Mileva Maric Einstein, the first wife of Albert Einstein, was herself a brilliant physicist and mathematician. According to some sources, she significantly contributed to Albert Einstein’s work and co-authored his celebrated 1905 papers.

She was born in Serbia (then Austro-Hungarian Empire). She was a brilliant student who excelled in mathematics and physics and continued studying at ETH Zurich, one of few universities admitting women at the time. She was in the group with Albert Einstein, as the only woman in the Department of Physics and Mathematics at ETH Zurich.

Einstein published remarkable papers in 1905 in the Annals of Physics which revolutionized physics (his “miracle year”). However, there were claims that the first drafts of the 1905 papers had “Einstein-Marity” as authors (Marity was a Hungarian version of her surname) and that her name was later removed, due to fear of papers getting less credibility with a female co-author.

Some sources asserted that Maric assisted Einstein with the mathematics he needed for the special relativity theory. There were letters between Albert and Mileva, written between 1897 and 1903, in which Albert discussed scientific ideas with Mileva and referred to scientific work as “our work”. Those letters were uncovered in 1987 and published in “Albert Einstein-Mileva Maric: The Love Letters”. There were also testimonies from their children that Albert and Mileva collaborated on their scientific work.

Albert and Mileva divorced in 1919 and Albert received a Nobel Prize in 1921 for his work on the photoelectric effect in 1905. However, he transferred the full Nobel Prize reward amount to Mileva.

Mileva’s younger brother was Milos Maric, a well-respected Soviet scientist in the field of mitosis which laid the foundation for cloning.

However hard it is to deduce the impact and exact contribution of Mileva to Albert’s scientific work, it is certain that she was a brilliant scientist and one of the first women to study physics and mathematics. She is highly respected in her country of origin, where two Technical Schools and streets in several Serbian cities are named by her.

Sources:

“The Collaboration of Mileva Maric and Albert Einstein”. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274263348_The_Collaboration_of_Mileva_Maric_and_Albert_Einstein