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.

I’m on a mission to excavate the most important, fascinating and complex historical women and bring their achievements into the light of the modern day through my books. I keep a long list of women about whom I’d like to write, but I often find it difficult to choose which of the women to focus upon next. Sometimes the nature of a particular woman’s legacy or the timeliness of her struggles will guide me towards her story, and sometimes a specific piece of research will factor into that decision. In the case of THE OTHER EINSTEIN, the information in the above quote played a role in my selection of Mileva Maric Einstein. When I first learned about Mileva’s meteoric rise from 19th century Serbia, where it was illegal for girls to attend high school (except in certain, very proscribed circumstances), to admission into a university program to study physics, I found her story compelling in its own right, not just as a footnote to Albert Einstein’s life. I could envision the sort of resilience, hard work, and brilliance it must have taken to prevail in that sort of environment at that time. But, when I learned how challenging it was for European women to secure a university degree, Mileva’s accomplishments were thrown into bold relief, and I felt even more compelled to tell her tale. I often feel a sense of wonder when I realize the lengths historic women had to go to in order to do their crucial work. That is what propels me to write their stories. Certainly, in my most recent novel, THE MYSTERY OF MRS. CHRISTIE, my astonishment at the enigmatic, real-life disappearance that Agatha Christie suffered through when she was a young mother in 1926 moved me to write her story. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54221749-the-mystery-of-mrs-christie