Yes but do you have any actual evidence?
So maybe women really do think logic is ‘a pestiferous male invention’ (The Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense). It would seem so by this, anyway – Senta Troemel-Ploetz replying on Alan Boyle’s blog to Allen Esterson’s article on Troemel-Ploetz’s paper claiming that Mileva Marić ‘did Einstein’s mathematics.’ It’s a cringe-making performance, frankly. She offers no real evidence, she simply cites ‘a tradition that always attributes achievement to men even if the men themselves claim their wives were the authors’ and then gives three quotations from Einstein to Mileva Marić:
“How happy I am to have found an equal in you (eine ebenbuertige Kreatur) who is as strong and independent as I am.” “Until you are my dear little wife, we want to eagerly work together scientifically so that we won’t become philistines….” “When I look at other people, I realize what I have in you / what mettle you are made of.”
Later, Boyle says, she wrote an addendum:
Sophia Yancopoulos, an American physicist, speaks of the ‘subtler issues of collaboration,’ and we are far from knowing much about them. What we do know is that again and again the work of creative women was appropriated by men in the arts and the sciences, and men who fairly give credit to their female collaborators are the exception. Einstein was a very normal man, as I said in New Orleans anno 1990.
And that’s it. That’s really embarrassing – embarrassing the way watching ‘The Office’ is embarrassing. Offering three affectionate comments and a couple of broad generalizations to back up a claim that Einstein’s wife did his mathematics for him – and being willing to go public with that. Ow, ow, cringe.
Esterson replies – with admirable temperance – here.
In historical investigations such as this one must be guided by the hard evidence, not (as Troemel-Ploetz writes) by what is “plausible”, or “for all we know”. Nor should we take (as Troemel-Ploetz does in her 1990 article) as serious evidence the mostly third-hand statements obtained many decades after the event from interested parties taking nationalist pride in what they fondly believe to be a Serbian achievement. In his book Don’t Believe Everything You Think (2006), Thomas Kida reports the research of two psychologists who secretly recorded a meeting held in Cambridge, England. Two weeks later, the participants were asked to write down everything they could remember. Among other gross inaccuracies in their memories, many participants ‘remembered’ hearing comments that were never actually made. That puts into perspective the utter unreliability of third-hand reports provided decades later…
It looks as if Senta Troemel-Ploetz urgently needs to read that book.
Ah, but OB,she BELIEVES!! She has faith in her belief!
She has shreds of circumstantial data that can be put together (if you ignore a lot of other stuff) to suggest the merest possibility of fact…
So OF COURSE it’s true!
Next thing you’ll be telling me that the head of Jesus ISN’T buried in Roslyn Chapel, just down the road from Edinburgh!
:-)
Yeah, boy does she believe, and that’s all it takes. She apparently can’t even detect what a leg she doesn’t have to stand on.
OB, you can’t feel what isn’t there.
Well, there is the phantom limb syndrome, but possibly I digress . . .
It is very sad, and does the cause of women intellectuals no good.
The efforts of people like Mme Lavoisier, and J. S. Mill’s deceased wife, or Rosalind Franklin, or Dorothy Hodgkin should not be degraded by shoddy work like this.
>The efforts of people like Mme Lavoisier, and J. S. Mill’s deceased wife, or Rosalind Franklin, or Dorothy Hodgkin should not be degraded by shoddy work like this.< That is precisely the position taken by John Stachel (founding editor of the Einstein Collected Papers project) and the historian of physics Gerald Holton.
The extract that intrigues me is “Until you are my little wife…”. What did AE assume her role would be once they were married? I think Troemel-Ploetz is raving by and large, but I’d understand her getting exercised about the patriarchal implications of this remark.
>The extract that intrigues me is “Until you are my little wife…”. What did AE assume her role would be once they were married? I think Troemel-Ploetz is raving by and large, but I’d understand her getting exercised about the patriarchal implications of this remark.< Such items need to be seen in the context in which they were written, namely the phase a year and a bit before they were married when Albert and Mileva were still in the lovey-dovey stage – and Mileva was pregnant with baby Lisserl (whose fate is unknown). The translations of this sentence in the Collected Papers and in Renn & Schulmann (2002) are slightly different, but both start: “When you are my little wife…”, leading on to “…we’ll work diligently [or zealously] on science together, so we don’t become old philistines, right?” In the previous month Mileva had written to Albert “My dear naughty little sweetheart”, which, had it been written by Albert and lifted out of context, could no doubt be taken as showing Albert’s being condescending towards Mileva. The story of their relationship is long and complicated (and, since no one is privy to what went on in their marriage, by no means completely ascertainable). If one is going to take a simplistic “modern” view, treating Einstein as if he were just another selfish husband, then he will be (and has been) condemned. But (i) the evidence of Mileva’s letters to her close friend Helene Kaufler show she had given up all idea of a career in science by 1901 and (ii) initially she was blissfully happy with her role of looking after the household and (soon) being mother to baby Hans Albert. On the other hand, Albert not only had a “9-5” job, he was utterly engrossed in his groundbreaking ideas, sometimes on two or more topics more or less at the same time. Even in the letters he wrote to Mileva when she was having serious problems with baby Lisserl he couldn’t help launching into reports of the ideas on which he was working. Einstein was a genius of the kind that comes rarely, and with such genius comes the need (the absolute necessity in Einstein’s case) to totally immerse himself in his life’s work – often to the detriment of those nearest to him. After he and Mileva had separated in 1914, he neglected himself so much in pursuit of his ideas on general relativity that he eventually became seriously ill and spent months in bed. In other words, he didn’t only neglect those closest to him by his total dedication to uncovering the secrets of the universe, he was just as neglectful about his own welfare. There is, of course, much more that can be said on this topic, but it needs a full scale essay!
Two weeks later, the participants were asked to write down everything they could remember. Among other gross inaccuracies in their memories, many participants ‘remembered’ hearing comments that were never actually made…
Memory is better than you think. Actually I remember precisely the same discussion some weeks ago at ‘Flies and Butterwheels’ — one of those American born-again sites, I think, always banging on about the ‘rapture’and the upcoming apocalypse with the damnation of all who don’t believe in the Resurrection, etc.
Very droll, Cathal – and brilliantly well spotted. It wasn’t the same discussion though! I was the one wot said it the previous time (at least, if we’re thinking of the same one, and if I remember accurately), and it was a different experiment. But amusing point taken.
I think I’ve also mentioned before that Jeremy did one of those experiments to me, and I failed with flying colours. It was a trap: I thought he was checking to see if something was being transmitted, so I simply copied it, when I was supposed to read it and then type it – but all the same, I failed thoroughly.
The thing about ‘little wife’ – I bet that’s just an artifact of German. German loves diminutives, and uses them with wild abandon. Weibchen is an endearment. Though it may also be inherently somewhat sexist if for instance there is no parallel for husband (which I don’t know). It may be somewhat sexist but it’s also more ‘normal’ than ‘little wife’ sounds in English.
Female names with diminutive endings are common in German – Gretchen, Lottchen; I don’t know if that’s true of male names. Hannerl…? Is that a diminutive of Hans? Anyone know?
Are you sure Hannerl isn’t a female name – perhaps a related to Hannah, Hannelore?
Otherwise, you’re right about diminutives in German. Same thing about Dutch: diminutives are attached to the strangest things (zonnetje ‘little sun’). Additionally, female names may be made (and were, particularly in the older days) from male names simply by adding a diminutive suffix: Pietje; Keesje; Jantje, Jansje, Janneke; my great-grandmother was named Geertje.
The equivalent of Weibchen, vrouwtje would definitely be seen as sexist nowadays, but maybe not in 1910 or so. I can conceive of the male counterpart, mannetje only in very negative contexts (wat een naar mannetje! – what an unpleasant fellow!). I can imagine, but am not sure, whether the same would go for German Männchen.
In both languages, diminutives for ‘man’
and ‘woman’ are now mainly used in zoological terms (as distinct from human males and females).
>The thing about ‘little wife’ – I bet that’s just an artifact of German.< Good thinking, Sherlock Benson! I just checked, and Einstein writes “Weiberl”, with the diminutive incorporated in the noun, German fashion. Judging by the Einstein/Maric letters, Germans do love to use the “little” diminutive. (Well, Mileva was Serbian – but she was writing in German.) Here is Mileva writing to Albert: “My dearest little sweetheart, I just received your dear little letter…” [the “little” is incorporated in both instances] Mileva generally called Albert by the pet name “Johnnie” [strictly “little John” = “Johannzel”], or just “sweetheart”, or “sweet little treasure”. (I’m beginning to feel I’m intruding on private ground. How could they possibly have guessed that these private letters, with their intimate endearments, would become public property?) Anyway, to continue: Einstein often called Mileva “kitten”, or “Dollie”, and was rather more inventive, further evidence that it was he who came up with the theory of relativity. -:)
I just remembered: In the “Einstein’s Wife” film Senta Troemel-Ploetz writes of the the pair’s use of petnames that “they showed their creativity by inventing names”. So it *was* a step on the way to relativity!
Wouldn’t ‘little treasure’ be a translation of Schätzel, Schätzchen, which is kind of the equivalent of ‘honey’? Not very creative, that. Nothing like ‘kitten’ or something.
Heh. Great.
“Are you sure Hannerl isn’t a female name – perhaps a related to Hannah, Hannelore?”
No, not a bit sure, that’s why I asked if anyone knew. Thought it might be.
I knew about -je, of course – partly from Rembrandt paintings, but I think also just from time spent in the Netherlands; knew it but didn’t think of it.
“Mileva generally called Albert by the pet name “Johnnie” [strictly “little John” = “Johannzel”]”
Well there! That answers my question then; you can. Oh – duh – Johannzel: Hansel: Hansel and Gretel. I was trying to think of that earlier and somehow thought it didn’t fit. I don’t know all the diminutive endings, that’s what it is.
“Not very creative, that. Nothing like ‘kitten’ or something.”
Well, Sentachen grasps at strawchens, as we’ve seen.
I’ve belatedly realised I misread Chris Whiley’s point above, so let’s look at it again. Chris wrote:
>The extract that intrigues me is “Until you are my little wife…”. What did AE assume her role would be once they were married? I think Troemel-Ploetz is raving by and large, but I’d understand her getting exercised about the patriarchal implications of this remark.< Looking into this shows how tricky close scholarship can sometimes be. As I wrote above, the two published translations both have “When”, instead of “Until”, as Troemel-Ploetz writes. A literal reading of the original German would appear to show that Treomel-Ploetz is correct. And yet… The other two translations (“When”) make more sense if you take the context into account (which is presumably why the respective translators chose “When”). The remainder of the sentence reads (in translation): “…we’ll work diligently on science together, so we don’t become old philistines, right?” It is immediately followed by Einstein’s remarking that his recently married sister “seemed to me so philistine. You must never become like that..” So he is concerned that they don’t become philistines *after they are married*. Furthermore, their marriage was going to be in the near future, so it doesn’t make sense for Einstein to have been meaning that they would only work diligently on science together just for the short time before they were married. Clearly he was saying that they would work together on science after they were married so that they don’t become philistines – as his sister had following *her* marriage.
How tricky close scholarship and translation can sometimes be. Those shades of meaning. One language may include ‘until’ as one meaning of ‘when’ while another language doesn’t.
It’s all very interesting.
>One language may include ‘until’ as one meaning of ‘when’ while another language doesn’t.< To make things even more tricky, in this instance it seems that Einstein was slipshod in writing the sentence in question, rather than that the word he used (“bis”) also has the meaning of “when”. Perhaps his mind was on the “fine piece of tobacco” that Mileva had included with her “darling little letter”. Yes, you’ve guessed it Ophelia, she sent him a “Brieferl”!
Heh!
The Einsten-Marley theorem.
Your demand for ‘evidence’ is just part of the rigid souless globalist consumer-driven white male eurocentric colonilist and science-fascistic B&W conspiracy against traditional religious spiritual diversity and tofu.
To make things even more tricky, in this instance it seems that Einstein was slipshod in writing the sentence in question, rather than that the word he used (“bis”) also has the meaning of “when”.
Before reading the above posting, I had a look at the original German. And that’s exactly what I thought — that it can only be a slip of the pen. Einstein was writing to a woman he wanted to flatter and soft-soap, after all.
‘Bis’ in German means ‘until’, not ‘when’, ‘unless’, ‘pink crocodile’, or ‘Rumpelstilzchen’.
One could of course argue that translators should translate what the author wrote, not what he intended to write.
See my argument catalogue at P-068 for further details.
Or maybe not. I had a peek at the lemma for ‘bis’ at the Grimm brothers’ dictionary (http://germazope.uni-trier.de/Projects/DWB) and lo and behold:
“die heutige volkssprache vieler gegenden drückt aber durch bis nicht usque, sondern reines wann aus: wann werden wir uns wieder sehen? bis montag, d. i. nächsten montag; das wollen wir bis sonntag beraten, d. i. auf sonntag, nicht etwa von heute an bis sonntag. diese ausdrucksweise ist ganz der älteren schriftsprache gemäsz, in welcher bis jar bedeutet über jahr, nächstes jahr, bis sonntag den nächstfolgenden sonntag.”
(The current colloquial language of many places does not employ ‘bis’ to mean ‘usque’, but simply ‘wann’: wann werden wir und wider sehen? bis montag, that is, next monday…)
So it would at least seem quite possible that Einstein was using a colloquialism, rather than making a slip of the pen. I think that Trömel-Plötz should have, all things taken into consideration, opted for the ‘when’ translation.
Great having a resident linguist!
>Einstein was writing to a woman he wanted to flatter and soft-soap, after all.< I think you’ve got it quite wrong, Cathal. The evidence of his many letters to Maric during the student years 1898 to 1901 is that he thought that in Maric he had found someone (in contrast with previous girlfriends) with a serious turn of mind, with ambitions like his own. He was constantly trying to draw her into his world of the pursuit of the fundamental bases of physics, and encouraging her in her Polytechnic work, and in 1901 towards a Ph.D. even though she had already had her first failure in the final diploma exam. When he wrote her that he wanted them to work on physics together after they were married so that “we” don’t become philistines (read: so *you* won’t become a philistine, as he indicated in the next sentence) like his sister had after *her* marriage, I see absolutely no reason not to take it at face value. It is entirely consistent with his attitude expressed several times in earlier letters. Anyway, he had no need to flatter and softsoap Maric at that stage. She had been besotted with him (the young rascal) for a couple of years by then, and was still sending him “great big hugs and kisses from your – Doll.” >One could of course argue that translators should translate what the author wrote, not what he intended to write.< Yes, of course. But in a case like this when all the evidence of what he writes over three sentences is that it only makes sense if it is translated as “when” should also be pointed out. >So it would at least seem quite possible that Einstein was using a colloquialism, rather than making a slip of the pen. I think that Trömel-Plötz should have, all things taken into consideration, opted for the ‘when’ translation.< As did the two published translations of the letters. Many thanks, Merlijn. I second Ophelia’s praise!