In the braincase beneath that wild hair
Hatched a theory beyond all compare:
You can drive without gas
If you transform some mass,
Because E equals m times c-square.
On April 18, 1955, hours after legendary genius Albert Einstein died, 42-year-old pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey stood over the body with scalpel in hand. He "tonsured the scalp.... He cracked the skull like a coconut." A few peels, cuts, and snips later, "at last, there it was. A huge, rough pearl. He reached with his fingers into the chalice of the man's cranium and removed the glistening brain."
According to Michael Paterniti, who wrote those words, Harvey's life was never the same after that moment. His marriage and two more ended in divorce. He lost his job and eventually left New Jersey for Kansas, where he lived next door to Beat Generation author William Burroughs and worked as an extruder in a plastics factory. Everywhere he went, he carried "two large glass cookie jars full of what looked to be chunks of chicken in a golden broth: Einstein's brain, chopped into pieces ranging from the size of a turkey neck to a dime."
Mr. Paterniti had heard the story of Dr. Harvey and Einstein's brain as an urban legend and had enjoyed its embellishments too much to question its veracity. Then, by chance, he rented an apartment in New Mexico from a friend of Burroughs, who assured him that the substance of the tale was true. Soon Mr. Paterniti had Dr. Harvey's phone number and, after four months of trying at various hours, reached the elusive former pathologist.
They discussed a meeting, but then the doctor disappeared — back to Princeton, NJ, it turned out, where the author finally caught up to him again. After several visits, Mr. Paterniti learned offhandedly that Dr. Harvey, then eighty-four, wanted to go to Berkeley, CA, to meet Einstein's adopted granddaughter, who was rumored to be the love-child of the genius himself. He would, of course, take the brain with him.
Article comments
1 - Vikk
Ah, you beat me to the review on this one. I agree that it's an interesting book and concur that there could have been a bit less of the author's personal life. Sometimes I'm amazed at what can turn out to be a really good read.
2 - Fred Bortz
Hey, Vikk, I think you should post your review here. Or I can add it to my Science Shelf review as a second opinion.
It never hurts to see more than one reviewer's comments.
3 - Temple Stark
Wow, that's sad. Not rationally sad, I'm not claiming that, but to see genius broken into pieces, put in jars and tramped; I don't have a good feeling. I could have done without this information. And yes, that's just me.
4 - vikk
I agree, Temple, it is ghoulish.
5 - Fred Bortz
Ghoulish? No more so than any autopsy in which a brain is removed for study and preserved by the scientist. The problem was, this scientist lost his job, traveled across the country, and kept his jealously guarded research sample with him.
I wouldn't call Dr. harvey a ghoul. But quirky? That's an understatement!
This link should take you to an article called "Doctor kept Einstein's Brain for 43 years in yesterday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
It turns out Dr. Harvey viewed this as a "responsibility" until he finally gave it up seven years ago to the Princeton University Medical Center. Harvey is still alive at 93, and he seems as weird as ever judging by the quotations in the article.
6 - Eric Olsen
great review Fred, crazy stuff, much appreciated, where fetish and materialism meet
7 - NancyGail
Talk about truth being stranger than fiction
8 - shanti
The goulish nature of this story and of Dr. Harvey's motives has nothing to do with autopsies, or the doctor's supposed sense of scientific curiosity. More suprisingly, it also has nothing to do with hunk of flesh that the good doctor cut, pickled, and jarred. Dr. Harvey had no concern for scientific discovery. He wished only to touch greatness, hoped only to catch a piece of the reflection of a man no one could ever hope to be. He is an opportunist, a charlatan, a false man of false ideals. This is the man that looked upon one of the greatest scientists of all time, who dared to take a piece for himself. The success of this article is Paterniti's portrayl of this sad, pathetic man and his sad, pathetic motives. If Dr. Harvey told the truth, that he took a morbid souvenir, it would have been a quirky story, but it would not have had the same menacing goulishness, this truly sad wrongness that offends one's core of morality.