How Albert Einstein's Brain Worked

Albert Einstein is one of the world's most recognizable geniuses. But was his brain any different from that of an average person? Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about Thomas Harvey, the man who set out to decipher Einstein's brain.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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I've got a big brain, Chuck has a big brain.
Mine is smaller than yours. It's true. You know who
had an average sized brain? I do? Albert Einstein? Fantastic.

(00:24):
So we've got our segue. Let's talk about Einstein's brain, Chuck,
that's a good idea. All start apparently, all right, you're ready. Yeah,
Einstein was very well aware of his renown, right as
I don't think he may have been a hyper intelligent person,
but I don't think he had a big head. But

(00:44):
he was aware of the kind of cult of personality
that the world loves, right, he was aware of his
own fame. Yeah, and he didn't want to end up
just some you know, venerated saint of mathematics, so he
asked that he his body be cremated upon his death
in yeah, April eighteenth nifty five, the day the year

(01:08):
the Earth stood still. Um and uh, he said, specifically
didn't want people to come worship at his bones. Yeah.
I was kind of taking I thought that sounded a
little cocky, but a little but again, yeah, I don't
think he was a very cocky fellow. I don't want
people to worship with my bones either, so it's something
we have in common. I could live with that. Actually,

(01:30):
you could be fine. You want people to worship your bones. So, Um,
Einstein's wish was nine percent fulfilled if we're speaking weight wise,
because the brain actually makes up about two percent of
the body weight on average. So it sounds to me
like you're saying he's buried without his brains. Yes, he was,
my friend. Did you know that? I did. Of course
you did, so, Chuck. This guy, who was, as far

(01:54):
as I could tell, a pretty standard pathologist, UM, working
at Princeton University's hospital, was charged with doing the autopsy
on Einstein, and I guess he was kind of struck
with this moment of inspiration where he realized that he
was holding Einstein's brain and that surely this brain had

(02:18):
some sort of secrets to some value to be each part. Yes, yeah,
there had to be something here. This guy, I mean,
Einstein was just as as big as it gets. He
he you know, so many other physicists had come before
him and we're we're just UM had gotten all of
their their genius out very early on. Newton did it,
and Einstein did it to a certain extent. But he

(02:40):
he also did continue working, you know, longer than was average. UM.
And this guy just wanted to know. He just couldn't
bring himself to cremating the brain of the smartest man
of the twentieth cent I might have been with him there,
you know. Thomas Thomas Harvey and Thomas Harvey. Thomas Harvey
stole Einstein's brain. No one can sue us for that
because it really happened. Oh it did it did so

(03:02):
Harvey basically takes Einstein's brain I imagine, throws it in
some fromale hide in a jar, and Um holds it
hostage until he gets permission from one of Einstein's sons
to study it. Right. I saw a head in a
bucket once. Tell me about ever tell you that story
a little sidebar. Uh, Yeah, it was when I was

(03:24):
working in the film industry in Los Angeles and I
was doing some work at I guess I won't mention
the hospital. They might not might frown upon hearing this broadcast,
but a hospital in l A. We were doing a
job there, and one of the researchers pulled me a
signs and, hey, man, you want to see a head
in a bucket? And I said, yeah, I'd love to
see a head in a bucket, no doubt. Took me
in a room, brought out a bucket and it had

(03:45):
this you know, elderly man's head floating in it. And
it wasn't in a jet glass jar. It was an
open bucket with no lid. And I looked down into
it to this head. Was he looking up at you? Uh? No,
he wasn't. That is the most amazing thing that anyone
I knows ever do. I just wanted to get that
out there. That is very, very surreal. That's yeah, I'll

(04:05):
bet it was slightly. It doesn't haunt me, but I
can picture it in my mind's eye still. And that was,
you know, probably five years ago. Easy. How's he looking,
milky eyes? He looked like an old guy with you know,
without a body in a bucket. Wow, everybody else, no idea. Okay,
Well's brain doesn't seem nearly as cool, right, Um, Well,

(04:30):
I guess we'll just talk about it anyway, right, So, um,
Harvey's got Einstein's brain in a glass jar. And now
he's secured permission to study it. So he cuts it
into like twos as far as I understand, and he
encases him all he preserves him in ste lloydn right. Well,
he waited first. First he did a few um measurements,

(04:52):
just to make sure photographed, you're right, yeah, And and
heavily photographed, just to make sure that there was nothing
that stood out and nothing did it weighed about the
Sam's and the other brain. He also, I think, did
a study first of the the brain cells. They were
they were average sized, there was an average amount of
and by by all rights, Einstein's brain looked pretty average.

(05:13):
But you know, Harvey quickly became obsessed with the notion
that Einstein's brain was not average, that there was something
fundamentally different about it that we could point to. And
who knows, I mean, maybe if we can figure out
how Einstein's brain was different, we can start, you know,
or something like that. Um. So Harvey cuts the thing

(05:35):
into pieces after he's catalog did and documented it, and
he starts sending it to researchers whose work he finds interesting.
These are people around the world. Each one, I imagine
was contact at first, I don't think. They just got
a piece of Einstein's brain and the mail and they're like,
what the hell is this? You know? Um, So he
contact him and say, I think your works interesting. I've

(05:55):
got Einstein's brain. I want to send you some pieces
to study and compare it using your of the view
of your work. Yeah. I bet he didn't get a
lot of people that decline that opportunity. No, I wouldn't
think so. Yeah. So, um, he's expecting very quickly that
Einstein's brain is going to give up its secrets, and

(06:16):
the waiting game began. It didn't we have still to
this day. I'm gonna go ahead and cut to the end,
the big finish. We're still not entirely certain how how
Einstein's brain worked. But um, yeah, we'll get to that
in a minute. Harvey, under this obsession basically turns into

(06:37):
something of a weirdo actually, kind of the Howard Hughes
of pathology of brain. Yeah. Every once in a while
a reporter would um would look him up because he
basically just disappeared with the brain. UM. And one guy
found him living in Kansas, UM, and the brain was
in a jar in an old cider box behind a

(06:59):
beer cool Right. So this guy Harvey's probably you know,
taking orders from his cats, and Einstein's brains just sitting there, chilling,
waiting to, you know, be studied again. Finally, thirty years
after Einstein's brain is stolen by Harvey, Uh, he finds
out about the work of this um woman named Dr

(07:22):
Marion Diamond. You want to talk about Dr Diamond, Chuck? Right.
Dr Diamond worked at cal Berkeley and uh studied the
plasticity of the brain of rats brains and she rat,
I don't um. She found out that rats um that
had more enriching environments had more robust brains. Uh, specifically

(07:45):
the glial g l I A L. Someone pronouncing glial cells? Yes,
is that correct? Yeah, you're right, no, neurosis surgeon, I
think it's glial. Yeah, so we'll call it glial cells. Um. Uh.
So they had more glial cells and aasition to their
other neurons. And so she thought, let me take a
look at Einstein's brain and see if the same thing holds. Now.

(08:05):
Glial cells are basically um they they clean up this uh,
these potassium ions. Potassium is actually discharged by a neuron
when it fires right, So after time, the potassium kind
of builds up. It's a waste product. And if it
builds up enough and neuron camp fire properly shuts down.
If you have enough glial cells to keep the neurons clean,

(08:29):
then they should be able to fire properly. And by logic,
the more glial cells you have, the more um, the
smarter you should be, because the cleaner your neurons are. Exactly,
and this is actually what she found was that Einstein
had a higher ratio of glia cells uh to other
neurons and uh. She basically hypothesized that this means that

(08:54):
he had, you know, more rapidly firing neurons and other
people However, yeah, asked and answered no, not quite answered
because she wasn't exactly comparing against like brains. Um, Einstein
was older than the other brains, and glial cells divide
over the course of your life, right, So Einstein was
what seventy when he died, and she was comparing the

(09:16):
average age of the brain that she was comparing Einstein's
brain to sixty four. So that right, there is terrible methodology.
That's not the end of it. That's not the end
of it. Um, so in theory, he would have more
glial cells just because he's twelve years older than these
other brains. And she didn't take into account i Q
score either. Well, she didn't even know whose brains these
were as far as I know exactly, so she had

(09:36):
no idea what kind of brain intelligence level that she
was comparing Einstein too. And even worse than that, apparently
there's twenty eight ways to measure glial cells, and she
threw out any measurement that didn't support her hypothesis. So
I don't understand how this woman had funding. Yeah, she
was at UC Berkeley too. I mean she wasn't, you know,
like the Mexico City upstairs medical clinic. This is like

(09:57):
what I did in my in my seventh grade sign
it's fair project. If the results studying glial cells, will
know But if the study, if whatever I was doing,
if the results didn't match up, I just didn't use them.
Oh yeah, sure, yeah, sure, yeah that is that's seventh
grade science fair project stuff. So yeah, this this comes out,
and um, Harvey, I imagine it's a little dismayed by this,

(10:18):
and I it probably ruined Dr Diamond's career. Um, but
Harvey was a very patient, obsessed man, as we've said,
and he continued to wait. And then finally about ten
years after the diamond thing, and this was hullabaloo. I
mean this is huge, Like it was touted in newspapers
all over the place, news media. Everybody was like, We've

(10:39):
got Einstein's brain figured out. And then it came out
like her methodology wasn't holding up. So you know, there's
a real high and then you know there's an equal
low um. And then about ten years after that, another
woman's work. This this woman's name was Dr Sandro Whittleson,
Britt Anderson. No, Britt Anderson turned Harvey onto Whittleson's work.

(11:04):
I'm sorry, britt Anderson, just for the second time I
cut you out of the podcast. I wanted to mention, Yeah,
there's a guy named Britt Anderson at a University of Alabama, right, yeah,
you go ahead with britt Anderson. Well, britt um was
studying the size of men and women's brains are in
the differences, and yeah, you're right. He turned him onto
this other doctor so right, whose name was Dr Sandra Whittleson.

(11:26):
She's at McMasters University in Ontario. Our fair neighbor to
the north. And um, she basically she had a bunch
of brains. Yeah, a nice collection of like brains, and
she had data on all of them. She knew whether
the people were insane, she knew what their IQs were. Um,
she she had a lot. Yeah, she had a lot

(11:47):
of good data and some good brains to study to
compare Einstein's brain to um, and actually she had quite
a breakthrough she did. Um, there's this thing called the
Sylvian fisher and it's breaks your parietal lobe. Right. Your
parietal lobe is responsible for mathematical skills, spatial reasoning, three

(12:09):
dimensional visualization, all of which would come in handy for
a guy like Einstein. He was pretty much the master
of all those. So if the Sylvan Fisher is absent
or not pronounced as Dr Whittleson found, Einstein's was, Um,
the parietal lobe would be bigger. You could pack more
more brain cells in there and wider than Yeah. Sure exactly,

(12:34):
which is assuming a lot because neither of us have
been autopsy yet. True. So Um, basically what Dr Wilson
said was, Okay, we now know that uh, Einstein had
a fifteen percent wider parietal lobe than the average person
that could account for it. We don't know. Basically, what
she's done is set a benchmark um where brain research
is going to have to catch up to to either

(12:55):
prove or disprove, because we don't have the technology to say,
or we don't have a fundamental understanding of the brain
yet to say whether that's what it was or not.
But it's nice to know what's out there exactly the
physical difference. Yeah, there definitely was. Dr Whittilson basically said,
whenever you guys can catch up to it, here's what's

(13:16):
different about Einstein's brain disproved. Um. But our our Steam
colleague Molly Edmonds brought up I thought what I thought
was a very interesting point, um, and that is that
it's is it dangerous to study things like physiological abnormalities? Um?
She she brings up. You know, if you really look

(13:37):
at Einstein's brain, the parrietal lobe, especially with a lack
of understanding of what it's exactly doing, um, then one
could make the argument that a physician would have told
Einstein's mother that her son's brain was damaged, which could
have limited him for the rest of his life. He
may never become a mathematician. She may not even put
him in school exactly why bother you know. So I

(14:00):
thought that was a really interesting point in one worth discussing, right,
because well, Einstein also had a delayed speech development, and
so coupled with that a parent might have been, you know, concerned. Yeah. Oh,
apparently he used to um write his address down in
his arm every day, so when he inevitably get lost, UM,
he just kind of look and asked somebody if they
could take him there. Right, He was a hell of

(14:21):
a guy. Yeah, And just a nice little bow on
the end of this gift to our listeners. Uh. The
Harvey actually returned the brain before he died to Princeton Hospital,
which I thought he died in nineteen nine, I'm sorry,
two thousand seven at the age of ninety four, and
he returned the brain back to Princeton. He did. He
actually kind of bequeathed it to the resident pathologist at

(14:44):
Princeton University Hospital, UM, who basically now is shackled with
this thing totally around. UM. An extra little aside which
I thought was pretty interesting, A guy named Michael Paternity
wrote a book called Driving with Mr Albert. Michael paternity.
That's the way I took it. That's a great name. Yeah. Um.

(15:04):
He wrote a book called Driving with Mr Albert, I believe,
and it is about driving on one of the many
cross country trips that Harvey took with Einstein's brain. Apparently
he did it a lot. Sounds like a movie in
the works. I I think so too. It's gonna beat
Tuesday with more. I can tell you so. Stick around
because it is correction time, and today we have a

(15:28):
correction for me. This is not Chuck. Actually, Chuck argued
against what I said. I was right for a change.
Chuck is supported by yet another person who mistakenly thinks
my first name is Brian. My name is Josh. Chuck's
last name is Brian. But thank you anyway, Misha Bailey.

(15:49):
Misha Bailey pointed out in a podcast, Well we'll play
the clip. It's from how China's pollution sniffers work. Uh,
listen this. You know, have have you ever eaten jellybelly?
Jelly beans? I'm not a jelly bean guy. These things
are not jelly beans alright. Anyway, if you get a
bag of this on the back, it says like, you know,

(16:10):
two blueberry plus one. I think toast of marshmallow creates
like the flavor of like a blueberry muffin. So there's
different recipes. You come up with your own. It's very fun.
Are these the ones that are kind of nasty tooth like?
They have a booger andros I think you're confusing a
Harry Potter with reality Again. Well, uh, as it turns out,

(16:35):
Chuck I was wrong, right, Jelly Belly does indeed make
a booger flavored jelly beans. I knew I hadn't imagined
that in some fantasy that I had, So basically, um,
there's a special edition called bean Booze Old, and Jellybelly
is going to the trouble of making identical looking jelly
beans with radically different taste like black licorice, which is

(16:56):
bad enough. Um is also there there's another one that
looks like the Black Liquors one, but it's a skunk spray. Um.
And specifically there's one that's juicy pear and in other
cases it's Booker flavored favor. They have ten different flavors.
Thank you Jelly Belly, and thank you Misha Bailey for
proving me wrong. If you want to prove either one

(17:19):
of us wrong, or tell us you know what you think,
what's on your mind, give us what for? Perhaps you
have a man crush on one or both of us.
You can send an email to stuff podcast at how
stuff works dot com. And speaking of podcast, Chuck, Yeah,
I wanted to give a just a quick mention to
one of our other podcasts called brain Stuff from the

(17:40):
founder of our awesome company, Marshall Brain actually his real
last things. Yeah, he has his own podcast called brain
Stuff and there's a really cool one up there now
called what are hot Dogs Made from? Fascinating? So before
you get go to the next ball game and we'll
fown that hot dog. You should listen to this. Either
that or if you really want to eat a hot dog,
you should probably wait until after work. I would recommend that. Yeah,

(18:01):
so you can check that out like our podcasts on iTunes,
and you can learn even more about Albert Einstein's brain
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(18:22):
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