Is it true that Einstein's brain was stolen? Ageless genius: Einstein's brain was shown to the general public. And at this time

Albert Einstein died in Princeton on April 18, 1955. His dying wish was a modest funeral without much publicity - and it happened. The scientist's body was cremated, and at the funeral, which was attended by only 12 people, his ashes were scattered in the wind. However, the scientist was cremated ... not all. His brain is supposedly still stored in formalin, which is available for research.

The scientist's brain was extracted by Thomas Harvey, the pathologist who performed the autopsy of Einstein at Princeton Hospital. At that time, it seemed to the doctor for granted that the brain of a great scientist should be studied - moreover, he was sure that the scientist himself bequeathed this. The fact that his actions were subsequently identified as theft was a shock to him.

Harvey photographed the brain from all possible angles and then carefully cut it into 240 small pieces, each of which was packed in a jar of formalin or colloidal film.

When the fact of hiding Einstein's brain became known, Harvey was asked to return it by a relative, but he flatly refused. Almost immediately this was followed by dismissal, later - a divorce from his wife. Harvey's life was completely destroyed - until the end of his days he worked as an ordinary worker in a factory, only giving interviews for documentary dedicated to his "theft". Later, in hindsight, Einstein's relatives gave permission to study the scientist's brain.

The first study of Einstein's brain took place in 1984 - 29 years after the scientist's death. Then a group of scientists published in the journal Experimental Neurology two parts of Einstein's brain (9 and 39 of Brodmann's field) with similar parts of the control group. The conclusion of the scientists was that the ratio of the number of neuroglial cells to neurons in Einstein was higher than in others.

This study was so criticized that its results were not taken seriously. Among the main arguments were those that the control group consisted of only 11 people, which is too small for comparison, and moreover, they were all significantly younger than Einstein at the time of his death.

15 years later, these mistakes were taken into account and an article published in the medical journal "The Lancet" reported on the study of a larger group of people whose average age was just 57 years old - it was with them that the scientist's brain was compared. The researchers then identified special areas of the brain responsible for the ability to mathematics, and noted that they are larger than the rest, and the scientist's brain itself was 15% wider than the average brain.

Between these studies, there was one more - in 1996, during which they found out the total weight of Einstein's brain (1230 g), which is slightly less than the average brain of an adult male (1400 g), but in contrast to this, it was put that the density of neurons in Einstein was much and much more than usual. Apparently, the researchers suggest, this provided the scientist with a much larger and more intense connection between neurons and, accordingly, better brain activity.

Harvey himself all this time kept the photographs and the very brain of Einstein himself until his death. He passed away in 2007, after which his family passed on all this data to National Museum Health and Medicine at Silver Springs. Despite the fact that Harvey has repeatedly stated that he collaborated with other scientists to study Einstein's brain, no documents of these experiments have been found.

Later, in 2012, anthropologist Dean Falk examined Einstein's brain from photographs. She found that the scientist had a highly developed part that is generally considered to be developed in left-handed musicians. Actually, the fact that Einstein played the violin is not a secret.

She also found an extra gyrus in the frontal lobe of the brain, thought to be responsible for memory and the ability to plan ahead. Einstein's corpus callosum, according to Dean Falk's report, is also different from most people - it is significantly thicker, which could mean that the communication of information between the two hemispheres of the scientist's brain was more intense.

Terence Hines, a psychologist at a university in New York, considers all this research a waste of time. He is sure that the brain of each person is so individual that even if you find another person with exactly the same characteristics, it will not mean that this person will turn out to be a genius. He argues that it is simply impossible to reveal genius by the physical dimension of the brain.

Was Einstein a genius because his brain was special in some way, or did the brain become special precisely because the scientist was a genius? This question is still open.

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879. As is often the case with great people, many facts about their lives are overgrown with legends. One of the main mysteries and topics of controversy associated with the German physicist concerns his brain. Was it larger than that of mere mortals? What was wrong with his neurons? And with the hemispheres? Futurist talks about what the scientific community thinks about Einstein's brain.

Reason for research

After Einstein's death in 1955, pathologist Thomas Harvey (who was stripped of his medical license a few years later) decided to keep the scientist's brain for science while his body was cremated. After taking the organ around the country for some time, Harvey cut the brain into 240 pieces and sent it to everyone interested. Einstein's son Hans, oddly enough, agreed, and scientists began numerous studies. In the 80s and 90s, several experiments and measurements were carried out at once, which resulted in claims of more neurons in the physicist's brain than in the average person, as well as reports of the outstanding size and width of his brain.

Corpus callosum and the connection between neurons

A more detailed and relevant study was carried out in 2013. Scientists led by Dean Falk delved into the issue of two cerebral hemispheres: the left - responsible, for logic, and the right - the so-called "creative" hemisphere. They suggested that Einstein's genius was due to the excellent connections between both hemispheres.

The plexus of nerve fibers responsible for connecting the hemispheres is called corpus callosum ... Such a bundle of neurons has been found not only in humans, but also in some animals. The corpus callosum allows the left side of the brain to “talk” to the right, and vice versa.

A Florida State University study is titled “Corpus callosum of the brain Albert Einstein : the key to his high intelligence ”. They managed to create a technology that allows you to study the corpus callosum in detail. As a result, differences in thickness were found in different parts of the plexus of neurons in the "bridge" of the brain, and in some places the corpus callosum in the number of neurons significantly exceeded the brain of the volunteers who came to the laboratory for comparison.

Einstein was not only a brilliant physicist, but also a talented violinist. And this is no coincidence: music lessons engage all hemispheres of the brain and improve the connections between them. A similar story is with the bicycle, on which Einstein moved almost daily. There is a strong connection between cerebral aerobic movement (like when we pedal a bicycle) and creativity. This is why ideas have so often visited genius during exercise.

By examining parts of Einstein's brain, Falk and her colleagues were able to identify visual features characteristic of a person with high intelligence: the complexity of the patterns and unusually deep grooves, especially in the prefrontal and visual cortex, as well as the parietal lobes. The prefrontal cortex is believed to be responsible for abstract and critical thinking. By the way, in comparison with the average person, Einstein also showed an increased somatosensory cortex: it receives and processes incoming sensory information.

Rebuttals

However, a year later, a scientist at Pace University in New York Terence Hines tried to dispel all the myths about the features of the brain of Einstein. As part of his own experiment, he analyzed three histological studies of brain tissue of the famous physicist and did not find noticeable differences from the brain of an ordinary subject.

“This shouldn't be a big surprise,” Hynes said. "The brain is an extremely complex structure, and it is naive to assume that analysis of only a few small parts of the brain (we are talking about 240 pieces - editor's note) can reveal any data related to the characteristics of this particular person."

Hines also voiced doubts about Einstein's large brain size. First of all, he crushed the original study of the pathologist Thomas Harvey ... Hines' greatest complaints were caused by the control group, with which Einstein's brain was compared: they were people of 47-80 years old (Einstein himself died at 76). And, of course, over the years of storage in refrigeration units, the organ of the central nervous system of physics could be significantly deformed.

Nor did Hines' studies reveal any statistically significant excess in the number of neurons in Einstein's brain. True, the tissue of the organ itself was somewhat thinner than usual, which may indicate a tighter fit of neurons to each other and, accordingly, more efficient connections between them. But this, again, is only a guess.

“In general, I am skeptical that the size of the brain can somehow influence its neurobiology, especially considering that we have not fully decided what genius is,” concluded Hynes.

Appearance is not the main thing

Last year, on the Quora website, where experts answer the questions of ordinary users, an interesting commentary from a doctor of neuropsychology appeared. Joyce Schenkine .

“It should be borne in mind that each person's brain demonstrates completely different capabilities depending on whether we are hungry, excited, calm, sleeping enough, taking medication ... Predicting abilities and behavior requires much more than just looking at the brain. Its mere sight will give us practically nothing ”.

An interesting example confirming Schenkine's words is Dr. James Fallon ... He devoted his whole life to the study of the brain of psychopaths and, in particular, his outward appearance... As a result, with the help of MRI, the doctor learned that his own brain looks exactly like the brain of his patients, classical psychopaths. At the same time, it is obvious that the doctor himself was absolutely normal.

What can you say in the end? Einstein himself, most likely, did not want his brain to become the subject of such a thorough study and even some hysteria. It is unlikely that he would have seen the point in these expensive studies, and, perhaps, he would even have said something like a phrase, the authorship of which is mistakenly attributed to himself: “Not everything that can be counted counts; not everything that counts can be counted. "

Einstein was the greatest genius of our time, whose achievements in physics changed the way we view the world and turned science upside down. Today everyone knows the name of this brilliant scientist; he has several facts from his life that you may not be familiar with.

He never failed math

This is a popular myth - as a child, Einstein "failed" exams in mathematics. However, this is not at all the case. The brilliant scientist was a relatively average student, but mathematics was always easy for him, which is not surprising.

Einstein supported the creation of a nuclear bomb

Although the scientist's role in the Manhattan Project is often exaggerated, he did write a letter to the President of the United States asking him to start work on the nuclear bomb as soon as possible. Einstein was a pacifist and after the first tests he spoke out against nuclear weapons, however, he was convinced that the United States should have created a bomb before Nazi Germany, otherwise the outcome of the war could be completely different.

He was a great musician

If physics had not become his vocation, Einstein would have been able to conquer the philharmonic halls. The scientist's mother was a pianist, so the love of music was in his blood. From the age of five he played the violin and was in love with the music of Mozart.

Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel

When the first president of the new state of Israel, Chaim Weizmann, died, Albert Einstein was offered to take his post, but the brilliant physicist refused. It is noteworthy that Weizmann himself was a talented chemical scientist.

He married his cousin

After divorcing his first wife, physics and mathematics teacher Mileva Mari, Einstein married Elsa Leventhal. In fact, the relationship with his first wife was very tense, Mileva had to endure the oppressive moods of her husband and his frequent ties on the side.

He won the Nobel Prize, but not for the theory of relativity

In 1921, Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for his achievements in physics. However, his greatest discovery - the theory of relativity - remained without Nobel recognition, although it was nominated. He received his well-deserved award for the quantum theory of the photoelectric effect.

He loved to sail

From the very university, this was his favorite hobby, but the great genius himself admitted that he was a bad navigator. Einstein never learned to swim until the end of his days.

Einstein didn't like wearing socks

And usually he didn't even wear them. In one of his letters to Elsa, he boasted that he had managed to never wear socks during his entire stay in Oxford.

He had an illegitimate daughter

Before her marriage to Einstein, Mileva gave birth to his daughter in 1902, which is why she was forced to interrupt her own scientific career. The girl was named Lieserl by mutual agreement, but her fate is unknown, because since 1903 she has ceased to appear in the correspondence.

Einstein's brain was stolen

After the death of the scientist, the pathologist who performed the autopsy removed Einstein's brain without the permission of family members. Subsequently, he received permission from the son of a genius physicist, but was fired from Princeton for refusing to return him. Only in 1998 did he return the scientist's brain.

Since childhood, I admire pathologists. Those who don't have any romanticism in their heads at all!

It was at the dacha, at the dinner table. I am about four years old. I was probably amused and balabolic something ...

Andrey, don't talk while eating, ”Aunt Mila says in a gentle metallic voice without raising her eyes (in fact, she was the first pathologist in my life). - Okay, I'm here, if you choke - I'll pierce your throat with a knife, - her knife did an ominous somersault over the sausage, - and everything will be fine. And if I am not near? .. - Aunt stopped the "opening" of the sausage and pierced me with her slanting Buryat eyes.

Needless to say, after this "stabbing" I, in the presence of Aunt Mila, for a long time not only spoke, but was even afraid to cough. Well, really, what should be in the head of a person to report something like that to a four-year-old child who does not know about the indications for an emergency tracheotomy ?! There is only one answer: the complete absence of romanticism.

All the more surprising is the case of the pathologist Thomas Harvey, the doctor who stole the brain of Albert Einstein.

Einstein died at Princeton Hospital of a ruptured aortic aneurysm on the night of April 18, 1955. In accordance with the wishes of the deceased, the funeral was quiet, quick and only for our own people. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered.

But in the 24 hours that separated the death and the turning of the great scientist to ashes, Thomas Harvey - either with the consent of the executor, or without it (the story is dark) - opened Einstein's cranium, separated his brain and put it in a jar with formaldehyde. By the way, the ophthalmologist of the same hospital - Henry Abrams, taking advantage of the general confusion (just imagine what was happening there that morning!), Also managed to extirpate the eyes of the same corpse, later hiding them in his safe deposit box.

Thomas Harvey, however, showed much more consciousness - he responsibly chopped the stolen brain and recorded the material. For half a century, Einstein's brain, cut into 240 pieces, traveled across America with the romantic pathologist Thomas Harvey. Harvey hid his "charm" from prying eyes, changed his place of residence, divorced his wife, who could not accept his obsession, and secretly sought allies. Someday, he hoped, we might be able to unravel the mystery of Einstein's genius!

In the early 1980s, a can of mayonnaise with fragments of Einstein's brain was received from Harvey by a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Mariana Diamond. Later, she will publish in which she will announce that the obtained samples have a higher concentration of glial cells than in ordinary people. Glial cells are a kind of insulator that hides the process of the nerve cell, and therefore improves its conductivity.

The more actively one or another part of the brain is used, the more, theoretically, more glia will grow in the corresponding places.

Part of Einstein's brain was obtained by Dr. Sandra Whitelson of the Ontario Research Center in Canada. She concluded that there was a specific fusion of the areas of Einstein's cerebral cortex responsible for mathematical and spatial thinking. It was in this area, according to Dr. Witelson, that the famous theory of relativity arose (it is based on just the geometric - visual-spatial - understanding of gravity). In the same logic, another feature of Einstein's brain is interpreted - a fifteen percent excess, in comparison with the average, of the size of the parietal lobes of both hemispheres.

In the late 90s, Dr. Harvey, having never understood anything about Einstein's genius, "tired of the responsibility for storing the brain," handed him over to Princeton University Medical Center, where the remaining pieces are still waiting for their romantic pathologist-researchers, who, like we can see from the example of Aunt Mila, not so much (about the fate of the brain of Dr. Harvey himself, who died in 2007, as you understand, nothing is known).

Dr. Harvey's romanticism is destroyed by banal arithmetic: our brain consists of about a billion neurons, which are connected to each other by a quadrillion connections (this is one with fifteen zeros), and there are only 23 thousand genes in human DNA, that is, even if our entire genome was engaged exclusively in coding connections in our brain, we already lack about a trillion genes.

Hence the conclusion: we are not born with brilliant brains (whatever is meant by this phrase), but we make them that way.

Yes, there are individual characteristics: some of us, with all our desire, will not be able to overcome the intellectual level of oligophrenia - this is about 1% of the population (not so lucky not so lucky), in addition, connectomics specialists have obtained quite convincing data regarding the characteristics of the brain autists and schizophrenics - there are also about 2-3%. Add here another, say, 5% for chromosomal diseases and erased cases of some difficult-to-verify pathology, so that with a margin, and at a stretch we will reach 10% of the world's population, whose intellectual fate depends significantly on biological factors. (On the other hand, old people Alzheimer's and Parkinson's with their companions in degeneration approach us along the line of life, but we will put them in brackets.)

And again, back to arithmetic, it is indicative. According to the calculated data of Sebastian Seung, the amount of information contained in one human connectome (these are all connections between neurons in one brain) is approximately equal to a zettabyte, and this - hold on to a chair - 10 to the 20th power. Obviously, we are faced with a paradox, but of a different kind, because this number is equivalent to all digital information created by mankind to date. Now let's imagine one and a half kilos of gray and white matter lying on the pathologist's table, and ask ourselves the question, how can something like this fit in it? Of course, we are not talking about actual neural ensembles, but about all, theoretically and speculatively, possible combinations in which the connections of a given system may consist. Of course, only a small fraction of these combinations are realized in reality, and even less can be attributed to the material substrate of mental activity proper. In general, going this way, hoping to find a specific thought in the brain, is not just looking for a needle in a haystack, but a grain of sand in the endless spaces of the Universe.

Even if by some miracle we collect the brain of Albert Einstein, cut into pieces, into a whole, then restore it with the help of a super-powerful computer (this, by the way, does not exist yet), even in this case we will not know which connections in this brain were responsible for the theory of relativity, and which, for example, for thoughts about how to scratch the heel that itches while reading the Nobel speech (or, if we are talking about relativity, someone who is especially itchy, scratch with the same heel). In other words, even if the morphological features of the brain do matter, their influence on intellectual function is negligible - it is not the morphology of connections that is important, but, as our precious Pyotr Kuzmich Anokhin would say, the "functional systems" generated by them, which cannot be found in a dead brain.

Yes, different brains will give us slightly different world views. Let's say that Einstein's ability to visual-spatial thinking was actually slightly better from birth than the average in the hospital. But does the length of the fingers determine the genius of a musician? And it's not a fact that the geometric model of gravity is ideal, and most importantly, universal (at least with the help of the same type of thinking, the same Einstein failed to formulate a unified field theory, and he worked on it for almost forty years). It is quite possible that other features of the brain would be very useful for solving a number of problems in the same physics. For example, Einstein said that it is impossible to solve a problem if it cannot be represented spatially. It didn't bother Niels Bohr somehow ...

A penchant for this or that type of thinking is not surprising, but it does not guarantee anything by itself. If your brain, like Einstein's, is more likely to be ready for spatial and mathematical thinking, but you do not develop this feature, then the brain of an ordinary engineer, to whom your potential (but never achieved) successes were not even dreamed of.

The brain is a developing and trainable machine. But again, this is not the secret.

Now ask the pathologists to wait ...

In 1956, the American psychologist George Armitage Miller published his famous article "The magic number seven, give or take two: some limits of our ability to process information." In fact, the entire content of this article is already reflected in its title. However, the "magic number seven" is relevant only for the so-called short-term memory - the one that allows us to remember objects for half a minute after their single presentation (in this sense, the previous seven-digit phone numbers were, for example, ideal - you say and the person writes down, does not ask again, but here adding the operator code messed things up).

The function of short-term memory is important, but it will not help us either in solving mathematical problems, or in determining the route to follow, you cannot comprehend career plans with its help, and you cannot understand the meaning of life. For all these and most other goals pursued by our intellectual function, a long-term memory is needed - it is necessary to remember mathematical rules, names of streets, persons and organizations, all sorts of concepts and concepts, etc. But thinking with long-term memory is also impossible: every time you perform a certain conscious thought act, you are removing something from your long-term memory, and at all do not use it all at once. At the time of solving a problem, these objects extracted from long-term memory exist in our brain using the mechanisms of working (or, as it is also called, operational) memory.

In 2001, psychologist Nelson Cowan published the data of his research, which, despite all its simplicity, could be called revolutionary. Cowan has convincingly shown (in fairness it must be said that similar data were published before him) that in the case of working memory, Mr. Miller's "magic number seven" drops sharply to three or four units (and only a few of us can boast that they think, juggling in their minds simultaneously with five intellectual objects). This conclusion is surprising. Well, we know, for example, about outstanding chess players who demonstrated the wonders of playing simultaneously on many boards! Or the famous players “What? Where? When?" - these intellectuals put forward dozens of versions per minute! Finally, what to do with Einstein ?! It turns out that if Kovan is right, then his brilliant brain, I beg your pardon, did not have the opportunity to cross this limiting threshold - in three, well, five objects that can simultaneously fit into his working memory.

I suppose that many are quite condescending to the statement that, they say, modern man possesses essentially the same brain as a Cro-Magnon or even a Neanderthal. They doubt it, giggle quietly, but in vain: biological evolution has its own laws and cannot proceed faster than it happens, and tens and even hundreds of thousands of years is not a period for it. Now, imagine the simple life of a Cro-Magnon man and try to answer the question: in order to solve such an urgent task, he might need to simultaneously keep more than three or four intellectual objects in his working memory? Hunting? Digging a dugout? Painting the walls of a cave? Making a spear tipped with animal bone? Making a fire? Pairing? Three or four objects - the edge!

It is no longer necessary and even dangerous: an increase in the number of intelligent objects that need integration would slow down the reaction rate, and the latter is much more important in Cro-Magnon times.

But if our brain is really so primitive that it can count, I beg your pardon, only up to three (dash - five), then how then, for example, was this limited optionality enough for Einstein to make such great discoveries as SRT and GRT? What's the trick here? The fact is that the intellectual successes of Homo sapiens'a are not at all connected with wonderful brains, who have come from nowhere, but with the mechanisms for coding information that are provided to us by culture. With the help of language (and a complex system of other signs), we have learned to encode information, aggregating it into massive blocks. And where a Cro-Magnon man has a piece of coal in his hand, a memory of a hunt and a cave wall, a man, for example, understands the phenomenon of "entropy", "the second law of thermodynamics" and "the idea of ​​the irreversibility of processes in time" - not a pound of raisins.

It is in this ability to “pack” large amounts of information into compressed blocks (intellectual objects) that is the secret of the success of chess grandmasters, “experts” of the Crystal Owl Club and the same Einstein. Yes, Kovan's restriction is in effect, but the grandmaster operates in his working memory not with individual figures, but with whole schemes of games - it is for this purpose that he has been honing his chess composition skills (problems, studies, etc.) for many years. The “expert” in the same way pulls out from the depths of his long-term memory not individual facts, but strings of ideas associated with the corresponding stimulus material, and it is this skill that takes a long time to learn. Finally, let us recall the famous thought experiments of Albert Einstein, in which you will not find more than three or five objects: an elevator car - acceleration - a ball - an observer, a train - a searchlight beam - the speed of light - an observer, observer number 1 - a rocket - observer number 2, and etc.

In other words, the problem is solved not by the number of objects involved in the work of the intellectual function, but by their, so to speak, specific weight - by how complex they are within themselves.

Here I will allow myself to shorten the presentation a little, since the "10,000 hour rule" is already well known to the general public, thanks to Malcolm Gladwell's charming bestseller "Geniuses and Outsiders". The rule is simple: 10,000 hours of practice (just no fools, of course) in any field - composing, drawing, art writing, medical work, chess, figure skating, programming, etc., etc. - and you are inevitable reach top level skill. The question is, why does the brain need these 10,000 hours? Believe me, in order to just find out everything you need to understand in the relevant field, much less time is enough. Most of this practice is necessary in order for a kind of intellectual shackles to form in a person's long-term memory - weighty, complex, voluminous intellectual objects (Eric Kandel received his Nobel Prize for describing the mechanics of this process).

Yes, solving this or that professional problem, these specialists of "ten thousand hours", like any other person, will be able to simultaneously place in their working memory no more than three to five objects, but they will be so powerful that the result will be incomparably higher than any other know-it-all rookie. The power, complexity, and the proportion of these intellectual objects placed at the disposal of the working memory is determined by the number of connections that make up this “functional” system of intellectual function given in Anokhin's way.

Roughly speaking, for each such item - an intellectual object - this specialist could probably write a solid monograph and still would not say anything that he knows, understands, sees.

Now imagine that you, being such a specialist, are trying to comprehend some serious research problem that you have just got to - you have caught, so to speak, by the tail, anticipating the correct answer, but have not yet pulled it out. Your working memory updates and iterates over one by one a set of intellectual objects related to the topic; you fold them, unfold them, give up something, return to something again. In the end, you settled on three or four such "monographs", and now, keeping all this disgrace in your working memory, you need, in accordance with the task at hand, to put them - in your mind - into one new book.

How many nuances, details and features do you need to consider? A huge variety! After all, these objects are complex, and were not created for this task, and therefore must now be rebuilt for it. This work of the mind requires incredible tension and concentration, time and will to truth - qualities that are so unusual for our modern culture and so lacking for it. That's why I'm inclined to believe the story that Elsa regularly checked to see if her cousin and husband was walking with his pants unbuttoned. Because of little need, you can, after all, go on a simple automatism, without being distracted from solving an intellectual problem, but buttoning up your fly in such circumstances is not difficult to forget.

Unfortunately, most of our fellow citizens rush about the information space with their trousers unbuttoned, but for a completely different reason: not because they are too focused on their intellectual function, but rather because they are no longer capable of it in principle. A full-fledged, high-quality intellectual object cannot be borrowed from a TV set, and indeed from any external source of information, and the total media dependence of the population, I believe, is no secret to anyone.

From the outside, we are able to assimilate only a falsification of an intellectual object - a rumor, a meme, a media virus, an ideological cliché or a cliche.

An intellectual object itself cannot be assimilated or appropriated; it can only be created, moreover, independently and inside one's own head. This is a long process, when you combine many times three or four objects (at first small, but then all increasing), adding them to each other, integrating with the next batch, turning this whole nascent colossus over and over, and again working it out, adding that something new (and removing something), raising to a power and spreading along new coordinates. In the end, we - almost all of us, with the exception of the 10% of the population we received at the beginning of this article - are able to form objects with a high specific gravity in our brain, and only they are important for the operation of a high-power intellectual function.

But it is, of course, easier to acquire counterfeits.

Fortunately, I have not yet reached my last pathologist, and, apart from classmates who have chosen this specialization, the “extreme” pathologist for me (and also a forensic expert) is a professor who taught us the corresponding course in the Military -medical academy. Anatoly Nikiforovich (if I don’t confuse anything) was no longer young, a retired colonel - massive, even overweight, obviously of worker-peasant origin, with a talk and an amazing military-pathological “black humor”. He joked constantly and, of course, mostly over us.

In addition to autopsies and lectures, our so-called practical classes were devoted to solving forensic medical problems: we were offered this or that "accident", and we had to give an opinion on it. Igor Negoduiko, a lanky, extremely emotional Ukrainian with a nimble and quick mind, was always the first to jerk his hand. Subsequently, Igor became interested in Dianetics, dropped out of the academy and joined the Scientology sect of Ron Hubbard (the times were still those, I must admit). Where, however, he was more than once expelled for excessive zeal, but then taken back. Rumor has it that now our Negoduiko emigrated and became a big shot in the Dianetic pyramid. I would not be surprised if in this moment he finds out the relationship with Tom Cruise.

Nefarious ?! - Anatoly Nikiforovich was surprised every time, watching as he, as soon as the question sounded, jumped out of his place.

Shaw ?! - Negoduiko was surprised in response.

Not sho, - the professor mimicked him. - Did I tell you that all geniuses are slow-witted?

They talked, and sho? .. I know sho!

But you don’t know sho, - Anatoly Nikiforovich frowned, - sit down. Two.

For two sho something ?!

But think!

Pathologists and forensic experts have an amazing medical specialty: they do not cure, they only investigate - scrupulously, thoroughly, fact by fact. Their work resembles the work of a detective, reconstructing the scene of an incident in the smallest detail. They are virtuosos in solving puzzles: how did a "blunt object" move that broke the victim's skull, where the victim was in the car before the car fell into a two-hundred-meter abyss, why did this soldier have a "crossbow" and not a "battle wound" and so further, further, further. They are devoid of any romanticism, because, unlike any other doctor, they always find out the only correct answer (I don’t know what happened to the Last Judgment, but you cannot escape the justice of the pathological anatomical court).

However, the real happiness of a pathologist is that he can afford to be slow-witted: he always has time to solve a problem. Yes, Anatoly Nikiforovich, like a real pathologist, did not have any romanticism in his head at all (if he knew about Dr. Harvey's act, I think he would roll on the floor laughing). And although the old professor did not tell us why "all geniuses are slow-witted", I remember this main and extremely important lesson.

Elsa said that Einstein, lost in his thoughts, wandered around the apartment, completely oblivious to her. He could go into the study, then suddenly return, go to the piano, take a few notes in thought, and then retire to the study. His relative David Maryanov recalled that dinner at the house began with the fact that Elsa, with difficulty, in a demanding tone, took her husband away from work. Einstein appeared in the dining room, lost in thought, and muttered something in protest under his breath. A bowl of soup was placed in front of him, which he emptied with rhythmic mechanical movements. He could go out into the rain without a raincoat and hat, then come back and stand motionless on the stairs for a long time. The scientist's friend in Berlin, Janos Plesch, recalled a very significant family scandal: Einstein returned from a week-long trip to a conference, but the things in his suitcase were clean, folded by a neat woman's hand. Elsa, of course, demanded an explanation, not realizing that this caring hand was her own. Einstein never opened the suitcase she had collected: he was busy thinking.

Could this work have been found in Einstein's stolen brain? And was it necessary so hastily to steal the brain of this cute, albeit slightly extravagant old man, if, to understand the mechanics of his genius, the same thing is enough - just think about it well?