The Other Einstein: A Novel

This book is about Albert Einstein 's first wife, Mileva "Mitza" Maric, a Serbian woman with a limp whose parents didn't believe she had any hopes of a future with a husband but was rather brilliant with math and science and could possibly have a future as a professor and doing research. Switzerland was a progressive country that was allowing women into its colleges and universities and Mileva was accepted into Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich.She took up lodging at Engelbrecht Pension an all-girl boarding house where she became friends with Milana, Ruzica, and most especially Helena who also had a limp. She had never had friends before.as.She was always teased and ridiculed. In class, Dr. Weber was particularly hard on her because she was a woman and because she was Serbian. One student reaches out to.her and that student was Albert Einstein. He flirted shamefully with her and she turned him down. Her friend Ruzica talked her into going into one of the cafes where Einstein and his friends were having an intellectual discussion on science and she found herself drawn into the discussion. When Einstein found out about the women's playing music after dinner he showed up uninvited with his violin to play with Milena. The other women don't much care for him, though.Helena and Milena have made a pact to not have a man in their lives and to focus on their careers. But soon, Helena has found a man to love and has broken the pact. So, Milena doesn't see why she has to keep the pact too, especially when her mother is encouraging her to pursue romance even though her father is against it. Einstein and Milena have talked about marriage and while Einstein has graduated now and is looking for work, which is hard because his teachers aren't giving him good recommendations due to his absentees from class and his disrespect toward them. Milena took a semester off her second year in order to cool off her feelings for him and got behind in school which meant that she had to wait another year before she could take the test.Einstein talks her into taking a vacation at Lake Como where they can make love before they get married. Milena comes back pregnant and Einstein won't marry her without a steady job. She flunks the exams due to her pregnancy and he refuses to come to her home to talk to her parents about the pregnancy. He has a lead on a job in the Patent Office but for now, he's tutoring. She takes the train up to the next stop to see him but he refuses to take the train up to the next stop to see her. Eventually, her money runs out and she must go back home furious at him for not seeing her. She has a baby girl that he asks her to leave with her parents six months later because he got the patent office job and he listed himself as unmarried and he can't show up with a child in tow. So she does for now.On a paper they worked on together he asks that she take her name off of it in order for him to get better job prospects when he shows it to a friend. A year later their daughter comes down with scarlet fever and dies. On the way home riding the train, she comes up with the Theory of Relativity. The year 1905 was known as Einstein's Year of Wonder. He published four groundbreaking papers. Milena's name was supposed to be on them but he took her name off of them. She was furious. This cracked their marriage. Not to mention the infidelity. Einstein was a real bastard.While this book plays a little fast and loose with the facts in that no one really knows what really happened and the author is imagining what she thinks happened, it is indeed a possibility. You really feel sorry for Milena who loses everything in her association with Einstein. This was a really good book that tells an incredible story. I give it five out of five stars.Quotes I had become the embodiment of the old Serbian phrase the house doesn’t rest on the earth but on the woman.-Marie Benedict (The Other Einstein p 175)

3.5 stars Brilliant, sheltered young woman gets played and played and played again.A deformed hip let Mileva pursue an education in a man’s field–physics right at the dawn of the 20th Century. In her cohort was the young Albert Einstein who takes an interest in Mileva from the get-go. While Mileva has made a pact with other girls to pursue science and live the life of a professional, Einstein continues his efforts to ingratiate himself. As feelings ripen, Mileva takes the BFF pact with the girls very seriously and flees to another University. When she gives up and returns to Switzerland, the girls and Einstein love finally triumphs. Until it doesn’t. She should have trusted her gut reactions. But, woman believe what the want in any day and age. (Been there myself, got the t-shirt and the divorce). Idealistic, sheltered. Sadly it often adds up to gullible and manipulable.Since time began men have used smart women to advance their careers. In the early 20th Century it was considered a good move to marry the boss’s daughter or similar. After all, marriage made them “one.” Many a woman has contributed far, far more than we’ll ever know to a famous man’s career. Remember Harry Truman’s saying? “Behind every successful man is a proud wife and a surprised mother-in-law.” But in Albert Einstein’s early career it was an outraged wife and a surprised mother-in-law. But that outraged wife was savvy–way savvier than her using rat of a hubby.This book is well written and believable. The author gives a full account of what is fact and what is fiction which helps. But even acknowledging that Mileva was very, very well educated and therefore would have come into contact with progressive views on women-probably even going so far as to read the early feminists. Add that Albert made the so-called Bohemian life seem so romantic (hardly the first time a man’s pulled that ruse, either be it a lifestyle on the extreme left or the extreme right), I found some of her outrage a bit too 21st Century. While, I doubt another woman was duped to the point of a Nobel Prize, I just think at that time and place she’d have gone on accepting the lies. The pleasant surprise was how she negotiated the end. Brilliant move.But, did she really clearly see that Berlin saw East Europeans so badly then? Antisemitism was clearly present in Kaiser Wilhelm II’s reign and in his court, but the East European discrimination, I’m not sure. Finally, I found it very odd that she didn’t have at least a maid of all work.In the end I did not like Milvena-she was full of herself. But if I disliked her, I loathed Albert Einstein.

I being a female physics student of the 90's remember the male dominance even that late into the years. Having spent so much time learning about Einstein and his studies it was very interesting prospective to see what could have possibly been his personality and attitude towards women or at least his first wife. When we study science we hear of the great "scientist" and the theories they made famous. But we do not get to see them as "people" ... knowing another side of these famous "scientist" gives a totally diff perspective of who they are.

Bien documentado con mezcla de ficción. Te hace sentir el amor que fluye y el coraje que puede producir compartir su vida con alguien como su esposo. Lo recomiendo en su idioma original el vocabulario es muy formal. Me encanta.

Me encantó este libro y me dio visibilidad sobre la historia que no conocemos. Me encantan los libros que escribe Marie que da visibilidad a figuras femeninas de la historia

Very good and engrossing

Bought as a Christmas present As what do you buy a woman who has most things 👍

It is not too long so I snuggled down in my recliner and didn't stop reading it until I had finished it. It purports to tell the story of a young Mr and Mrs Einstein. I was very surprised by what I read. If it's true (and the author gives numerous sources including personal letters). If it's true, I was shocked to find that Al was something of a mysoginistic a--hole. What a shock. Mrs E was the one who could to the complicated arithmetic and physics to support the theory of relativity. Al didn't give her credit until the got divorced at which time he gave to her the cash which he was given along with his Nobel Prize. What an eye-opener (if true). And all very well written.