The Other Einstein(74)

I offered the only explanation I could cobble together without inciting Albert. “The children have made it challenging. And please call me Mileva.”

Madame Curie sipped her tea and thoughtfully responded. “Mileva, I’m frequently questioned, especially by women, on how I reconcile family life with a scientific career. Well, it hasn’t been easy. But nothing is easy for people like you and me. We are eastern Europeans living in countries that look down upon people from our lands. We are women, who are expected to stay in the home, not run labs or teach at universities. Our expertise is in physics and math, exclusively male fields until now. And on top of it, you and I are shy in a scientific realm that requires us to speak publicly. In some ways, managing a family has been the easiest part.”

How could I respond? Thank God, she didn’t make me.

“You and I are not so different except in the choices we’ve made.” She chortled. “And the husbands we chose, of course.”

Nearly spitting out a mouthful of tea, I guffawed at the unexpected, almost inappropriate, remark. Madame Curie’s late husband Pierre was well known for his unstinting support of her career. Was she insinuating that Albert was not Pierre in this regard? I’d often considered the scientific marriage of the Curies and coveted their union. Once, I had thought that would be the path that Albert and I would travel.

“I didn’t have the honor of knowing Monsieur, but his encouragement of you and your work is well known. He must have been an extraordinary man.” I said the only diplomatic thing that came to mind, the only statement that wouldn’t directly compare Albert to Monsieur Curie. A comparison in which Albert would suffer greatly.

“I have no idea how the division of labor works between you and Albert, but my husband fostered my career from the start. When the Nobel Prize committee was being petitioned to remove me from consideration in 1903, Pierre publicly lobbied for me. He insisted to influential people on the committee that I had originated our research, conceived the experiments, and generated the theories about the nature of radioactivity, which was, indeed, the fact. But many a lesser man wouldn’t have made that effort.” She didn’t ask, but implicit in her statement was the question of whether Albert would have gone to those lengths.

I tried to answer her question as vaguely as possible while still being respectful. “From the beginning of our marriage, our situation didn’t allow for my work outside the home. Though I certainly longed for it.”

Madame Curie was quiet for a full minute. “Science certainly needs practical men, but science also needs dreamers. It seems to me that your husband is one of those dreamers. And dreamers often need caretakers, don’t they?”

I laughed. Was I really having this frank and insightful conversation about the state of my marriage and career with Marie Curie? “They do indeed.”

“Whether Albert has championed your scientific efforts or not, he certainly supported mine. Did you know that he came to my defense last year when all that unpleasant business with my Nobel Prize arose?” Madame Curie paused, aware that further elaboration on her “unpleasant business” was unnecessary. Scientists worldwide had called her unfit for the Nobel Prize when her affair with married fellow scientist Paul Langevin became public.

I shook my head. Albert hadn’t told me. Interesting that Albert was more willing to champion a known adulterer—brilliant and worthy though she was—than his own hardworking and deserving wife. What did this say about his moralistic worldview and allegiances these days?

She continued. “Perhaps, when your circumstances allow, Albert will encourage your scientific efforts again.”

“Perhaps,” I answered quietly, knowing full well of Albert’s lack of interest in my work.

“Remember my words, Mileva, when you withdraw into the deadening cycle of home. You and I are not so different except in the choices we’ve made. And remind yourself that a new choice is always possible.”





Chapter 38


July 14 through September 23, 1913

Zürich, Switzerland, Ka?, Serbia, and Vienna, Austria

Just as I’d begun to develop a tenuous confidence on the strength of Madame Curie’s words, Berlin came calling for Albert.

The directorship of the soon-to-be formed Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics. A professorship at the University of Berlin with no teaching duties. Membership in the Prussian Academy of Sciences, the greatest scientific honor aside from the Nobel Prize. The package, the prestige, and the money—all with no requirement that he do anything but think—were so overwhelming that they made Albert forget how much he’d hated the Berlin of his youth. His loathing of the city and its people had been so strident that he renounced his German citizenship to become Swiss in his early twenties.

Or perhaps it was something else entirely that washed away all those awful memories.

Berlin, for me, held only fear. Berlin was Albert’s family, who despised me. Berlin was notoriously hostile toward Slavic eastern Europeans, and I plainly was anything but Aryan. More than anything, however, Berlin was Elsa, who I suspected engineered this position somehow. With Elsa in the wings—no matter Albert’s assurances that he had broken off their affair—I feared that Berlin would be the death knell of my marriage.

But it wasn’t a choice, according to Albert. In the past, we’d always deliberated new opportunities and new locations together, but not this time. After Max Planck and Walther Nernst made a trip to Zürich to persuade Albert to take the package—a job, they dramatically informed him, that was critical for the future of science—Albert announced that we were moving to Berlin. At first, I begged him not to, but after his emphatic insistence, I said little else in the passing weeks, even when he baited me about it. It was as if he was hoping I’d refuse to go so he could leave me behind.