The Man Who Stole Einstein’s Brain

The brain of Albert Einstein has never been laid to rest. Although the iconic genius died in 1955, pieces of the brain that changed our view of the universe have roamed the world ever since, in mayonnaise jars, cardboard boxes and car trunks. Yet the man behind the brain’s bizarre afterlife has remained a shadowy figure. But in this quirky, intimate portrait of Thomas Stoltz Harvey, The Man Who Stole Einstein’s Brain reveals the stranger-than-fiction saga of an obsession that lasted half a century.

A Yale-educated Quaker, Harvey is the chief pathologist at Princeton Hospital who, while performing the autopsy on Einstein, steals the dead scientist’s brain hoping it can solve the mystery of genius and make him a scientific hero. When Einstein’s family demands the brain be returned, Harvey strikes a secret deal with Einstein’s estate. By vowing to safeguard it from publicity and souvenir hunters, and use the brain for scientific study only, Harvey is given permission to keep it. But after cutting the brain into 240 pieces for research, Harvey learns brain science is not up to the job, and that he can never escape the power of Einstein’s celebrity.

Instead of becoming his ticket to scholarly fame, the brain leads to his undoing like a relic cursed. He loses his Princeton job, his medical licence, three marriages fail and he spends 40 years drifting from place to place, hiding Einstein’s brain in basements as he struggles to make ends meet. All the while, Einstein’s estate, and a stream of reporters, hound him for results from the brain study. But as Harvey refuses media requests from all over the world, he becomes an urban legend, the slippery doctor who pulled off the heist of the century. Meanwhile, Harvey shows off his jars of brain to fellow Quakers and co-workers and gives out pieces to professors he likes. By the time Harvey is in his eighties, the former Ivy League doctor works night shifts at a plastics factory, shares a cramped apartment with a university student and keeps Einstein’s brain in the closet.

Only near the end of Harvey’s life, does modern-day science start to make discoveries about his prized possession. But not until a few years before his own death, is Harvey finally able to let the brain go. He turns it over to another Princeton physician, identified only as Dr. X, to be its new keeper – and history repeats itself. Dr. X has since been hiding Einstein’s brain for more than 20 years and is currently deciding where it should go next.

With shades of the tragic and comic, this poignant account touches on humanity’s age-old fascination with genius, the seductive maw of celebrity, and the price of ambition. It features a rich archive, rare access to Harvey’s own recorded words and letters, and interviews with a colourful cast of characters, among them Harvey’s children, co-workers and the chicken-raising, Appalachian-dwelling manager of Einstein’s social media accounts, who posts messages each day for Einstein’s 20 million followers.