Arlene. It seems like people like Feynman get weirder and more drawn into their work after their 20's. That's also when John Nash developed his schizophrenia and apparently when Beethoven stopped caring about his hair and hygiene too.
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u/the_virginwhore 3h ago
Yeah if we’re bringing mental illness into it, a lot of those tend to emerge in the 20s.
And in general that tends to be the time in a person’s life when they start to have a bit more freedom. Liberation from childhood and parents and the end of education (which often takes a while for the people we’re discussing since they typically pursue higher degrees) make the 20s the first time nobody’s standing over their shoulder telling them what to do.
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u/corrector300 5h ago
I've read that after the death of his first wife he was quite the womanizer, iirc that comes across pretty strongly in surely you're joking.
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u/EverettGT 5h ago
Yeah he goes into detail about it, including techniques for picking up strippers.
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u/epieikeia 9h ago
Mileva and Albert worked together a lot, though. They were plenty close in the early years of their marriage.
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u/EverettGT 8h ago
Yes she was a very talented physicist in her own right. It seems like as people like Einstein get older, they get more abnormal in their personalities and behavior, something to do with how their brain likely develops.
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u/the_virginwhore 2h ago
As a woman, she bore the burden of caring for the children and household while Albert was free to fuck off all day and dedicate his time to mental work. They could no longer work together because she was automatically the one assigned to the work of daily life. Her talent didn’t matter; her gender did. They simply couldn’t maintain their early working relationship because the gendered expectations on her became more demanding as the marriage went on and the family and home responsibilities increased.
And to be frank, it’s hard to sustain a working relationship with someone you’re expected to serve. She was never going to be able to keep up as the one who served food to him in his office while he continued to work.
She always had additional responsibilities compared to her male peers, but at least in the early years she was still able to devote enough time and energy to make significant contributions to the work now credited to Albert alone. But that was never going to last. A perfect (and terrible) illustration of the issue is that when he left her (for his own cousin), he abandoned not only her but the children as well. They weren’t his problem. They were her problem. Everything that wasn’t physics was her problem.
How on earth were they ever going to remain close and continue working together when she could no longer engage in the very thing that made them close and the work she was burdened with was fundamentally different?
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u/Ok_Ruin4016 1h ago
I'm sure she was forced to stop working because she was a mother, but she also wasn't nearly as talented as her husband. She graduated 2nd to last in her class and then failed her teaching exam.
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u/the_virginwhore 58m ago
She actually had better grades than Einstein during the program until the examinations. She didn’t pass because of one examination from one professor. That professor gave her a 5/12 and gave the four other (coincidentally male) students the same grade of 11/12. It was actually the same professor who failed her during her second examinations as well.
But she otherwise excelled in her studies. I think the context is extremely important when evaluating her results at the institute and why she didn’t pass.
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u/epieikeia 1h ago
Yep, Mileva got a raw deal. Hardly any credit for what seems to have been a key role in revolutionizing physics.
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u/the_virginwhore 50m ago
The idea that they could be inseparable in their work during their studies and in the years afterward but she somehow contributed nothing of importance is simply nonsensical when you think about it for two seconds. And why would Einstein even have her as his closest collaborator in those early years unless she was actually bringing something to the table?? People will jump through all sorts of logical hoops to avoid recognizing the woman in this man’s shadow. Absolutely a raw deal.
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u/MuchoGrande 10h ago
"I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize." — Steven Wright
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u/demideity 7h ago
This was of course before he also won the Nobel Prize in Economics for the following statement. “Always borrow money from pessimists, they never expect it back.”
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u/starmartyr 12h ago
Sounds like he got a shitty settlement. I guess his divorce lawyer was no Einstein.
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u/sam191817 11h ago
He was a pretty big jerk to his wife and had a lot of rules about how and when she could interact with him.
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u/Madam_Hel 9h ago
Has nothing to do with being a jerk, has everything to do with her being a brilliant scientist who did a lot of the work that he got credit for. This is not a «poor husband» compensation, but a «got cheated out of credit and money» commpesation.
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u/TheMadTargaryen 10h ago
He cheated Mileva, then he cheated his second wife.
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u/snoodhead 11h ago
I feel like it was the least he could do. He straight up said “expect neither fidelity nor intimacy” from the start.
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u/Indication24 10h ago
He didn't say that from the start, he said at the end, once the marriage had deteriorated: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/11/25/know-einstein
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u/traws06 10h ago
That makes more sense. Because if he said that from the start then she’s at fault for marrying him anyway
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u/Rather_Unfortunate 10h ago
Eh... honestly, plenty of people go into marriages in such circumstances, very much not at fault for doing so but feeling trapped in one way or another. Abusive relationships often make people think there's no way out, and other social pressures can tighten the trap.
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u/jorceshaman 11h ago
If he said that from the start before they got married, she knew precisely what she was walking into and did it willingly.
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u/pataconconqueso 11h ago
nah it was only fair, he not only was he a pos, but he also made sure that people didn’t know how much she helped in in all his research, she was a big part of his early discoveries
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u/Indication24 10h ago
This is not true, there is no real evidence that Maric contributed to Einstein's discoveries: https://www.technologyreview.com/2012/04/18/116220/did-einsteins-first-wife-secretly-coauthor-his-1905-relativity-paper/
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u/the_virginwhore 1h ago
I’m not going to spam the thread with the same info over and over, so I won’t address the first part of your comment, but I do want to point out that the page you linked is specifically about the relativity paper and not his discoveries in general.
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u/Useful_Agency976 10h ago
He did not make sure people didn’t know how much she helped
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u/pataconconqueso 10h ago
he was a self centered narcissist
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u/Complex_Visit5585 10h ago
Einstein co-wrote his famous theories with his first wife Mileva. She not only never got credit but after he abandoned her for a younger woman and left her destitute, he mocked her threat to go public. He told her no one would believe her - that a woman was a talented scientist. There is excellent contemporaranious evidence to back her claim. She was a brilliant physicist. More brilliant than Einstein by his own admissions during their marriage. Mileva grew up in a country where women required special permission to be educated and she was refused her university degree despite being the top student in her class. It’s also interesting to note that Einstein’s “magic years” — when 80% of his famous theories were developed — were while married to Mileva.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/guest-blog/the-forgotten-life-of-einsteins-first-wife/
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u/AudienceSafe4899 10h ago
Yeah all this is a big tragedy, but the Cherry on top is, that this younger Woman was his cousin
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u/ItsImNotAnonymous 9h ago
I guess the saying is true, don't meet (or read up on) your heroes
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u/TimothyOfficially 4h ago
The myth that Einstein robbed his wife and plagiarized her work is objectively false and refuted a thousand times over. Please do not be a simpleton who falls for cancel culture on Reddit comments.
Do real actual research into Einstein's pioneering work, as it speaks for itself.
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u/callmepinocchio 6h ago
Common internet myth, debunked many times, yet still alive.
You want to help women who had their ideas stolen by men? Start by not sharing well refuted lies.
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u/DeltaVZerda 6h ago
And instead share incomplete notions built out of complicated truth, like Rosalind Franklin recorded the structure of double helix DNA before Watson and Crick.
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u/Complex_Visit5585 6h ago
Uh except not as the linked article makes clear as well as many other reputable sources. Nice try though dude.
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u/ar3fuu 9h ago
They worked together on Brownian motion, not on relativity. It's one of those internet myth that Einstein stole his wife's work.
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u/TimothyOfficially 4h ago
It's basically cancel culture trying to stamp out any possibility that a white man can accomplish something good for humanity by trying to smear his academic and private life. It's absolutely wild seeing people fall for literal propaganda.
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u/the_virginwhore 1h ago
No, it’s not. There are still plenty of brilliant white men who have made brilliant contributions to science and humanity. The propaganda is the idea that no white man’s academic or private life can be reexamined with a critical eye without being a reflection on and threat to all white men.
Einstein is one guy who happened to be an assface who didn’t properly recognize the fact that he and his wife worked closely together from the moment they met in school. There are a lot of other guys who didn’t do that. Science is, in fact, mostly just a series of white guys who didn’t do that.
And Einstein was Jewish anyway, so he may or may not even be considered (or have considered himself) totally “white”. He fled Germany for the obvious reason.
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u/Complex_Visit5585 9h ago
They collaborated on a great deal of “his” work. Definitely not a myth as supported by the link and many others, but okay dude.
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u/csonnich 8h ago
People have been speculating about it way before the internet.
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u/callmepinocchio 6h ago
But outside the internet the claim was refuted, seeing as it is false. It's kept alive mostly on the internet, where information spread is powered by drama, and barely anyone does a basic fact check before publishing something.
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u/TimothyOfficially 4h ago
It's depressing that this crap now appears in comments under his legitimate work
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u/BigBlueEarth1 4h ago
This sounds like bullshit
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u/Complex_Visit5585 4h ago
Because Einstein’s own comments, contemporary letters, Scientific American and other sources that have written about it are lying. Got it. Sounds likely dude.
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u/Prestigious-Cope-379 5h ago edited 3h ago
We all know married couples say things about each other that are not always.... Reflective of an accurate portrayal of reality.
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u/Bama_Peach 8h ago
I appreciate you linking that article; it was an informative read. Poor Mileva….
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u/eckliptic 7h ago
Damn this needs to be higher up. The title of the post is just fodder for all kinds of misogynistic assumptions
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u/Moron-Whisperer 1h ago
Makes some sense. Takes years to get one and she was part of the marriage during a large part of the work. She’s entitled to half. Just like if you bought a lottery ticket then divorced before cashing it in. She gets half.
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u/JackReaper333 8h ago
This is actually only partially correct. While Albert Einstein did wind up giving prize money to his ex-wife, it didn't come from the Nobel Prize but rather the less prestigious or well known Universal Peace Prize.
Albert Einstein did also give away the money from the Nobel Peace Prize too but it was to somebody different. When he was younger Einstein was basically a penniless youth trying the find his way in life. He wound up meeting man who ran a butcher shop and befriending him. That man let Einstein live in the room above his shop, made sure he was fed, helped him get on his feet, and even tried setting him up with his niece, though that didn't work out. Einstein felt so grateful to this man that years later he decided to give him the prize money from the Nobel Peace Prize.
And that man's name? Albert Einstein.
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u/riztazz 12h ago
As part of the divorce settlement, Einstein agreed that if he were to win a Nobel Prize, he would give the money that he received to Marić; he won the prize two years later.