Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Technology Books Media Book Reviews

Driving Mr. Albert 82

Posted by JonKatz from the driving-across-America-with-Einstein's-brain dept.
You've all probably heard the great scientific folktale about Einstein's brain, removed mysteriously during the great man's autopsy and hidden away for four decades? It's almost all true, and Michael Paterniti not only tracked the brain down, but drove across country with it (in a Tupperware jar) and the odd octogenarian pathologist who took it. This is a great cosmic road trip. You cannot spend a more entertaining few hours this summer than with this book.
Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America With Einstein's Brain
author Michael Paterniti
pages 211
publisher The Dial Press
rating 8/10
reviewer Jon Katz
ISBN 0-385-33300-5
summary Solving one of the great scientific folktales

You've all heard the scientific folktale about Einstein's brain, right? In l955, during an autopsy after the great man's death, Einsten's brain was removed from his body, ostensibly to be studied for clues to his genius. The tale varies and gets murky after that, but most versions have it that the brain supposedly disappeared and was languishing in some file cabinet or basement.

Some rumors had it that the brain had been cut up and parts resided in various attics and garages around the United States and Canada. Other parts were said to be in the posession of the controversial doctor who performed the autopsy, an odd old man who had vanished from public view. Einstein's family, went the tales, wanted no part of his brain, or of the notion that anything could be learned from it.

Freelance writer Michael Paterniti heard the rumor, along with almost everyone else in America who is interested in science and/or technology, and was fascinated by it. He happened to mention it to his landlord in New Mexico, who didn't even blink. "Yeah," said the landlord, "the guy with the brain lives next to William (Burroughs, the writer) in Kansas. He used to be a pathologist."

So it turns out a shocking percentage of the rumor was true and soon thereafter, Paterniti tracked down the pathologist and the brain (which was stored in formaldehyde-filled Tupperware jars in New Jersey, and offered to drive him to California, where the doctor wanted to take it to Einstein's grand-daughter. Soon the two were barrelling across America in Paterniti's Buick Skylark headed for California, munching donuts, staying in cheap motels, the brain bouncing along in the trunk.

One of the amazing thing about this story is that it could have been any one of us who heard the rumor, checked it out and ended up with the brain in the trunks of our cars. But not all of us could have written so terrific and haunting a book. "Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain," details the journey of Paterniti and the bizarre octogenarian Dr. Thomas Harvey, the pathologist who impulsively separated Einstein and his brain during the latter's autopsy and hid it in various garages and basements for four decades while lawyers and ethicists fought over what to do about it, then essentially forgot that it existed.

Dr. Harvey, it turns out, is a man of few words, hardly any of them lucid or revealing. Most of them are phrases like "Way-ell, it sure has been a wonderful specimen."

Harvey, no longer a physician, bounced around the country, ending up working in a plastics factory, and can't really give a lucid accounting of why he took the brain or what he really intended to do with it. One gets the sense though that the act -- branded by some as ghoulish thievery -- ended up ruining his life in some way that even he couldn't describe. But those details don't really matter. In the hands of Paterniti, this is a surreal yarn about myth, genius, desire science and the great rewards of curiousity. There's a wonderful hacker quality to Paterniti, a mystery-solver who can't rest until he figures out the puzzle of what happened to the brain bouncing around in the Tupperware jars, the only remaining physical legacy of the century's greatest thinker.

Although nothing all that dramatic happens on the trek across America -- the odd couple stops and visits with the writer Burroughs and Paterniti can't help exclaiming to incredulous strangers all along the way what's in the trunk of the car -- the writing more than carries the yarn, as when Paterniti describes his first encounter with the loopy Dr. Harvey:

"Harvey appeared from the darkness with a big cardboard box in his hands. Then he set it down and, one at a time, pulled out two large glass cookie jars full of what looked to be very chunky chicken soup in a golden broth: Einstein's brain chopped into pieces ranging from the size of a turkey to a dime...And then he noticed me, noticing. Perhaps he saw my fascination, too, or maybe he was mad at himself for revealing so much, after all. Dr. Thomas Harvey had spent these last decades invisible to most of the world. He immediately gathered the cookie jars back up, returned them to the box, and Quasimodoed from the room, leaving me nothing but the after-vision. Flashes of bright light, the chill of a visitation."

As great as the writing, and as funny as Paterniti can be, he also knows he has a poignant tale to tell, about the boundless fascination the world holds for one of its most amazing minds. In what other country in the world could this possibly have happened? And what would Einstein himself have made of the spectacle of his brain tissue being carted all over the country for decades in plastic jars? Harvey, Paterniti comes to believe, just couldn't bear to put the great mind into the ground and hoped that somebody somewhere might unlock the key to Einstein's genius. And the hapless pathologist paid for his impulse, spending the rest of his life in controversy, then obscurity. Paterniti is always conscious of Einstein, his sorry personal life and his eerie presence every step of the way.

"Driving Mr. Albert" was initially published as a magazine piece, and in a narrative sense, it comes up a bit short as a full-fledged book. But it's a great magazine piece, and a surprisingly powerful and entertaining story. Paterniti is a very fine writer, and he showed amazing, almost inspirational, enterprise in getting to Einstein's brain. The story of the brain's final trek -- it does find a home, Harvey's untimately revealed purpose in letting Paterniti into his life -- is a brilliant rendering of one of the most bizarre folktales in modern science. You cannot spend a better afternoon or evening this summer than in reading this book (soon to be a major motion picture, by the way).

purchase this book at fatbrain.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Review: Driving Mr. Albert More

Review: Driving Mr. Albert

Comments Filter:
  • On the other hand, I don't think the Bible says anything about what to do with dead bodies.

    That's only because you haven't bothered to read it, it would seem, or else you'd know about large portions devoted to ritual impurity caused by contact with corpses. As a starting point, consider Lev. 12:1 - 15:33.
  • Yes, he was a great physicist, but there are many many more who have arguably accomplished more, and who were easily just as smart. They just weren't lucky enough to have developed this bizarre cult of personality around them.

    I could care less about Einstein's gray matter. Dissect Feynman's brain, I am sure its much fresher.

    -josh
  • "Smithers, massage my brain".
  • Exactly. I want to be disposed of in an interesting way, like to be left in a forest to rot or something. Maybe on the seafloor to be eaten by crabs. Just make sure I decompose naturally - no embalming fluid for me, thanks.
    Even if they feel the strong need to put me in a box under 6 feet of dirt, I want no preservatives added.
    I'll be the fastest rotting corpse in there... cool!

  • Ada Lovelace :)

    And the wonderful chickie^W lady that worked/hacked on the first real computer and debugged it (yes, i have forgotten her name but i believe she was a naval officer)

    darkewolf

  • Many thanks for brushing up my knowledge base

    darkewolf

  • Indeed. I've learned that some people are so self-absorbed with their own perceived superiority that they act like nitwits thinking they're making some kind of profound point.

    No one condemed you, though one response was a bit sarcastic. In fact, both responses were helpful enough to provide you with a map. Their motives were to educate you, not condem you. You are the self-righteous fool sneering at the innocently gullible.
  • Weird. I thought I was the only one who gets queasy at the thought of embalming It's so disgustingly morbid, turning a person's body into prop with a bunch of chemicals. And cremation seems so wasteful.

    I think one of the nicest ways of being disposed of, aside from organ donation and training medical students, is to be chopped up and fed to animals at a petting zoo. Who cares about worms and bacteria, I want to feed cute fuzzy animals!
  • This may be slightly off topic, but it does tie in with Albert and Germany and the such... and it is a slow day.

    Maybe I'm missing something really obvious, but it has always bothered me that a comparatively small country like Germany could have enough citizens to wage war on the rest of the world.

    I mean, this is a country about the size of Montana (according to the CIA page linked above). It seems that we could have beaten them just based on sheer numbers of bodies we could throw at them.

    Anyone out there who can shed a little light on this for me without having to write a poli-sci thesis?

  • not really. personally, i wouldnt give a shit. i mean, im dead. im gonna be dust. my body can either sit in a coffin and rot, or my brain can be cut out and studied in the offchance that it might reveal something useful. either way, im not gonna know about it.
  • Our soul is what makes us different from the plants and other animals around us.

    Now that's disrespectful, goddammit. I don't believe in God (though I do have a sneaking suspicion that the mind is more than physiology) but I'm not particularly anti-religion. The exception is where they make ludicrous statements like these. How do you claim that, say, bonobos don't have a soul compared to a human despite being demonstrated to have more intelligence than a three-year-old kid? Presumably any aliens we meet would also not have a soul. Hah! Are you in for a shock...


    ---
  • Dammit...can I ever expect something from Katz in which he doesn't claim somebody is a hacker. It was a fine review except for that gratuitous hacker plug.
  • Hmmm... So how do you install linux on Einstein's Brain? If it's possible, it shouldn't be too hard to port the code to other brains.

    New concept of an alarm clock:
    # crontab -e
    6 * * * * killall -9 sleep

  • ....think of how much the S/N ratio would improve on Slashdot

    Somehow, the idea of reading anything which comes recommended by Katz does not strike me as a valuable use of time.

    Of course, neither does reading Slashdot :)
  • (I mean, not as if I knew the guy or have any standing to be presuming to talk for him, but...)

    "I really would have preferred some jam in those jars."

    (and no, not with the brain in it too, you sick bastards)

  • I have to admit that this is the first thing that sprang to my mind. I've ticked all the boxes on my organ doner card and am pretty sure that Einstein is the kind of guy that would have too.

    I guess the reason the post was moderated flamebait is because the brain wasn't stolen to cut up in the interests of science but by someone who didn't have a clue what they were going to do with it (surprised it didn't find its way onto eBay).

    Phillip.

  • Oh chill out ! - a
  • Many geniuses often just have an intuitive understanding for their unique insights, and need someone else`s help to put their ideas down

    Yeah - for instance, Barry Manilow can't read or write music. Does his genius shine less brightly?

    Pete
    How to tell a story... [amazon.com]

    -Pete

  • Last I heard from Albert, he was sleeping at a bottom of a vat of molten cheedar.

    How did he sound? Muffled?
    And what's cheedar?

    -Pete
    How to tell a story... [amazon.com]

    -Pete

  • I'm going to have a clause in my will that says before anyone gets any of my loot, i have to be stuffed and placed on the couch in the living room for at least 5 years. hehe. My cat has to be there (stuffed) too. Otherwise, no one gets anything.

    Damn disrespectful children.

  • I am glad that I don't know what brains taste like.

    No problem ! Order some tasty ones on-line [brains4zombies.com].

  • Famous for her nanoseconds (foot long pieces of wire, the distance an electrical signal can travel in a nanosecond) and for giving the world COBOL.

  • Einstein had better graphics and branding than Niels Bohr.

    How many "typical people" know anything more about Einstein other than the haircut, and the fact he invented the atom bomb (sic).

  • Check a map [pnl.gov] first next time... Germany borders on both the North Sea and the Baltic sea.

    J1

  • Very true. Not to belittle his work in relativity and photoelectricty, but how much of his own and other people's time did Einstein waste with his misdirected GUT work, the cosmological constant, and arguing against quantum mechanics?

    Everything Einstein ever said or wrote is treated as sacrosanct. Why should his political and sociological views have been more valid than anyone else's because he derived E=mc^2?

    Einstein was a great scientist of course, but well known and feted probably because of his memorable physical appearance. We're seeing the same thing with Stephen Hawking today.

    To return to the original article though, am I the only one pleasantly surprised that the crank didn't just /eat/ the brain?
  • From http://www.homeschoolzone.com/hsz/le ppert2.htm [homeschoolzone.com]:

    Musical Intelligence
    Spatial Intelligence
    Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
    Interpersonal Intelligence
    Intrapersonal Intelligence
    Linguistic Intelligence
    Body-Kinesthetic Intelligence

  • Michael Faraday ("whose theory of electromagnetic fields and lines of force largely inspired Einstien`s quest for relativity") couldn`t understand the mathmatics behind his theories... Faradyay`s law developed with him picturing them almost like rubber bands. His notebooks and diaries were filled with unstructured streams of thought. It was James Clark Maxwell who later set them into math. Faraday tried to follow Clark`s work, but latter wrote Maxwell asking him to trasnslate his hieroglyphics into a common language he could understand.

    Many geniuses often just have an intuitive understanding for their unique insights, and need someone else`s help to put their ideas down into Mathematical language for immortality. Faraday had his rubber bands, Einstein had his bicycle, flashlight and ray of light. Genius is not so much being able to write stuff down in mathematical code, but having unique insights into problems that have stumped others for centuries. Einsteins insights came through his "deep thought" experiments, a sort of cosmic voyage in his mind. There are seven different intelligences, Math is just one of them...
  • I really don't see what the problem is. What is Einstein going to do with his brain?

    "Would you like it if someone kept a piece of one of your relatives after they died? Without even asking your permission or letting you know what they were doing? No, you wouldn't"
    And what gives you the right to put words in my mouth? People can dig up my relatives if they want and chop them up and put them in jars. It makes no difference. They're dead!
  • ...at least it would prove that Jon has a brain. Most scientists believe Jon has a bundle of cells that act like a brain (like in an earthworm). They give Jon the ability to breathe, eat, move, shit, and post to Slashdot.
  • That could result is some serious emotional trauma for those at the funeral. Let's say you are at Uncle Bob's funeral and there is a sudden wind shift and Uncle Bob gets sprayed into the group; that is really gonna fuck with some people. I guess every one could bring some plastic sheeting, but it would be too much like a Gallegher(sp?) show at that point. Maybe we could just shoot the corpses out of a cannon?
  • You know what, if someone took my brain after I was dead, I would care.

    Wait a minute, no I wouldn't, because I'm dead! Come to think of it, I don't even care right now if someone took my brain after I was dead. Cause I'd be dead!

    Lighten up, it's just a book. ;P
  • I assume from your disrespectful tone that you're an atheist, as such people seem to delight in the baseness of human nature that they believe in.

    I know a lot of atheists who would disagree with you, and would have good reason for doing so.

    The person you responded to wasn't speaking in a disrespectful tone. They were just stating a couple of facts. The soul (assuming it's existence) is a supernatural entity. That means that is is ABOVE the natural or physical world (The world "science" studies (Good way to be disrespectful, don't you think? Putting quotes around a word.)) Therefore, since the soul is a supernatural entity, I first can't understand how it's the vehicle of the soul unless there is some sort of bridge that links the natural entity of the body and the supernatural entity of the soul. Either way, the body is still a natural entity, and therefore during and after the time it carries a soul, it's not part of the supernatural and is, as the other person said, meat, bones, and miscellaneous scrap. Guess we arn't much more than hot dogs (other than our "soul" of course ;)

    Sincerly not an atheist but getting closer and closer the more he talks to people like you, Moi!
  • Hey, never mind Germany, think of Britain. Small pissant little island, manages to basically whip all the rest of the world in battle and rule for 2 centuries (OK, American Revolution aside :-) And Rome dominated the world for maybe 800 years.

    There's 2 key elements to this.

    First off, most of your men are fighting, so they can't farm, produce food, work in industry, etc. So you need to get the folks you've just conquered to work for you, either by bringing them back home as slaves as the Romans did, or by shipping the stuff back home (as the British did).

    Second off, you make it clear that your way of life is what's got you to where you are. Simply by being in power, ppl will respect you and try to imitate your way of life (think of America today). And once that's happened, you've essentially _transformed_ the country you've conquered into a copy of your own. OK, the local customs will still survive, but there will be an aspiration to be like the ppl in power.

    Anyway, this is way off-topic, so I'll stop now.

    Grab.
  • In the president's basement, just sitting there in a jar of fermaldehyde.
  • As you can see on this map [odci.gov], Germany has a North coast. (Thats if you trust the CIA of course)
  • what bollocks. how can you disrespect something that doesn't exist? it goes something like thius: the body is a fleshy mantle which (among other things) supports the brain. The brain in turn appears to hold the mind. when the body dies, the brain dies, and the mind is not present in the collection of non-snetient, non living protien strings, corpuscles, carbohydrates and what not. so chopping the body that, whe alive, formed a large component of a manb we call einstein is no more disrespectful than shovelling horse shit onto your roses.
  • I assume from your disrespectful tone that you're an atheist, as such people seem to delight in the baseness of human nature that they believe in. The body is the vehicle of your immortal soul, and a testament to the Will of the Lord; as such it is worthy of respect even after your soul has depart
    I consider myself a devout Christian. I could reveal a long laundry list of qualifications; but in light of Philipians 3 I will not. Life is certainly sacred. Our soul is what makes us different from the plants and other animals around us. Our soul is really what makes us "us". On the other hand, I don't think the Bible says anything about what to do with dead bodies. I think it is mainly custom. As far as the Resurection is concerned, I don't think the state of our bodies when we die (or shortly thereafter) is any impediment to the power of an Almighty God. I think "respect for the dead" has more to do with what you say and think about them than what you do with their remains. If your father dies, do you respect him more by giving him a $100,000 monument or by living by the ideals your father believed in?
  • And yet, you take the time to not only READ the article, but to also attempt some witty comment about the S/N ratio...
  • "making out" with it? I'm sorry, but you seem to be ill-informed on the definition of necrophilia.

    ----------

  • Diane Rehm had an hour long interview with the author. I remember I was driving in the middle of nowhere listening to Paterniti explain how he got the brain and how they ended up driving across the United States in a rented Buick with it. Strange!

    The show was Teusday, Aug. 1, 2000 [wamu.org]. The direct link to the Real Audio archive is here [wamu.org].

    Worth a listen!

    ---
    In a hundred-mile march,

  • i agree -- everytime i pass a graveyard i think of all the wasted energy lying there under the ground, and i try to come up with a more fitting way to ritualize death. i'd rather be mulched to nourish someone's garden, but you'll find that in nearly all modern societies there are pages of legal code prohibiting these types of actions. it's telling that although we consider ourselves free creatures, even our very bodies are bound from birth to death and beyond by others' opinions of what is right.

    ---
    the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
  • That's only because you haven't bothered to read it, it would seem, or else you'd know about large portions devoted to ritual impurity caused by contact with corpses. As a starting point, consider Lev. 12:1 - 15:33.

    ahh, good ol' Leviticus. always a great place to go for spiritual guidance. together with the other four mosaic books, it manages to list what's right and what's wrong for just about every situation conceivably experienced in the daily life of the time.
    this code was so important that later god sent his son, jesus, who said, "yea, verily, you guys aren't following the law good enough. you should strive to be more like the pharisees, who are very careful to follow the correct interpretations of the laws. blessed are the steadfastly moral, for only they are good enough to deserve my love."

    you are very correct that the bible does provide rules for disposing of bodies, though the original point can still be made that on the list of things god may be concerned about, i would guess the treatment of our earthly vehicles, once empty, could be thought of as a pretty low priority -- that is, if a limitless, omniscient being could be said to prioritize anything (consider the sparrows and lilies).

    ---
    the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
  • Steven Levy (author of the incredible book Hackers) has his own story about finding Einstein's Brain -- http://www.echonyc.com/~steven/einstein.html
  • The fact that Einstein's brain was kept by some doctor was never a mystery, the man has been known to give slices of the brain to the scientific community once in a while.
  • "Their bodies, OTOH, should be disposed of in an environmentally freindly way. I say, burn me when I'm dead, and make sure the stacked has been smogged recently. " It would be more environment friendly to bury people (without the chemicals usually used, of course) than to burn the body. To burn someone corpse, you must spend an awfull lot of energy.
  • What i'd like to read about is JonKatz's brain dissected and scattered across the country. "An epic tale of a wasted brain put to good use as fertilizer!"
  • *smirk* I cant say I care much for the body of a dead person, show respect to their memory instead and donate their bodies to who ever needs them.
  • Aw, c'mon, don't be so sensitive. I'd rather have it like in France (where my Grandfather's ashes spent 4 years on top of our bookcase, waiting for the garden to be finished before we buried him) than like in Germany (where a burial at sea requires 14 signatures by officials, from the harbourmaster to the local mayor, including a map with 'X marks the spot' sent to some ministry or other in case they want to get the urn back). Regards, A042
  • Following you deep off-topic.
    Don't kill me on the following figures:
    Germany today has ~1/3 the population of US (85:260 Million). Back in the days, the ratio was different, but not by that much.
    Since the land mass ratio is ~1/30, Germany is 10 times as crowded, which leads to (a) urbanisation (b) industrialisation and (c) paranoia, all useful characteristics when going to war.
    Enough to start a war, obviously not to win.
    Toss in the central location within Europe (a continent with more politics per square inch than any other), that pretty much sums up the poli-sci thesis.
    Oh yeah, all the above is true in a way for economic success :)
    BTW, if that trolling accusation was directed at my original post, I stand by my claims (so maybe it's 10 signatures)
    rgrds, AlbertNull=42
  • Einstein's brain was studied [nih.gov] by Dr.Diamond [berkeley.edu] (my friend took neuroanatomy from her a year ago, she's the most pleasant professor he's ever met), and a few others

    more info can be found here [washington.edu].

  • If med students treat donated bodies anything like the way computer resellers treat customers systems on warranty work I ain't going for any of that donor stuff. Familiarity does breed contempt and these guys see so many corpses they probably stick their big mac and fries on your face while they carve up your guts and laugh at the Jack Daniels and gummy bears that was your last meal. Bury me closed casket, no embalming juice, don't play with my pieces and parts, just get it over with man...
  • I read something perhaps a year or so ago about people who were studying E's brain and commenting on the unusual structures and connections it had. So how could it be that some crackpot had it all this time?

  • As you so much profess to believe in the body being the vehicle for the soul, how can you contradict yourself with this sort of nutso statement? Your soul has left the body after death, your corpse is nothing but wormfood anyway.

    Did I say that there was anything magical about the body after death? No, I didn't, I said that respect should be paid that person, which means treating their body with respect. By your rationale, we might as well let necrophiliacs at the corpses as soon as they cool.

  • This is not a "bizzare folktale of modern science", it is a prime example of how incredibly disrespectful people can be towards the dead. Just because Einstein was somewhat more intelligent than the average person (and it has to be said that tales of his genius are somewhat overrated), what gives someone the right to remove his brain, chop it up into pieces and then keep them stored in jars? None, that's what right.

    Would you like it if someone kept a piece of one of your relatives after they died? Without even asking your permission or letting you know what they were doing? No, you wouldn't, yet here is another "scientist" who thinks that he can divine some kind of insight into intelligence from some poor bastard's dead brain! Do these people have no respect for the dead?

    I find this to be in the poorest of tastes, and only a step up from necrophilia. Is this tale to be taken as condoning the right of "scientists" to be able to violate your corpse as they will? Let's hope not, but we've all seen what can happen in the name of "science".

  • Just because Einstein had the insight to express SR so clearly physically, the math part of his reasoning cannot be ignored. Do you think he intuited the meaning of SR without clearly understanding the mathematics of the geometry behind it? At math, Einstein was genius level. We just choose to concentrate on his physical analogies.

  • Okay, so we're so far off-topic that I find it reasonable to comment on the following:

    "But the Roman Empire collapsed because they had spread themselves too thin, and didn't have enough soldiers to control such a lot of territory."

    Actually, there have been a lot of theories advanced over the years as to why "the Roman Empire collapsed". Everything from lead poisoning to inadequate infrastructure.

    However, over recent decades a number of historians have begun to question the basic assumption, and ask: Did the Roman Empire collapse?

    It is inarguable that the Western Roman imperial power waned - but Eastern Rome (Byzantium) lived on with vigour until 1453. And, though there were no actual emperors in the West, there was no breakdown of Roman society - it continued, in an unbroken (albeit gradually modified) thread up through the centuries. Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 800, and he can justly be said to have taken over a culture that was an unbroken inheritor of the Rome of old.

    I could go on, but suffice to say that Rome never really fell - it lived on in its inheritors.

  • My grandmother was terrified of being buried alive, which was why she insisted on being cremated (that is to say, before she died, she insisted that she be cremated after her death). At least Einstein didn't have too much to worry about in that department...

  • Is running it through an industrial sized chipper/shredder, spraying into the Pacific Ocean considered environmentally unfriendly?

    That's the way I want to go.

  • "Would you like it if someone kept a piece of one of your relatives after they died? Without even asking your permission or letting you know what they were doing?"

    Wandering off-topic a bit, this is pretty much the same thing that happened in the Middle Ages to people who were deemed destined for sainthood -- people would dismember their corpses for relics. In some cases, the whole body was systematically chopped up into preserved parts.

    The church, IIRC, didn't share your opinion of this practice -- most holy places kept reliquaries with these little bits o' saint (among other things, like Saint Soandso's chamberpot, or the ubiquitous "pieces of the True Cross"). A good reliquary would enhance the prestige of these holy places -- the same sort of logic as a trophy case in a high school, I suppose.

    This sort of thing is really fascinating about human nature. We imbue objects with the significance of events or people they were associated with. Why? In some cases -- like Einstein's brain -- there is no more historical evidence to be obtained from it, but there is still that mystical quality.

    BTW, don't embalmers remove the brain anyway?

    phil

  • Here's another piece to this (sorry...)

    Dr. Sandra Witelson of McMaster University did some of the work on Einstein's brain. I attended a talk by her a few months back, which was quite interesting. There is a review/summary of the talk at:

    http://www-msu.mcmaster.ca/sil/20_01_00/einstein.h tml

    Her work involves studying the effect of brain morphology on function, and yes, they did in fact find differences in his brain. (And yes, he'd agreed to donate his brain to researchers before he died)
  • *Insightful*? Gods below.

    When you die, what's left is meat, bones, and miscellaneous scrap. Why in the world is this garbage worthy of respect? Would it have been more "respectful" (I threw those in for you, quoteboy) to have incinerated this brain? Would it have been more "respectful" to have pumped the body full of preservative chemicals and sealed it in an overpriced box, to be buried in the ground?

    If someone has some "scientific" use for body parts after the body has died, by all means, let him use them.
  • Let's hope not, but we've all seen what can happen in the name of "science".

    You mean like vaccines, organ transplants, blood transfusions, and cures to crippling diseases?

    Hey everyone, let's play Mad-Libs! Complete this sentence: We've all seen what can happen in the name of [abstract noun]!
  • remember reading in some Scientific American or some such magazine that researchers had determined that Einstein had a much higher percentage of Glial cells in his brain than does the average population.

    Aye, but it's the old cause-and-effect argument again. Was his brain so significantly difference because he was such a genius or did he spend so much time contemplating the universe that parts of his brain were stimulated and enlarged? I believe that a lot of current theories support the latter, but at a guess I'd say it was a combination.

    There seems to be a lot of research highlighting the differences between Al's brain and mere mortal's brains. I wonder if you took any two brains from the population would you find significant differences? Just a thought.


    ---
  • I read this article when it first appeared a couple years ago. It was entertaining as a story, and the writing was descriptive and clear. But it never tackled any of the deeper questions like /.ers are covering on ethics of carving out a dead corpse's brain and hiding it away. When I heard the author/adventurer was going to rewrite it as a book, I was hopeful he would put some thought into it and at least ask some of the questions, even if he didn't directly draw conclusions. From the J-K review, it sounds disappointing the issues were ignored.

    Does anyone have a reference to the original series of articles? It would be interesting to find it published on the web somewhere, but all my searches turn up reviews of the book.

    the AC
  • Einstein helped shape quantum mechanics. He took the formulae and derived results from them which are completely counterintuitive - most of these results could be proven by experiment afterwards.
    Einstein was of the opinion that quantum mechanics wasnt the pretty everything-and-the-kitchen-sink theory, but he accepted that it had correct results.
    Did you ever hear of e.g. Bose-Einstein condensation (atom laser) or the Einstein-Podolsky-Rose (EPR) paradoxon, both results predicted by Einstein and observed only during the last few years.
    Quantum mechanics wouldnt be what it is today - physics best thought through (even though not understood) and tested theory, hadnt it been for Einsteins permanent criticism.
  • From the Marine Mammal Myths [highnorth.no] page:

    The brain of the sperm whale weighs 7,800g, the elephant's weighs 7,500g, man's weighs 1,500g, the dolphin's 840g, and the brain of a mouse weighs 0,4g. If these figures are used to determine intelligence, then the sperm whale and the elephant are five times as intelligent as man, who in turn is twice as intelligent as the dolphin, which in turn is 2,000 times as intelligent as a mouse. Should we rank animals in order of how large their brains are in relation to their body weight, then the mouse would come out on top with its brain comprising 3.2%, the dolphin's 0.9% and the sperm whale's 0,021%. Neither absolute brain weight nor the relationship between brain weight and body size provide us with sensible criteria for comparing the intelligence of different species.
  • Not bad. This is the kind of response that might prove useful to trolls when they grow out of their juvenile insensitivity.

    - Michael Cohn
  • I believe that respect for the dead is a meaningful concept. However, I also believe that the dead are gone, permanently, and that god -- if any such thing exists -- doesn't really care what we do with their bodies.

    Therefore, respect for mortal remains is valuable only insofar as it respects the wishes of the living (either to comfort the survivors or quell the fears of the not-dead-yet). If Einstein volunteered his brain for research, and his family never complained, then I see nothing morally offensive about what was done with it.

    Pragmatically wasteful, maybe.
    (though maybe not, if we can study the brain more expertly than we could have had it been decanted right away)

    - Michael Cohn
  • Shouldn't it be a "science" piece? At least then we'd have a picture of good 'ol Al.

    (I know. Realistically it should be Enlightenment [slashdot.org] or some such).
  • how much of his own and other people's time did Einstein waste with his misdirected GUT work, the cosmological constant, and arguing against quantum mechanics?

    How is arguing against a scientific theory a waste of time? Scientific theories which go unchallenged are worthless, no matter which side is correct, popular, orthodox, etc.

  • If Einstein wanted his oblivious, dead parts chopped up for medical study, then it is respectful to honor his wishes. If Einstein wanted his intact corpse to wither in a beautiful box, society should also honor those wishes.

    Regardless of what his wishes were, the uniqueness of if his brain and the inability of his corpse to defend itself, does not give any society the right to ignore his desires.

    Maybe someone could provide some info on what Einstein's true intentions were. Either way, society should honor the man by honoring his individual choice.

  • Imagine a beowulf cluster of those!

  • WTF (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, 2000 @06:24AM (#806913)
    Einstein's brain chopped into pieces ranging from the size of a turkey to a dime

    the size of a turkey? Last time I bought a turkey, it was larger than two human brains. Is this a typo?

  • A Conversation with Einstein's Brain (Score:3)

    by danny ( 2658 ) on Monday September 04, 2000 @04:01AM (#806914) Homepage
    This reminds me of the great story "A Conversation with Einstein's Brain" by Douglas Hofstadter. It's one of his Achilles and the Tortoise dialogues in which we are asked to imagine a book encoding all the information in Einstein's brain, down to the cellular level.... Check it out, it's one of works in The Mind's I (edited by Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett [dannyreviews.com]), which has a pile of great stuff in it.

    Danny.

  • Informative Links (Score:3)

    by ekmo ( 128842 ) on Monday September 04, 2000 @04:09AM (#806915)
    There was another Slashdot story [slashdot.org] about the famous brain a while back.
    Here is another book review [salonmag.com] by Craig Seligman of Salon.
    And this [aol.com] is a whole site dedicated to the brain itself.

  • I have always heard... (Score:3)

    by ca1v1n ( 135902 ) <snookNO@SPAMguanotronic.com> on Monday September 04, 2000 @05:18AM (#806916)
    ...that part of the reason that Einstein was so brilliant in matters of physics is that he had a genetic defect that caused one part of his brain to never grow. The effect of this is that the area immediately adjacent to this section, which is the section of the brain responsible for spatial perception, was approximately 15% larger than in most human brains. This improved ability to process spatial relations allowed Einstein to think in 4 dimensions probably with nearly the same ease that we traditionally think in 3. (His great practice with the topic surely helped as well.)

    Unfortunately, I can't remember any of the sources I got this from, so it could just all be rumor. Anyone have any ideas?

  • Bizarre (Score:3)

    by mirko ( 198274 ) on Monday September 04, 2000 @04:48AM (#806917) Journal
    I already heard about taking a brain off its dead owner but at least "they" gave us some info about it, like its weight.
    Some typical celebrities brains are Russian writer Ivan Tourgueniev's (one of the heaviest now) which was almost 5 pounds (2,5kg) of French writer Anatole France which was amongst the lightest.
    In Einstein case we don't even know how heavy it was but maybe it is because by studying M. France and Tourgueniev organs we already knew that size doesn't matter...
    Anyway, carrying it in a plastic container sounds quite weird and I don't think it smelled good after some of these Tupperware meetings. :-(
    --

  • Strange Aspects of Einstein's Brain (Score:3)

    by Schwarzchild ( 225794 ) on Monday September 04, 2000 @07:04AM (#806918)
    I remember reading in some Scientific American or some such magazine that researchers had determined that Einstein had a much higher percentage of Glial cells in his brain than does the average population. I believe I have heard similar things in the last couple of years.

    Oh, I found a link about Einstein's glial cells [straightdope.com].

    As for Einstein's brilliance. I think he truly was an intuitive genius having published five ground breaking papers in 1905 and devising SR and GR. Not to mention making an important argument in QM in the form of the EPR paradox which led John Bell to try to prove Einstein right though Bell ended up showing that QM is weird after all. He did however lack some advanced mathematical skills otherwise he wouldn't have required having mathematical assistants throughout his career.

  • Re:How incredibly disrespectful (Score:4)

    by DeadSea ( 69598 ) on Monday September 04, 2000 @04:23AM (#806919) Homepage Journal
    I can't speak for Einstein, but why do you assume that this is disrespectful to him? When I die, I hope that scientists can use my brain to figure out what gives me my *ahem* superior intellect and modesty.

    I am an organ donor, and wouldn't hesitate to give my body to science. I hate the concept of cemeteries. I think there are much better ways to remember the dead than to fence them in and put a rock over their head.

    What would be more hurtful to me is that people might argue about it as they have done with Einstei

  • It's a great book, but... (Score:4)

    by zlite ( 199781 ) on Monday September 04, 2000 @04:12AM (#806920)
    It's really more a travelogue and portrait of the strange Dr Harvey than what I had been expecting, which was sort of America as Einstein would see it, through a lens of relativity and the mind-expanding concepts of quantum physics. (Initial reviews had suggested that Paterniti, thanks to having the brain in the trunk, had found himself almost channelling Einstein throughout the trip, which sounded fun).

    That said, there are a few moments when he does engage in some quantum flights of fancy, and we do get lots of interesting tidbits from Einstein lore.

    It's amusing to see what a muddle the scientific community made of the brain. First Harvey messed up the preservation, so all the DNA denatured. Then, after it became clear that there was nothing very special about the brain from a macro perpsective (which is pretty much what you would expect) rather than say, "okay, that's that", he perpetuated this cult of perpetual study, where fascinating findings were always around the corner. Sad, but a telling insight into human nature. In the end, Einstein's brain became a totem, attracting the sort of people who needed one.

  • Purchase at.... (Score:5)

    by luckykaa ( 134517 ) on Monday September 04, 2000 @03:44AM (#806921)
    Fatbrain. Highly appropriate

Slashdot Top Deals

"In my opinion, Richard Stallman wouldn't recognise terrorism if it came up and bit him on his Internet." -- Ross M. Greenberg

Close