BRAIN OF A GENIUS

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27664, 21 May 1955, Page 9

BRAIN OF A GENIUS

Einstein's Bequest For Medical Research

FINAL WARNING TO WORLD ON ATOMIC POWER

LBy a Staff Correspondent of the “Sydney Morning Herald”! Albert Einstein, who loved humanity, helped to give it in his lifetime a terrifying instrument for good or evil, for he opened thb atomic age. At Princeton University recently, two of America’s leading pathologists studied Einstein’s last gift—his own brain, for research. Dr. Einstein bequeathed his remains years ago for medical research, and Dr. Thomas Harvey, the pathologist at New Jersey’s Princeton Hospital, removed the brain when he conducted a postmortem on the physicist’s body.

Dr. Harvey injected the brain with formaldehyde, a preservative which will keep the brain indefinitely, and immersed it in solution, ready for study by him and his former tutor and Einstein’s personal friend, Dr Harry Zimmerman, Professor of Pathology at ColumMa University. “It is too early yet to say what we shall find or even hope to find,” Dr. Zimmerman said. “The study of the brain will take at least eight weeks. We will conduct a detailed microscopic study to find the exact cell structure of the brain. We will count the cells in various dissected partfe, a job of some magnitude, when it is realised that there are billions of cells in the human brain.” Dr. Zimmerman said the study of human brains had been a subject of tremendous medical interest over the last few decades. Exhaustive studies had been made in Berlin on the brains of political figures like Bismarck and Lenin—Lenin’s brain was the subject of a medical book. Size Not Decisive The sizes of brains had no relation to the talents of their owners, Dr. Zimmerman said. An" average adult brain weighed about 1,500 grammes (3.31 b But brains of intelligent people had been found to weigh as little as 1000 grammes, yet in some forms of idiocy brain weight was up to 2000 grammes. “Even in the intricate microscopic study of Einstein’s brain I doubt whether the cells will show Einstein was smarter than anyone else,” said Dr. Zimmerman. Moving pictures in colour and black and white will be taken of the brain study so that no clues are missed — clues that may show pathologists the difference between an average brain and that of a genius. The ultimate in tbe . 1S a complete understanding e human brain and the Princeton study of Einstein’s brain will be a step towards this goal. At present the highly technical data compiled from previous brain studies 3 i available only in advanced physiology textbooks are incomplete. There was a strong fighting heart as well as the brain of a genius in the frail body of Dr. Albert Einstein. Obituary notices described the sadfaced scientist as an “iconoclast.” In religion and politics, as well as in science, Dr. Einstein was never afraid *°, express publicly his views even when they ran against all accepted beliefs—which they often did. He did not believe in normal religion nor in personal after-life.

“I cannot imagine a god who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation —a god, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty,” he wrote. “Neither do 1 believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbour such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism.” Einstein referred to his religious ideals as “the cosmic religion” and described it as “the totality of experience as a unity full of significance ... “That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God,” he wrote. Dr. Einstein’s unorthodoxy extended to political and social ideas. His views got him into trouble and some people tried to pin the label of Communist on him, but he staunchly denied any Commuist affinities. He was a pacifist and idealist who believed in justice, liberty and the brotherhood of man and he was always ready “to fight for his ideals. “Never do anything against your conscience even if the State demands it,” he once counselled a friend. In his own words, Einstein was a man “with a passionate interest in social justice and social responsibility.” Appalled At Outcome When he left Nazi Germany to go to the United States in 1933, the Woman Patriot Corporation of America, alarmed at his theories, sent a petition to President Roosevelt, demanding that he be refused entry on the grounds that he was “a Communist and a menace to American institutions.” During World War 11, after much soul-searching, Einstein wrote to the President that the Germans were studying the possibility of making an atom bomb and suggesting that the Allies do likewise. But he was appalled when the bombs were dropped on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as he felt that the Japanese should have been warned of this weapon first. Einstein believed that world government was the only way to world peace. The threat to the survival of man aroused passionate resistance in Einstein. He was acutely aware of the perils of the atomic age. “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe,” he said.

This was probably his most significant message to mankind.—Associated Newspapers Feature Services.