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"Too intellectual". "An old witch." Here are some of the comments that the family of Albert Einstein dedicated to the first wife of the scientist, Mileva Einstein.
But the relationship has not always been so thorny. Before the divorce in 1916, they were both students at the Polytechnic Institute of Zurich, one of the few universities in Europe to welcome women at the time. There, they shared their love of science.
Mileva's qualifications leave no doubt about the fact that she was a brilliant physicist and scientist, sometimes with higher marks than Albert's. And yet, he has not pbaded the last stages of his career.
Letters also reveal that around 1900, when they were not yet married, Mileva became pregnant. There is no trace of the couple's first daughter, but it is thought she died of scarlet fever, an infectious disease.
Several biographies indicate that the student period marked the beginning of many years of collaboration, for which Mileva was little recognized, and that the education of her children with Albert separated her from the higher level of science.
Always together
The 43 preserved letters mention "our works" and "our theory of relative movement", "our point of view" or "our articles".
"During the school holidays, often dead, they exchanged several letters in which Albert was constantly referring to his collaboration," says Pauline Gagnon, principal physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (better known under the acronym Cern).
"Even his son, Hans Albert, remembers watching them work day and night at the kitchen table," says Gagnon.
This occurs in 1905, when Albert publishes his most important works: four articles in the journal Annalen der Physik that forever change the understanding of the laws of physics, including his theory of relativity. .
A woman in the shadows
When they divorced, they agreed that if Albert won the Nobel Prize, Mileva would receive the cash prize.
He received the Physics Award in 1921, when he was separated from the first woman two years ago and that he was married again.