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Subscribe to RSSSlides containing thin slices of Albert Einstein's brain will go on display at Philadelphia's Mutter Museum, thanks to a donation from a neuropathologist who has been holding onto the samples for decades.
Lucy Rorke-Adams of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia received the box of 46 slides in the mid-1970s from the widow of a physician who helped arrange the preparation of the brain samples, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Thomas Stoltz Harvey, a doctor at Princeton Hospital, conducted the autopsy on the famed physicist just hours after his death in 1955. Apparently without the family's permission, Harvey preserved Einstein's brain and sectioned it into hundreds of specimens on microscope slides for study. The controversy, as well as the strange journey of Einstein's brain, are detailed in Michael Paterniti's book "Driving Mr. Albert."
Harvey and other researchers found nothing unusual about the brain's size, but there was evidence that Einstein's brain contained more than the expected proportion of glial cells, which play a role in supporting connections between neurons. Rorke-Adams, whose research focuses on comparisons of brain cells at different ages, said Einstein's brain looks remarkably youthful under a microscope: "“It does not show any of the changes that we associate with age," CBS Philly quoted her as saying.
More about Einstein and brains:
- Explore the brain's hidden frontiers
- Brain growth predicts IQ in preterm babies
- Celebrate a century of Einstein
- Einstein slideshow: A life of genius
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Why?
And without the family's permission...
who cares about the family's permission? we are a little silly about dead bodies in this country. it's just meat. if it can be useful in some other arena (other than lunch), people should consider getting off of their weird high horse about "honoring the dead" by babying their corpses. makes no sense at all.
I clearly don't want you to speak for me, if I have myself cryonically preserved...
Ah, gourmet brain prized by connoisseur zombies!
Truffle of the zombie cuisine!
No.
This exhibit is a bit tasteless ... pun intended.
This is disgusting, and the Einstein family should be very upset. Why is this man's brain not in his coffin with him. Again....this is disgusting and that Dr. Harvey should have been arrested for body snatching and thrown in jail.
have any of you ever *visited* the Mutter Museum? It's not a sideshow. It is part of the College of Physicians of Philidelphia, and a working medical library as part of the college. The displays are mounted in a respectful manner and the information provided with the exhibits are facinating. On the whole I find it much more tasteful than the "Bodyworks" travelling exhibit.
Someday we are going to clone that brain and put it in a new body. I wonder what Einstein will think about the state of physics at that time?
why didnt he just give into cloning