Autopsy of Albert Einstein
The autopsy was conducted at Princeton Hospital, Princeton NJ, on April 18 at 8:00 am. Einstein's brain weighed 1,230 grams -well within the normal human range- which immediately dispelled the concept that intelligence and brain size were directly related. Dr. Harvey sectioned the preserved brain into 170 pieces in a lab at the University of Pennsylvania, a process that took three full months to complete. Those 170 sections were then sliced in microscopic slivers and mounted onto slides and stained. There were 12 sets of slides created with hundreds of slides in each set. Harvey retained two complete sets for his own research and distributed the rest to handpicked leading pathologists of the time. No permission for the removal and preservation had been given by Einstein or his family, but when the family learned about the study, permission to proceed the study was granted as long as the results were only published in scientific journals and not sensationalised.
In August, 1978, New Jersey Monthly reporter Steven Levy published an article, "I Found Einstein's Brain", based on his interview with Dr. Harvey when he was living in Wichita, Kansas. In 1988, Dr. Harvey retired and moved to Lawrence, Kansas. In 1996, Harvey moved from Weston, Missouri to Titusville in Hopewell Township, Mercer County, New Jersey. In the 1994 documentary Relics: Einstein's Brain, Kinki University Professor Sugimoto Kenji asks Harvey for a piece of the brain, to which Harvey consents and slices a portion of the brain-stem. Footage shows Harvey segmenting and handing over to Sugimoto a portion. In 1998, Harvey delivered the remaining uncut portion of Einstein's brain to Dr. Elliot Krauss, a pathologist at University Medical Center at Princeton. Certain parts of Einstein's brain were found to have a higher proportion of glial cells than the average male brain.
In 2005, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Einstein's death, the 92-year-old Harvey was able to give interviews regarding the remarkable history of the brain from his home in New Jersey.
Harvey died at the University Medical Center at Princeton on April 5, 2007.
Read more about this topic: Thomas Stoltz Harvey
Famous quotes containing the words albert einstein and/or einstein:
“By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of readers, to-day in Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be regarded as a bête noire the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!”
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
“God is subtle, but he is not malicious.
[Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber boshaft ist er nicht.]”
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955)