The Other Einstein

by Marie Benedict

The Polytechnic was a new sort of college dedicated to producing teachers and professors for various math or scientific disciplines, and it was one of the few universities in Europe to grant women degrees.

These friends didn’t take away my resolve to succeed as I’d feared. They made me stronger.

his first Italian history lecture focusing on the Venetian ghettos where Jews were forced to live from the sixteenth to eighteenth century.

I constantly astonished myself with these girls. Astonished that I had the words to express my long-buried stories. Astonished that I allowed them to see who I really was. And astonished that I was accepted regardless.

Sometimes, in the pages of my texts and in the glimmers of my musings, I sensed God’s patterns unfolding in the physical laws of the universe that I was learning. These were the places I felt God, not in the pews of Mama’s churches or in their cemeteries.

I had wondered about Mr. Einstein’s own heritage, even though I knew he hailed from Berlin.

Sir Isaac Newton. We talked about Newton at dinner often. I liked his idea that everything in the universe, from apples to planets, obeyed the same unchanging laws. Not laws made by people, but laws inherent in nature. I thought I might find God in such laws.

It was the time of day when I felt happiest. Papa really understood me. He was the only one.

For the first time in my life, I believed that—maybe, just maybe—my limp was irrelevant. To who I was, to who I could become.

for me, this inclusion, this discussion, Mr. Einstein’s confidence in me, made me feel alive, as electric as the currents running throughout Zürich.

I felt alive in Mr. Einstein’s company, understood and accepted. The sensation was unique and unsettling.

He laughed and then lowered his voice to a whisper, “How I love to see that smile.”

We were small against the vastness of nature. Even Mr. Einstein, ever garrulous, grew quiet.

“Never before have I been so certain of someone or something as I am of you. I will wait, Miss Marić. Until you are ready.”

Kać, Serbia, and Heidelberg, Germany

In early October, just before my arrival at Heidelberg University,

to reach this point, to examine the questions that philosophers have asked since time immemorial, the questions that the great scientific minds of our day were poised to answer: the nature of reality, space, time, and its contents.

numbers were the architecture of an enormous physical system integral to everything. This was God’s secret language, I was certain. This was my religion, I was on a crusade, and crusaders couldn’t afford frailty.

“Please know that I will be waiting. Should you ever change your mind.”

Turning away from Mr. Einstein and his violin, I settled more comfortably onto the piano bench and faced the keys. Even though I could no longer see him cradle his violin, his music moved me. Not because his playing was virtuosic but because it overflowed with emotion.

“Now, I’m going to give you the advice you’ve given me time and again. Remember to live in the moment.

Smiling at me, he said, “How lucky I am in you.”

I had once gravitated toward its patterns as the key to unlocking God’s plan for his people and world, a sort of religiosity all my own.

Physics was nothing compared to Lieserl. God’s secrets were revealed in her face.

Her quietude was not weakness; it was an ardent watchfulness that would be replaced by a roar when required.

an old Serbian phrase, Kuća ne leži na zemlji nego na ženi; the house doesn’t rest on the earth but on the woman.

Because in my honest moments, I found the work of caring for Albert and our home mind-numbing.

Albert and I researched the nature of light, the existence of atoms, and most of all, the notion of relativity.

Romans 8:18 said, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

Time was relative to space. Time was not absolute. Not when there is motion.

“You are a genius at everything but the human heart.”

It was the language in which

we first communicated and the only one Albert comprehended perfectly.

love followed in science’s footsteps with Albert.

My new theory on relativity had revealed that time may not have the same fixed qualities that Newton, along with nearly every other physicist and mathematician since him, once believed. But an even more ancient philosopher, Seneca, had certainly understood one aspect of time perfectly: “Time heals what reason cannot.” Time and my work with Albert, in honor of Lieserl, had healed much.

the link between the machine and one of the great debates among physicists: what was the precise “stuff” of our world.

I felt a certain sense of peace that Lieserl’s death yielded this magnanimous laurel.

As I took refuge in my room, one of Newton’s basic laws of motion crept into my mind unbidden: the law told us that an object will continue on a particular path until a force acts upon it.

Izgoobio sam sye. I was lost. But I could no longer afford to be.

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction: or

the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts. Sir Isaac Newton

I had conversed with Madame Curie and held my own. That was my treasure.

website http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu.

The Other Einstein aims to tell the story of a brilliant woman whose light has been lost in Albert’s enormous shadow—that of Mileva Marić.

I have perennial favorites like Jane Austen, A. S. Byatt, and Agatha Christie.

I’ve really been enjoying recent releases by David Mitchell, Lily King, Ann Patchett, and Lev Grossman. New or old, I am drawn to authors who attempt to unravel the larger mysteries of time.