Prompt Cast
The Mystery of Albert Einstein's Brain
TLDR After stealing Albert Einstein's brain, pathologist Thomas Harvey preserved and studied it, sending pieces to researchers around the world. Although some interesting findings were made, such as a wider parietal lobe, the full secrets of Einstein's brain remain unknown.
Timestamped Summary
00:00
Albert Einstein's brain was cremated upon his death, but a pathologist at Princeton University's hospital was charged with doing the autopsy on him and ended up keeping his brain.
03:34
Thomas Harvey stole Albert Einstein's brain, preserved it in a glass jar, and cut it into 240 pieces for study, despite the fact that it appeared to be average.
06:48
After cataloguing and documenting Einstein's brain, Thomas Harvey sent pieces of it to researchers around the world in the hopes of uncovering its secrets, but to this day, we still don't fully understand how Einstein's brain worked.
10:06
Harvey, the man who stole Einstein's brain, eventually found out about Dr. Marion Diamond's work on the plasticity of rat's brains and compared it to Einstein's brain, finding a higher ratio of glial cells, which he hypothesized meant that Einstein had more rapidly firing neurons and was therefore smarter.
13:39
Dr. Marion Diamond's work on the plasticity of rat's brains was discredited, which likely ruined her career, but Harvey continued to wait for more research on Einstein's brain, leading him to Dr. Sandra Whittleson's work comparing Einstein's brain to others.
16:51
Dr. Sandra Whittleson found that Albert Einstein's parietal lobe was 15% wider than the average person's, which could potentially explain his mathematical skills and spatial reasoning abilities, but further research is needed to confirm this.
20:00
Albert Harvey returned Albert Einstein's brain to Princeton Hospital before he died, and a book called "Driving with Mr. Albert" was written about the many cross-country trips Harvey took with the brain.
23:19
The podcast ends with a mention of another podcast called Brain Stuff and some ads for AC Hotels by Marriott and Discover credit cards.
Categories:
Society & Culture
