The Other Einstein: A novel

Albert Einstein is one of the most famous men in history. His name and face transcend the Western world he grew up in. Einstein is truly a universal hero. Historically, his genius overpowered the darker truths of his personal life. In this novel, Benedict highlights his controlling, dismissive nature to show the complexity and flaws of an exalted historical figure. In The Other Einstein, Einstein is brilliantly intelligent but also insecure, narcissistic, and chronically unempathetic.

Einstein is a complicated antagonist. On the one hand, he is genuinely cruel to Mileva and forces her to leave the things she values most to be with him. He abandons her and the children and does not react emotionally to the death of their daughter, whom he never took the time to meet. He is unfaithful and forces Mileva to make one of the most difficult decisions a woman at that time could make: the decision to get a divorce and raise her children on her own. On the other hand, it is difficult to rewrite Einstein’s legendary image. Benedict creates distance between the historical Einstein and the character in the novel by referring to him by his first name after his relationship with Mileva deepens. In portraying Einstein as Albert, from Mileva’s point of view, Benedict constructs an unadorned, intimate, non-historicized persona for him. Portraying a much-loved historical figure in a negative light is a risk for an author, but Benedict’s reliance on archival research and documented evidence makes her account reliable, even if many of the plot’s details are fictionalized. The novel’s goal is not to discredit or vilify Einstein but to shed a new light on his story by focusing on who he was to his wife. Rather than condemning him, Benedict uses him as a symbol for the poisonous patriarchy that thwarted Mileva and so many women like her.

Curie only appears at the end of the novel but plays a vital role in Mileva’s life, as this successful female scientist helps her recall who she could have been without Albert. Marie earned degrees in physics and mathematics at the Sorbonne and married Pierre Curie, a physics professor there. The two collaborated as scientists, and he was famously supportive of her work. In 1903, Pierre and Marie Curie shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with another scientist, and Marie won a second Nobel Prize, for chemistry, in 1911.

When Marie meets Mileva—despite Albert’s adoption of his charming persona in front of her—she recognizes her brilliance and privately tells her that the only difference between the two women lies in their choices. Mileva’s esteem for Marie and understanding of what she might have accomplished if her own husband had been loyal and supportive help her realize that she is not trapped with Albert. This leads to her decision to divorce him and create a new life for herself and her sons.

Lieserl was Albert and Mileva’s first child and only daughter. Mileva became pregnant with her prior to their marriage, prompting both Albert and her father to urge her to put the child up for adoption. However, Mileva and her mother both adored the child and refused to let her go. Because Albert delayed marrying Mileva, she returned to her parents’ home in Serbia for pregnancy and childbirth in an effort to avoid destroying her reputation and her career prospects.

Albert never met Lieserl. He showed no interest in visiting the child and asked Mileva to return to him without her. Mileva’s mother urged her to go in hopes that she would persuade Albert to marry her, and the baby remained in Serbia. When her mother wrote that the baby had scarlet fever, Mileva rushed back to Serbia to care for her, but the child died. Mileva left when her daughter was six months old, and the child died one year later.

Albert’s encouragement of Mileva to leave Lieserl in Serbia demonstrates his lack of loyalty and sense of responsibility. Albert’s abandonment of his daughter also foreshadows his later emotional abandonment of Mileva, when he begins an extramarital affair with his first cousin, Elsa.

Elsa was Albert Einstein’s first cousin, the child of his mother’s sister. Mileva discovers their correspondence and suspects that the two are having an affair. Later, she learns that they began sleeping together when the Einsteins moved to Berlin, and a letter reveals that Albert confessed his love for her but told her she couldn’t have him due to his marriage.

The novel shifts its focus away from Albert when Mileva decides to leave him and doesn’t address his future with Elsa. However, he married Elsa less than four months after his divorce from Mileva became final, and he was repeatedly unfaithful to her. The couple eventually moved to Princeton, New Jersey. Elsa became seriously ill soon after their move, and Albert largely ignored her while she suffered, preferring to focus on his studies. She passed away the following year.