Book Review: An Alchemy Of Mind - The Marvel And Mystery Of The Brain by Diane Ackerman

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago…
---Bob Dylan, "Desolation Row"

When Albert Einstein died in 1955 of a ruptured aneurysm of the abdominal aorta, his brain was secreted away by Princeton pathologist Thomas Harvey, who cut it into 240 blocks for study. Nothing in the noggin’ immediately jumped out and sang “I am genius, hear me roar” and so Einstein’s brain — after being plunked into two mason jars of formaldehyde — was placed in a Costa Cider cardboard box collecting cobwebs and virtually forgotten about as it sat under a beer cooler in Harvey's office. (The adage about preferring a bottle in front of me over a frontal lobotomy seems somehow apropos here, but I don’t know how.)

Eventually, renewed interest among various scientists and neurologists meant Einstein’s gray matter mattered once more and so Harvey took it out of mothballs and passed it around rather casually at times to in-the-know know-it-alls all over. At one point it was tossed into the trunk of a Buick Skylark for a cross-country road trip - which might make for a good buddy movie ("Dude, Where's My Cortex?").

In fits and starts of theory and inquiry, notes Diane Ackerman in the scintillating and enticingly all-embracing An Alchemy Of Mind, the 240 poked-and-prodded blocks went on to endure some flawed studies and unexpected conclusions. Public interest was stirred for a while, notes Ackerman, "with many of us picturing his glia as a sort of golden mucilage, the pith of brilliance.”

But the path to Einstein's brilliance, it was ultimately determined, may have stemmed from a missing Sylvian fissure, a fold running through the parietal lobes. Without that division, the consequent ease of connection and communication between neurons corresponded to Einstein’s contention that his mental functions didn’t involve words; he thought in images and took a mathematical approach to problem-solving. With such a unique brain formation, Ackerman suggests, no wonder Einstein “symbolizes genius” — though his affability gives it "a farouche human face surrounded by electric hair.”

Article Author: Gordon Hauptfleisch

Gordon Hauptfleisch is a Blogcritics Books Editor, freelance writer, and book reviewer for San Diego Union Tribune Books (R.I.P.). For many years he worked in and managed bookstores and record stores, and most recently was purchasing manager for San Diego Technical Books. …

Visit Gordon Hauptfleisch's author page — Gordon Hauptfleisch's Blog