When Albert Einstein died of a ruptured abdominal aneurysm in 1955 at Princeton Hospital in New Jersey no one would have imagined that his brain would end up in Weston.
The theoretical physicist who revolutionized the concepts of time, space and motion was considered a genius because his Theory of Relativity is believed to be the basis of modern physics.
Many people may not know that the pathologist, Dr. Thomas Stoltz Harvey, who performed the autopsy at Princeton Hospital, removed, and kept Einstein’s brain, a controversial act that some condemned, and some praised.
Einstein didn’t want to be worshiped for his intelligence and scientific discoveries, so he didn’t want burial and a tombstone. He had left behind instructions to be cremated and his ashes scattered.
Harvey took the brain without the permission of Einstein’s family. After it was discovered that he had taken the brain, Einstein’s son Hans Albert gave the doctor a reluctant OK, with the agreement that studies of the brain would be conducted only in the interest of science. Harvey convinced Hans Albert that a study of Einstein’s brain might shed light on one of nature’s greatest mysteries, the secret of genius.
Harvey soon lost his job, his marriage, and his career at Princeton due to the incident. He took the brain to Philadelphia, where he carved it into 240 pieces and preserved them in a hard and rubbery form of cellulose.
He cut the blocks into as many as 2,000 thin sections for microscopic study, and over the years he sent slides and photographs of the brain to at least 18 researchers around the world.
Soon after, Harvey moved to Wichita, Kan. to work as a medical supervisor in a biological testing lab. He soon moved again, to Weston, where he practiced medicine. He studied the brain in his spare time.
Many Weston residents remember Harvey.
Weston resident Susan Grinlinton never knew Harvey, but her mother and father did. Grinlinton, who works at the Weston Historical Museum and co-painted a historical mural on New Deal Warehouse, makes the point that while there was controversy about Dr. Harvey’s removal of the brain, he saved her father’s life.
Her father, Walter Cline grew tobacco and smoked from the time he was a teenager. He also raised 13 children.
“Dad was coughing a lot and went to see Dr. Harvey in the 1980s. He diagnosed my father’s lung cancer and without Dr. Harvey’s expertise in pathology it would have gone unnoticed,” Grinlinton said. “The X-rays showed black spots on the upper left lobe of the lung. The lobe was removed. It was not a simple surgery and no chemo or radiation was necessary. Dad had a tough time, but he recovered. Mom and dad both respected Dr. Harvey and Dad went on to live another 17 years. No ordinary doctor would have caught this.”
Grinlinton is sure that a lot of the older generation in Weston who were patients of Dr. Harvey were not aware of the brain he kept in a jar in a cider box under a beer cooler in his office.
Weston resident Ted Wilson’s dad also had a connection to Harvey.
“My dad, Roger Wilson owned a building in the upper block of Main Street close to the Methodist Church, currently occupied by Edward D. Jones Brokerage,” Wilson said. “We had operated an insurance agency there for years, and had moved the agency to the bank building at 421 Main in the mid-1980s. So, the upper main building was vacant, consisting of two rooms. Dr. Harvey rented it for storage, he and Dad were both Rotarians and would have seen each other regularly at weekly Rotary meetings. We never knew what Dr. Harvey stored in the building, had no direct knowledge about the brain, although that would have seemed a strange place to store such an item. The building was sold to Susie Harris, who opened the Towne Mouse store there, I am guessing sometime in the late-1980s. She was one of the first shops when downtown Weston began its revitalization.”
Louis Smither, longtime New Deal Warehouse owner, remembers being in the Weston Rotary Club with Dr. Harvey in 1987.
“When I joined Rotary, he was a member,” Smither said. “He was a very quiet Rotary member.” Smither said that a lot of the Weston residents who knew Dr. Harvey better than most have passed on.
In studies over the years neurobiologists have found that Einstein’s brain was different in many ways. While it was smaller than an average brain, it had interesting distinctions.
The first anatomical study of Einstein’s brain was published in 1999, A team led by Sandra Witelson, a neurobiologist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada did the first anatomical study of the brain. They found that Einstein’s parietal lobes were 15% wider than normal parietal lobes. These lobes are important for mathematical, visual, and spatial cognition.
Other researchers found that several regions of Einstein’s brain feature additional convolutions and folds rarely seen in other brains. His prefrontal cortex, which is linked to planning, focused attention and perseverance was also greatly expanded. A study published in 1996 at the University of Alabama found that the number of neurons in Einstein’s prefrontal cortex were more tightly packed than in the average brain and may have resulted in faster processing of information.
Einstein also had an extra ridge on his mid-frontal lobe, which is used for working memory and making plans. Einstein had four ridges, while most people have three. His corpus callosum which connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain was thicker than in control groups, which indicates greater co-operation between the brain hemispheres.
Another study found that there were more glial cells for every neuron in Einstein’s brain. Glial is like a glue that holds neurons in place while supplying them with oxygen and nutrients. Research on rats has shown that a stimulating environment can lead to an increase in glial cell count.
Dr. Harvey moved back to New Jersey in 1996. In 1998, after decades of safeguarding Einstein’s brain, he quietly gave it to the pathology department at the University Medical Center at Princeton, the university and town where Einstein spent his last 20 years.
Some people considered what Dr. Harvey did as wrong, and disrespectful to the Einstein family. Many expected him at some point to try and profit from selling it. Others admired him for removing the brain, - since it would have been cremated with the body - and searching for the best researchers in the world to study it.
Dr. Harvey died in 2007. In 2010, Dr. Harvey’s heirs agreed to transfer all of his materials to the U.S. Army’s National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, Md.