What about Einstein's brain made him a genius?
In a study in the medical journal Lancet, a Canadian neuroscientist and her colleagues say they have detected significant differences in the structure of Einstein's brain that might help account for his superior intellect, supporting findings from a 1985 study by California researchers.Ever since Einstein died in 1955 from a ruptured abdominal aneurysm, and his brain taken out during an autopsy by pathologist Thomas Harvey, it has been the subject of fascination. Einstein's family did not give permission for his brain to be excised at the time and only later consented.
At least three groups of researchers have analyzed Einstein's brain and found differences, including the 1985 California study, a 1996 Alabama study and the new Lancet study, written by neuroscientist Sandra Witelson, Harvey and a colleague.
In this latest analysis, the researchers report that a part of Einstein's brain -- the inferior parietal region, long considered the seat of mathematical thought and visual and spatial ability -- was 15 percent wider when compared with the brains of people with normal intelligence.
Einstein's brain was also unique for not having a groove, called a sulcus, that normally runs through this part of the brain. The researchers theorize that that absence of a groove may have allowed more neurons -- the brain cells that do the thinking -- to establish connections between each other.
But other scientists were critical of these findings, deploring the circumstances of the brain being taken out without the family's permission nearly 45 years ago, and questioning the effect of the chemicals the tissue has been steeped in all this time. One even called the examination of Einstein's brain "macabre."
"A case could be made that it was stolen, and it caused anguish to the family that this was done," said Gerald Holton, a Harvard professor of physics and the history of science, who has written several books about Einstein and his work.
Even the researchers who have found the differences in Einstein's brain say that does not prove why he was so much smarter than everyone else.