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Thomas Stoltz Harvey

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Thomas Stoltz Harvey
Harvey in 1955, on the day Albert Einstein died
Born(1912-10-10)October 10, 1912
Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.
DiedApril 5, 2007(2007-04-05) (aged 94)
Titusville, New Jersey, U.S.
Alma materYale University
Known forConducting the autopsy of Albert Einstein's brain and preserving it
Scientific career
FieldsPathology

Thomas Stoltz Harvey (October 10, 1912 – April 5, 2007) was an American pathologist who conducted the autopsy on Albert Einstein in 1955. Harvey afterwards preserved Einstein's brain on the condition that it would be studied for scientific purposes.

Early career

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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]

Autopsy of Albert Einstein

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The autopsy was conducted at Princeton Hospital on April 18, 1955, at 8:00 am. Einstein's brain weighed 1,230 grams - well within the normal human range. 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 with the study was granted as long as the results were only published in scientific journals and not sensationalised.[3]

Theft of Einstein's brain

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In August 1978, New Jersey Monthly reporter Steven Levy published an article, "I Found Einstein's Brain",[4][5] based on his interview with Harvey, when Harvey was working at a medical test laboratory, in Wichita, Kansas. In 1988, Harvey retired and moved to Lawrence, Kansas, near William Burroughs.[6][7][8] In 1996, Harvey moved from Weston, Missouri to Titusville in Hopewell Township, Mercer County, New Jersey.[9] In the 1994 documentary Relics: Einstein's Brain, Kinki University Professor Sugimoto Kenji asks Harvey for a piece of the brain, to which Harvey consents and slices a portion of the brain-stem. Footage shows Harvey segmenting and handing over to Sugimoto a portion.[10] In 1998, Harvey delivered the remaining uncut portion of Einstein's brain to Dr. Elliot Krauss, a pathologist at University Medical Center at Princeton. As Marian Diamond and associates discovered, certain parts of Einstein's brain were found to have a higher proportion of glial cells than the average male brain.[11] Diamond compared the ratio of glial cells in Einstein's brain with that of the preserved brains of 11 other males. (Glial cells provide support and nutrition in the brain, form myelin, and participate in signal transmission, and are the other integral component of the brain, besides the neurons.) Dr. Diamond's laboratory made thin sections of Einstein's brain, each 6 micrometers thick. They then used a microscope to count the cells. Einstein's brain had more glial cells relative to neurons in all areas studied, but only in the left inferior parietal area was the difference statistically significant. This area is part of the association cortex, regions of the brain responsible for incorporating and synthesizing information from multiple other brain regions. A stimulating environment can increase the proportion of glial cells and the high ratio could possibly result from Einstein's life studying stimulating scientific problems.[12] [13] The limitation that Diamond admits in her study is that she had only one Einstein to compare with 11 brains of normal intelligence individuals. S. S. Kantha of the Osaka Bioscience Institute criticized Diamond's study, as did Terence Hines of Pace University.[14] Other issues related to Diamond's study point out glial cells continue dividing as a person ages and although Einstein's brain was 76, it was compared to brains that averaged 64 in age (eleven male brains, 47–80 years of age). Diamond in her landmark study "On the Brain of a Scientist: Albert Einstein" noted that the 11 male individuals whose brains were used in her control base had died from nonneurologically related diseases. Diamond also noted that "Chronological age is not necessarily a useful indicator in measuring biological systems. Environmental factors also play a strong role in modifying the conditions of the organism. One major problem in dealing with human specimens is that they do not come from controlled environments."[15]

In 2005, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Einstein's death, the 92-year-old Harvey gave interviews regarding the history of the brain from his home in New Jersey.[16][17]

Harvey died at the University Medical Center at Princeton on April 5, 2007, of complications of a stroke.[18]

Legacy

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In 2010, Harvey's heirs transferred all of his holdings constituting the remains of Albert Einstein's brain to the National Museum of Health and Medicine, including 14 photographs of the whole brain prior to sectioning, never before revealed to the public.[19][20]

TV and film reporting

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The story of Harvey's autopsy of Einstein's brain, and its subsequent study, was explained in an episode of the Science Channel show Dark Matters: Twisted But True, a series which explores the darker side of scientific discovery and experimentation, which premiered on September 7, 2011. The program segment "The Secrets of Einstein's Brain" re-aired on the History Channel on June 4, 2016.[21]

The Man Who Stole Einstein's Brain (2023).[22][23][24]

Further reading

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  • The Search for Einstein's Brain
  • Yes, I Found Einstein’s Brain
  • Michael Paterniti, Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America With Einstein's Brain (G K Hall & Co, December, 2000) (ISBN 0-7838-9298-5)[25][26]
  • Carolyn Abraham, Possessing Genius: The Bizarre Odyssey of Einstein's Brain (St Martins Press, March, 2002) (ISBN 0-312-28117-X)

References

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  1. ^ Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain, Dial Press, 2001
  2. ^ Andrews, Lori B.; Nelkin, Dorothy (2001). Body bazaar: the market for human tissue in the biotechnology age. Crown Publishers. p. 9. ISBN 978-0-609-60540-0.
  3. ^ Sperlin, Daniel (2008). Posthumous interests: legal and ethical perspectives. Cambridge University Press. p. 144. ISBN 978-0-521-87784-8., Chapter 4, p. 144
  4. ^ "The Search for Einstein's Brain". New Jersey Monthly. 1978-08-01. Retrieved 2024-08-28.
  5. ^ Levy, Steven. "Yes, I Found Einstein's Brain". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2024-08-28.
  6. ^ "Driving Einstein's Brain: The Weirdness Is Brilliant | The Seattle Times". archive.seattletimes.com. Retrieved 2024-03-01.
  7. ^ "Einsteins Brain – Mexico City (Dec 2013)". Allan Parker. 2016-06-22. Retrieved 2024-03-01.
  8. ^ "Taking shots from Einstein's brain". Interconnected, a blog by Matt Webb. Retrieved 2024-03-01.
  9. ^ Staff. "Doctor Kept Genius's Brain in a Jar 43 Years", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 17, 2005. Accessed December 3, 2012. "He's 93, living in a small New Jersey town called Titusville."
  10. ^ "Relics: Einstein's Brain (1994)". YouTube. 2006-08-03. Archived from the original on 2021-12-21. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
  11. ^ Diamond, M. C.; Scheibel, A. B.; Murphy, G. M.; Harvey, T. (1985). "On the brain of a scientist: Albert Einstein". Experimental Neurology. 88 (1): 198–204. doi:10.1016/0014-4886(85)90123-2. ISSN 0014-4886. PMID 3979509.
  12. ^ "The strange afterlife of Einstein's brain". BBC News. April 17, 2015.
  13. ^ Diamond MC, Scheibel AB, Murphy GM Jr, Harvey T,"On the Brain of a Scientist: Albert Einstein", "Experimental Neurology 88, 198-204, 1985", Retrieved February 9, 2017
  14. ^ The Long, Strange Journey of Einstein's Brain NPR Morning Edition, April 18, 2005, audio w/ transcript, excerpting Postcards from the Brain Museum by Brian Burrell, Broadway Books, 2005; retrieved May 11, 2024
  15. ^ Diamond MC, Scheibel AB, Murphy GM Jr, Harvey T,"On the Brain of a Scientist: Albert Einstein", "Experimental Neurology 88, 198-204, 1985" Retrieved February 9, 2017
  16. ^ * The Long, Strange Journey of Einstein's Brain. NPR Morning Edition, April 18, 2005, audio w/ transcript, excerpting Postcards from the Brain Museum by Brian Burrell, Broadway Books, 2005; retrieved August 30, 2020
    • Burrell, Brian, Postcards from the Brain Museum: The Improbable Search for Meaning in the Matter of Famous Minds Broadway Books, 2005 ISBN 0385501285 - ISBN 9780385501286
  17. ^ POSTCARDS FROM THE BRAIN MUSEUM | Kirkus Reviews.
  18. ^ "Thomas Harvey Obituary (2007) - Trenton, NJ - "The Times, Trenton,"". obits.nj.com. Retrieved 2021-03-22.
  19. ^ Falk, Dean, Frederick E. Lepore, and Adrianne Noe (2012), "The cerebral cortex of Albert Einstein: a description and preliminary analysis of unpublished photographs", Brain; 135: 11.
  20. ^ Balter, Michael, "Rare photos show that Einstein's brain has unusual features", The Washington Post, Tuesday, 27 November 2012; E6.
  21. ^ "I Have Einstein's Brain, Unidentified Flying Nazis, Killer Thoughts". Dark Matters: Twisted But True. September 7, 2011. Science Channel.
  22. ^ "Canadian film on the theft of Einstein's brain among Hot Doc world premieres". ctvnews. 21 March 2023. Retrieved 2024-03-01.
  23. ^ "The Man Who Stole Einstein's Brain". Retrieved 2024-08-02.
  24. ^ "The Man Who Stole Einstein's Brain – Watkins Museum of History". www.watkinsmuseum.org. Retrieved 2024-03-01.
  25. ^ https://booknotes.org/FullPage.aspx?SID=158908-1 [bare URL]
  26. ^ "Not as Swift as Light". archive.nytimes.com.
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