Numerous questions have been debated since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Was there any other way the Allies could have proceeded? Would a conventional invasion of Japan by the Allies have saved more lives? How much longer would fighting have gone on if the United States didn’t drop the bombs? Could the United States have targeted areas without civilian populations? Should the United States have demonstrated in some other way the lethal nature of its new atomic weapon to persuade the Japanese to surrender? Was President Truman prompted by racism in dropping the bomb? Did Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, its abominable treatment of Allied POWs, and its commission of other atrocities and mass murders of innocent people during World War II show that it was a belligerent nation willing to stop at nothing to win? These and many other questions have been argued vigorously by people with different political ideologies. As far as the fiftieth anniversary commemorations were concerned, the Smithsonian ran a minimal exhibition, with a display of the forward fuselage of the Enola Gay, and the U.S. Postal Service scuttled its plan to issue the mushroom-cloud stamp.
In the end, one can only weigh the facts, and the two most essential facts are these: tens of thousands of people died as a result of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, and eight days after the Enola Gay dropped the bomb over Hiroshima, Japan transmitted its unconditional surrender to the Allies, bringing to an end the most destructive conflict in humankind’s history. Were the bombings justified? That question may never be resolved, but the Enola Gay will serve to remind future generations of the devastation of war.
LOCATION: Paul E. Garber Restoration, Preservation and Storage Facility, Suitland, Maryland. The Enola Gay will be moved for permanent exhibition to an extension site of the National Air and Space Museum after funding has been approved by Congress and the facility has been built.
EINSTEIN’S BRAIN
DATE: 1955.
WHAT IT IS: Brain matter from the great twentieth-century scientist Albert Einstein.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE: The brain is in several pieces, the largest of which measures approximately 3 inches by 2 inches. There are also thinly cut sections of brain tissue on microscopic slides.
At approximately eight o’clock on the morning of April 18, 1955, a forty-two-year-old pathologist stood before a corpse lying on a table in the morgue of Princeton Hospital in Princeton, New Jersey. As he prepared to make his first incision he glanced at the body, the famous face, and the bountiful snowy mane. The genius that had once resonated within this lifeless form had been extinguished less than seven hours before by a ruptured aneurysm.
As news of the man’s death spread and members of the press converged on the hospital, the pathologist lifted his scalpel. Otto Nathan, a close friend of the deceased, stood at the foot of the table. The room was quiet, pin-drop still.
A tinge of excitement crept through the pathologist. Might this postmortem uncover some secret of human intelligence, decode some labyrinthine oracle of cerebral ordination? For the pathologist was planning to extract and examine the brain of Albert Einstein.
Einstein’s work was so abstruse that it was (and still is) beyond the grasp of most human beings. In his special theory of relativity he described how space and time in one frame are not absolute but functions of space and time in another frame. He demonstrated that light, previously regarded as a wave phenomenon, could also, paradoxically, be thought of as a stream of particles. His studies on statistical mechanics, Brownian motion, quantum physics, and radiation were all brilliant. And his theory of general relativity revolutionized scientists’ concepts of gravity, space, time, mass, energy, and motion.
The first widespread acceptance of the German-born physicist’s genius came in 1919 when astronomers tested his prediction that the force of gravity deflects starlight by a certain value, demonstrating space was “curved” by matter. On May 29, during a total eclipse of the sun, expeditions of British astronomers in equatorial Africa and South America observed and measured the bending of light waves coming from the stars. When they analyzed their work, they found that Einstein’s calculation of the degree of deflection was almost exact. As a result, Einstein immediately received worldwide acclaim and was elevated to the pantheon of geniuses inhabited by the likes of Socrates, Aristotle, and Newton.
Only a handful of geniuses of the caliber of Einstein come along every millennium. It was even said that Einstein was the most brilliant being ever to have graced this Earth. The pathologist marveled: here was the opportunity of a hundred lifetimes! What benefits to humankind might result from the study of Einstein’s brain?
The pathologist’s name was Thomas Stoltz Harvey. Born in 1912 in Kentucky, he showed little interest in a medical career as a youth, although he did develop an early interest in nature. As a boy he would rise early in the morning to look for birds in the woods and creek near where he lived at the edge of Indianapolis. He graduated from West Hartford High School in 1930 and went on to college at Yale, where he majored in economics. Graduating in 1934 at the height of the Depression, he decided a career in business might not be the most prudent choice; he spent a year taking the requisite premed courses and in 1935 entered Yale Medical School.
Einstein's name may be synonymous with the word genius, but he was also a great humanitarian.
The man who admitted Thomas Harvey to Yale was Milton Charles Winternitz, dean of the medical school and a professor of pathology. Dr. Winternitz was to be a strong influence in Harvey’s later decision to become a pathologist.
In his senior year in medical school, Harvey came down with tuberculosis. At the time, there were no drugs to treat this disease, and the prescribed treatment was admittance to a sanatorium.
Harvey left medical school to convalesce, returning in time to graduate in 1941. Because of his health, Dr. Harvey had to find an internship that wouldn’t require him to wake in the middle of the night. Under Winternitz’s tutelage he became a pathologist and held positions in research, clinical medicine, and teaching.
In 1952 Harvey was hired by Princeton Hospital. Since the 1930s, Princeton, New Jersey, had been the home of Albert Einstein. Einstein had emigrated from Europe to work at the Institute for Advanced Study, and by the time Harvey arrived was already a living legend. As Einstein’s health deteriorated in the 1950s, he was closely monitored by his personal physician, Guy Dean. Dr. Dean had occasionally requested Princeton Hospital to run lab tests on Einstein’s blood, and Dr. Harvey would dispatch technicians to the scientist’s house to draw his blood.
On one occasion, however, Harvey decided to go himself and meet the icon. He was conducted to a second-floor bedroom, where the renowned scientist was lying in bed.
Einstein looked up. On previous occasions, the technicians who came to draw his blood had all been women. The pajama-clad legend was surprised to see a male visitor at his door.
“I see you have changed your sex,” Einstein noted wryly.
Harvey laughed. After a brief conversation, the doctor began to draw blood from Einstein’s left arm. About fifteen minutes later Harvey left, elated to have had a pleasant chat with the great man. He never dreamed that the next time he saw Einstein, it would be at a morgue table, with Harvey making preparations to remove his brain.
The autopsy on the seventy-six-year-old mathematical wizard was conducted just as any other, the torso opened first, then the head. Dr. Harvey made an incision across the scalp, from behind one ear to the other, peeling the skin of the front half forward down over the face. Then he peeled back the skin remaining on the skull. He sawed through the bone and revealed Einstein’s brain.
Harvey took great care not to damage the brain; to remove it was a delicate process. Otto Nathan, Einstein’s friend, the executor of Einstein’s estate and a professor of economics at New York University, continued to observe silently in the thirty-by-thirty-foot room on the ground floor in the back of Princeton Hospital.
Dr. Harvey cut the various blood vessels and nerves around the brain and the spinal cord. Finally,
he reached into Einstein’s open cranium and put his hands on the brain. It was soft and pink and felt like semisolid Jell-O. Then, holding his breath, he withdrew it.
Harvey immediately placed the brain on a spring scale hanging from the ceiling. The normal range in weight of the human male brain is 1,200 to 1,600 grams. (It is slightly less for females because of their smaller body size.) Einstein’s brain weight of 1,230 grams fell into the normal male range, immediately casting in doubt a long-held theory that brain size and intelligence were correlated.
With a formaldehyde solution Harvey injected the arterial system of the brain to “fix,” or harden and preserve, it. He then gently placed it in a large jar filled with a solution of formaldehyde. This immersion completed the fixing process.
Dr. Harvey finished the autopsy around 10:00 A.M. and met with a throng of reporters an hour later. He reported on the cause of death and announced his plans to examine the physicist’s brain.
Einstein’s body was to be cremated, pursuant to his wish. His family had requested that no one should know what time his corpse was going to arrive at the crematory, and workers there had a bit of difficulty getting the body in unnoticed by the photographers and reporters.
At around noon Einstein’s body was deposited in a retort, and his flesh and bones turned to ashes. The ashes were placed in a cardboard container furnished by the crematory. The cost of the cremation was seventy-five dollars. It was two or three months before a professor from Princeton University came to pick up the remains, and he would not disclose where they were spread.
Einstein's brain shortly after it was removed during his autopsy.
At the hospital, before proceeding to investigate the secrets of Einstein’s brain, Dr. Harvey examined microscopically the tissues he had removed from the scientist’s body during the autopsy. They showed arterial disease. Einstein had had a severe atherosclerosis of his abdominal aorta, which had finally ruptured. He had bled to death.
Harvey had had no conversations with Einstein prior to his death about removing his brain for study. Nor did he speak with Einstein’s family about this, although in an article in the New York Times on April 20, two days after Einstein died, Otto Nathan reported that Einstein’s son, Hans, had requested a scientific examination of the brain.
When the family was contacted by Nathan, according to Dr. Harvey, they were surprised to learn that the brain had been removed. They had wanted Einstein’s entire body to be cremated. But once they were informed of the nature and scope of Harvey’s planned study, they gave their permission for the work to proceed, provided the results would be reported in scientific journals and no attempts would be made to sensationalize the findings.
Harvey had a plan for his investigation of the brain: he would section the brain into numerous pieces from which he would prepare microscopic slide sets, and these he would distribute to a handpicked group of top-notch medical experts for study. But first he took measurements and photographed the brain from different angles, with and without the meninges (the membranes that envelop the brain). When it was time to make the microscopic preparations, Harvey took the brain to the University of Pennsylvania laboratory in Philadelphia, where he had worked before Princeton.
It was in this laboratory, located in a medical school building in back of the UP hospital at Thirty-fourth and Spruce, that Thomas Harvey first cut Einstein’s brain, sectioning it into approximately 170 pieces—far more than usual, but Dr. Harvey wanted a comprehensive study. The process was painstaking and took more than three months. The pieces were numbered, charts were drawn indicating the location of each segment, and the pieces were all photographed before and after the cutting. The technicians could handle only so much of the process at a time, and Dr. Harvey had to shuttle back and forth between Princeton and Philadelphia.
From these pieces, microscopic sections were cut. The sections were embedded in celloidin, a chemical that hardens tissue and is used for sectioning thin specimens to be examined under a microscope.
The tissue preparations were made by Marta Keller, a German histology technician with extensive experience in cutting brains. Keller used a tissue-cutting instrument called a microtome to slice thin sections of the celloidin blocks. The sections were mounted on glass slides and then stained so they could be examined under a microscope. Keller made a dozen sets of slides, each consisting of over one hundred slides.
Photographs were taken through microscopes of the various areas of Einstein’s brain. Most were in black and white, but some were in color.
Although just tiny slices of inert material now, the slide specimens represented an exciting scientific treasure. If genius had any organic manifestation, it would certainly be here. What would Einstein’s brain reveal?
Of the dozen sets of slides, Harvey retained two, which he took back to Princeton, and he distributed the remainder to his handpicked specialists. The key players were Gerhard Von Bonin and Percival Bailey, professors of neuroanatomy at the University of Illinois; Walli Nauta, a professor of neuroanatomy at MIT; Hartwig Kuhlenbeck, a professor of anatomy at Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia; and Harry Zimmerman, of Montefiore Hospital in New York City and a Columbia University professor of pathology.
The recipients of the microscopic slide sets had no mandate from Harvey. They were given full rein to study the brain using their own methods and report back to Harvey at their convenience. Their general modus operandi would be to examine under the microscope the configuration, or cell architecture, of Einstein’s brain and compare it with that of other human brains.
Anticipating good research, Harvey resumed his work at Princeton Hospital. He stayed there until 1962, when he left to do research at the New Jersey Neuropsychiatric Institute near Princeton.
Over the next decade or so, Harvey worked part-time in the psychiatric hospital systems of various New Jersey state hospitals. At the same time, he ran a commercial medical lab he started at Princeton, which he later moved when he changed jobs, until he finally sold it. He took Einstein’s brain with him wherever he moved, keeping it at home or in his office.
Through the years, rumors abounded about Einstein’s brain being investigated, but little was known publicly about it, and the research was all done in relative secrecy. Harvey, ever patient and hopeful, stayed in touch with the recipients of the microscopic slides, but strangely, there was never any announcement from them, nor was their work published. Eventually, Harvey came to expect that no startling differences would be found. Some researchers, such as Gerhard Von Bonin, who later moved to California, died. Harvey does not know what became of the slide sets used by these late investigators.
In 1975 Dr. Harvey accepted a job offer to run a large medical laboratory in Wichita, Kansas. He worked there for three years, then, in 1978, retired from laboratory work and moved to Weston, Missouri, to go into general practice. He practiced in Weston for a decade, also serving as the physician of the Kansas State Penitentiary near Leavenworth.
In the early 1980s Marian Diamond, a professor of physiology and anatomy at the University of California at Berkeley, contacted Harvey after her students sparked her interest in Einstein’s brain. A science magazine had run a photo of Einstein’s brain in a cardboard box sitting beside a desk, and Diamond’s students mounted the picture on a classroom wall. It hung there for months. After seeing it day after day, Diamond, unaware of Harvey’s ongoing investigation, finally said, “Nobody else has studied it and we have a database of [comparative information from normal human males], so why not take a look at it?”
Diamond, who had been studying brains for over forty years and had a special interest in how the environment can change the structure and function of the brain, had been conducting a study on the normal human male brain. She was investigating the neuron-glial ratios in the main association cortices, specifically in certain areas that are thought to be some of the most highly evolved parts of the human brain. (Glial cells are the structural and metabolic support cells for the nerve cel
ls.) Diamond wanted to compare these same areas in Einstein’s brain with the areas she had been studying in other human brains. She contacted Thomas Harvey and requested samples of Einstein’s right and left superior frontal and right and left inferior parietal lobes. In a small mayonnaise jar, Harvey sent the requested four pieces of Einstein’s brain embedded in celloidin.
Although this was now more than twenty-five years after the brain had been extracted, its cells were well preserved. Harvey’s technique of fixing the brain had worked well.
Diamond and her assistants sliced and stained the pieces, counting the nerve cells and the glial cells. It was tedious work. Unlike chemistry research, in which tissue can be ground up, placed in a solution, and analyzed in a spectrophotometer, counting cells with the human eye (which can make better decisions regarding densities than scanners) is painstaking and can take several months or longer.
After months and months of counting cells, Diamond concluded that in all four areas—the right and left superior frontal and the right and left inferior parietal—Einstein had more glial cells per neuron than the average male, but in only one area, the left inferior parietal cortex, was the variation statistically significant. This, she believed, constituted the major difference between Einstein’s brain and that of the ordinary human.
Although this would seem to be of significance, Diamond expressed caution about her findings. Scientists don’t do research on one specimen and declare their results conclusive. Ten genius specimens would be needed, ten Einsteinian brains with the same results, to affirm a scientific truth. Diamond’s work on Einstein’s brain supports what she has found in more than thirty years of research on rats: that rats that use their brains actively (in what scientists call an “enriched environment”) have more glial cells per neuron.
Lucy's Bones, Sacred Stones, & Einstein's Brain Page 34