Einstein May Have Had An Unusually Well-Connected Brain
Albert Einstein, 1921 Ferdinand Schmutzer via Wikimedia Commons More than half a century after his death, we're still searching for the secrets of Albert Einstein's genius. Almost immediately after he died in 1955, the famed physicist's brain was removed from his head, dissected and photographed for study by pathologist Thomas Harvey, who performed the autopsy. Harvey probably didn't have legal permission to remove the brain and preserve it, much less keep it stored in jars in his basement, as he reportedly did for decades, but he did manage to pave the way for scientists to investigate what makes a genius brain tick. For a new study, researchers from the East China Normal University in Shanghai and Florida State University looked at 14 recently discovered photographs of Einstein's brain. They compared his corpus callosum—the band of fibers that connects the right and the...