9. August 2010 by Nancy Pinard.

Today I read an article on Einstein that might provide a possible frame for the next book.  I’m not far enough in to say for certain, but the article presents a possibility.   http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1211594-7,00.html

The materials seem to be there, in print, translated and available, for me to do this without learning Hebrew and moving to Jerusalem to live in a library.  My fear is that the conflict–the race against a competitor to produce the theory–is too like Darwin’s threat from Alfred Russel Wallace.  The question becomes, is this kind of competition what makes scientists commit their notions to print?  Of course, the divorce scenerio and Einstein’s first wife’s antagonism is very different from the Darwin marriage.  The pain of the his son, Hans Albert, in the article is very touching.  

POV might be the solution to the similarities.  Not sure.  I need to read more– to find the similarity and resonance with my own life with some character in this drama.  At some point I’ll have words in my head.  I haven’t given up on my interest in exploring the question of his abandoning the son who was mentally ill–on the grounds that genius has its own demands and minding the infirm is not one of them.  The second son, Tete in the article, was schizophrenic.  His first wife, Mileva, beggered herself to take care of him.  Einstein, by then, was married to his cousin, Elsa Einstein, but he never stepped in to help–after the original Nobel Prize money he gave Mileva in the divorce settlement–for which she had to wait something like 14 years.  He became very wealthy but never revisited his obligation to his ex-wife/son.   

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7. June 2010 by Nancy Pinard.

In 1912 Albert met Paul Ehrenfest, a physicist and teacher of compatible brilliance.  Five years later, Ehrenfest had a son named Vassik born with Downs Syndrome, who in 1932 was institutionalized.  By way of comfort, Albert told him, “Valuable individuals must not be sacrificed to hopeless things.”  This position was consistent with Albert’s refusal to marry Mileva when she was pregnant and then delivered Lieserl, called by some who knew the family secret a “monstrosity.”  When their second son was afflicted with manic-depression, Albert abandoned the family.

As despicable as I find his abandonment, it remains an unsettled issue for me, as when I consider the pastor in Florida’s pain over his severely autistic son whose disability affects the whole family in such drastic ways.  I remember mother once saying that my classmate Susan was spending all her resources on a disabled baby and denying privileges to her two children who were actually capable of benefiting.  I’m against disabled children being mainstreamed and allowed to consume inordinate amounts of teacher attention/energy, so that the easily-educable children are denied.  So how is this different from Einstein’s position, as despicable as I find it on the page?  I’m also aware that if I were in the situation with my own child, it would no longer remain an intellectual question.  Like Mileva, I would feel committed to see it through, though even she abandoned Lieserl to her parents’ farm and went to Bern to marry Albert.  Ultimately, however, she died a grim, resentful woman, having beggered her emotional and financial resources to a lost cause.  How does this relate to a phrase I’ve heard myself speak to women who have allowed caretaking for elderly or mentally-ill relatives to use them up?  I ask them, “How many disabled people is better than one?”  But I don’t think I mean for them to abandon their loved one.  Rather to tell them it’s good (not bad, as they’ve been made to feel) to enlist support services, even if it means moving the person from the home. 

This being an unsettled issue is likely a point in its favor, just as the open-endedness of my position on faith vs science in the Darwin book made it a discovery process.  It’s really a moral problem. 

Posted in Einstein's children, family members, Darwin, Einstein, writing | 1 Comment »