Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 24, 1993 TAG: 9310240042
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CYNTHIA MAYER KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: LAWRENCE, KAN. LENGTH: Medium
It hasn't produced a worthy thought in almost 40 years. Which is to be expected, given its current state: bathed in alcohol, cut into about 100 chunks and slices, and divvied up among three glass jars.
Can this really be what's left of the mind that conceived the Theory of Relativity?
It can, and is.
Albert Einstein is in Kansas now. Well, his brain is, anyway.
It belongs to Thomas Harvey, a retired pathologist who typically doesn't tell his neighbors that the remains of one of humanity's great intellects can be found in his hall closet.
"I don't like to advertise it," he said with a little smile.
How did Einstein come to this?
The story stretches back to 1955, when the famous dandelion-haired physicist was working in Princeton, N.J., and Harvey was a middle-aged pathologist at Princeton Hospital. The two men knew each other slightly.
Their relationship become more intimate, however, when Einstein died and Harvey happened to be on duty.
Called on to perform an autopsy of the 75-year-old scientist, Harvey took that as permission to begin what has become a lengthy examination of Einstein's brain. His goal has been to discover some physical evidence of intellectual brilliance.
"Nobody had ever found a difference that earmarked a brain as that of a genius," he explained. "A few brains of great men had been studied, but only a few. So it was mainly an idea of seeing what we could find."
Harvey's search for the seat of genius quickly became a source of controversy.
It seems he neglected to let Einstein's family know that he had made off with the great man's gray matter.
It was only after the rest of Einstein's remains had been cremated and his ashes were scattered over the Delaware River - and word was leaked to The New York Times - that his heirs learned Harvey still possessed Einstein's central organ.
Family members, understandably, were upset, Harvey admits. He went to them in person to persuade them that studying the brain would be scientifically worthwhile. They eventually agreed.
Harvey then enlisted the help of his former teacher at Yale University, and together with a technician at the University of Pennsylvania, they carved the brain into blocks, each of which was tagged and numbered before being set afloat in formaldehyde. Microscopic slices of the organ were also made to prepare several sets of slides.
Since then, the brain has been Harvey's hobby and passion, and for nearly 40 years, he has carried it with him from state to state and job to job, studying it in his spare time in the hope of finding a clue to genius.
So far he has been baffled.
Einstein's brain, it turns out, looks like anyone else's. Harvey hasn't finished checking it, though. "I'm only two-thirds of the way through," he said.
Harvey has also lent slices of the brain to other scientists to study - so many, in fact, that he worries some parts of Einstein's brain have been misplaced forever.
Thus far, only one researcher has found anything promising. A University of California neurologist, Marian Diamond, discovered that Einstein's left parietal lobe had more glial cells than normal. She has theorized that since glial cells are known to feed neurons - they are usually found in areas of the brain recovering from injuries - this meant the cells might also be factors in intelligence.
Would Einstein have approved of this?
"Oh, I think so," Harvey said. He was, after all, a scientist.
Did he believe in an afterlife?
"He was religious," he said, glancing at the jar. "But he didn't go to synagogue."
Harvey studies slivers of the brain every two weeks or so. It is tedious work, but he hopes to be able to publish a detailed anatomy of the brain in two years.
By then, he will be 82. Harvey recognizes that his time as the brain's keeper is coming to an end.
The question then is who will be the organ's next caretaker. No Einstein heir has ever asked for the brain back, he said, and it remains in good enough shape for DNA research.
In light of that, Harvey is considering willing it to Hebrew University in Jerusalem, which has Einstein's archives. A lawyer for the university, Milton Handler, sounded a bit taken aback when told by a reporter recently of Harvey's interest.
"I find this a bit ghoulish," Handler said. On the other hand, "the medical school might want it," he said.
"I don't know whether it has any scientific value," he said. "I don't think it has any sentimental value. I can't conceive of any living human being who would want to look at anybody's brain."
by CNB