Driving Mister Albert

Driving Mister Albert

As the pathologist on duty at Princeton Hospital on April 17 1955, it was Thomas Harvey`s job to carry out the autopsy on Albert Einstein. It must have been a humbling experience, coming face to face with the world-famous physicist, whose theory of relativity was so complex it was fourteen years before it was understood enough to be verified. Who`s to say what inspired Harvey - greed or beneficence, pettiness or awe - but in an instance that was to shape his life forever, he cut the brain out of Einstein`s head and removed it for himself. Harvey chopped the brain into two hundred pieces, gave a third away, and kept the rest hidden in glass jars, floating in murky formaldehyde. Until 1997 when, aged eighty-four, Harvey decided the brain should be taken to Berkeley, to Albert Einstein`s grand-daughter Evelyn. It fell to the writer Michael Paterniti to drive him the four thousand miles from New Jersey to California

Machael Paterniti

Little Brown & Co

2000

Engels

DIV0008

9-780-3166-4585-5