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Review of ‘The Other Einstein’

Like so many male genius-types, Albert Einstein’s behavior toward at least one woman who supported him was revolting. Fortunately, Marie Benedict’s tragic, crisply told novel isn’t about Albert, but about his Serbian, almost-as-brilliant first wife, Mileva Marić, who narrates it. The two met at Zurich Polytechnic as students in 1896, embarked on a passionate affair…

Behind the Book by Marie Benedict

I almost didn’t write The Other Einstein. The little-known story of Mileva Marić, who made a heroic ascent from the misogynistic backwater of 19th-century Eastern Europe to become one of Europe’s first female physicists, kept calling to me, begging to be written. But the tale necessarily involved a depiction of Albert Einstein, the fellow Zurich Polytechnic student who wooed Mileva for years before their marriage in 1903—and who wanted to face that hurdle?

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