The Case of the Purloined Brain

If you think stealing an election is a big deal; how about your noggin?

Albert Einstein's brain was stolen on April 18, 1955 by Dr. Thomas Stoltz Harvey, the Princeton Hospital pathologist who performed his autopsy.  He took the brain against Einstein's stated instructions to be cremated.

Yikes! 

Lest you find this ghoulish, in the 19th and 20th centuries it was not uncommon to collect and study the brains of high-achieving people - including notorious criminals - to look for physical traits linked to their accomplishments and behavior.

Harvey was under the impression that the brain of the world's leading physicist must possess some distinct physical abnormalities.  While not a neurologist, and likely acting on impulse, Harvey found himself in a unique historical moment to preserve the organ before it was lost forever.

Einstein had specifically left instructions to be cremated and thus prevent his mortal remains from being idolized.  Harvey managed to obtain reluctant and retroactive permission from Einstein's son, Hans Albert, on the strict condition that the brain be used only for legitimate scientific research. 

While the brain no longer exists as an intact organ it has been divided into hundreds of fragmented specimens and microscope slides scattered across several locations. 

The vast majority of the tissue is safeguarded at the Penn Medicine Princeton Medical Center.  Access to this collection is restricted to the public and therefore not accessible to casual visitors. 

Philadelphia's Mütter Museum is the only location you can actually see pieces of the physicist's brain.  There is an exhibit where you can view 46 cross-section slices of the brain tissue mounted on microscope slides.   

Alas, Harvey distributed individual pieces and slices to friends and acquaintances around the world.  While many of them have been accounted-for there are likely some that are that are in private hands or university collections as historic oddities.  

In the end, Einstein's remains were cremated and subsequently scattered at an undisclosed location.

You can learn more about this story here.