Thomas Stoltz Harvey (October 10, 1912 – April 5, 2007) was a
pathologist who conducted the
autopsy on
Albert Einstein in 1955. Harvey studied at
Yale University as an undergraduate and later as a medical student under Dr. Harry Zimmerman. In his third year of medical school he contracted
tuberculosis and was bedridden for the next year in a sanatorium, claiming it to be one of the biggest disappointments of his life.
[1] The autopsy was conducted at Princeton Hospital, Princeton NJ, on April 18 at 8:00 am. Einstein's brain weighed 1,230 grams -well within the normal human range- which immediately dispelled the concept that intelligence and brain size were directly related. Dr. Harvey sectioned the preserved brain into 170 pieces
[2] in a lab at the University of Pennsylvania, a process that took three full months to complete. Those 170 sections were then sliced in microscopic slivers and mounted onto slides and stained. There were 12 sets of slides created with hundreds of slides in each set. Harvey retained two complete sets for his own research and distributed the rest to handpicked leading pathologists of the time. No permission for the removal and preservation had been given by Einstein or his family, but when the family learned about the study, permission to proceed the study was granted as long as the results were only published in scientific journals and not sensationalised.
[3]
In August, 1978, New Jersey Monthly reporter Steven Levy published an article: I Found Einstein's Brain based on his interview with Dr. Harvey when he was living in Wichita, Kansas. In 1988, Dr. Harvey retired and moved to Lawrence, Kansas. In 1996, Harvey moved from Weston, Missouri to Titusville, New Jersey. In 1994 documentary Relics: Einstein's Brain, Kinki University Professor Sugimoto Kenji asks Harvey for a piece of the brain, to which Harvey consents and unceremoniously slices a portion of the brain-stem. Footage shows Harvey segmenting and handing over to Sugimoto a portion using nothing more than a kitchen knife, common cutting board, and spoon at his apartment.[4] In 1998, Harvey delivered the remaining uncut portion of Einstein's brain to Dr. Elliot Krauss, a pathologist at University Medical Center at Princeton. Certain parts of Einstein's brain were found to have a higher proportion of glial cells than the average male brain.
In 2005, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Einstein's death, the 92-year-old Harvey was able to give interviews regarding the remarkable history of the brain from his home in New Jersey. He died at the University Medical Center at Princeton on April 5, 2007.
See also
Literature
- Michael Paterniti, Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America With Einstein's Brain (G K Hall & Co, December, 2000) (ISBN 0-7838-9298-5)
- Carolyn Abraham, Possessing Genius: The Bizarre Odyssey of Einstein's Brain (St Martins Press, March, 2002) (ISBN 0-312-28117-X)
References
External links
| Persondata
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| NAME
| Harvey, Thomas Stoltz
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| ALTERNATIVE NAMES
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| SHORT DESCRIPTION
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| DATE OF BIRTH
| October 10, 1912
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| PLACE OF BIRTH
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| DATE OF DEATH
| April 5, 2007
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| PLACE OF DEATH
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