Mileva Marić
Who was Mileva Marić?
Serbian physicist and mathematician who was Albert Einstein's first wife from 1903 to 1919. She studied at ETH Zurich and may have collaborated on some of Einstein's early theoretical work.
Biographical data adapted from Wikipedia’s article on Mileva Marić (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Biography
Mileva Marić was born on December 19, 1875, in Titel, a town in Vojvodina, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She showed a remarkable talent for math and science from a young age. Her father, Miloš Marić, who worked as a civil servant, worked hard to ensure she could access advanced education, even though it was very uncommon for women at the time. Thanks to special permission, she was allowed to attend the Royal Classical High School in Zagreb as the only female student. She excelled in physics and mathematics there. Her early academic achievements set her on a path driven by intellectual ambition, despite facing considerable institutional challenges.
Before Fame
Marić started at the University of Zurich and then moved to the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich, now called ETH Zurich, in 1896. She was the only woman in her physics program and one of the few women at the school. She also studied at Heidelberg University. It was at ETH Zurich that she met Albert Einstein, who would later become her husband, and they grew to be close collaborators and companions. She didn't pass her final diploma exam twice and didn't get her degree. Historians think this setback was partly due to personal issues, like an unplanned pregnancy, but the full reasons are still debated by scholars.
Key Achievements
- Became one of the first women to study physics at ETH Zurich, breaking through significant gender barriers in European higher education
- Engaged in advanced study at three prominent European institutions: ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich, and Heidelberg University
- Contributed to the intellectual environment surrounding some of the most consequential theoretical physics produced in the early twentieth century, with her precise role continuing to be examined by historians of science
- Negotiated a divorce settlement with Albert Einstein that secured the Nobel Prize money for herself and their sons, demonstrating legal and financial acumen under difficult personal circumstances
- Became a teacher and supported the education of her own students in Zurich following the dissolution of her marriage, maintaining an independent professional life
Did You Know?
- 01.Marić and Einstein had a daughter named Lieserl before their marriage, born in 1902, whose fate remained unknown for decades until letters revealed she likely died of scarlet fever at around eighteen months old.
- 02.She was the only woman among five students in her cohort studying physics at ETH Zurich, an institution that had only opened its programs to women a few years before her enrollment.
- 03.Several letters exchanged between Marić and Einstein, discovered and published in the 1980s, reignited scholarly debate about whether she contributed substantively to the papers Einstein published in his celebrated annus mirabilis year of 1905.
- 04.After her divorce from Einstein in 1919, she received a substantial financial settlement that included the funds from the Nobel Prize Einstein was anticipated to win, which he did receive in 1921 for the photoelectric effect.
- 05.Her son Eduard Einstein was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young man, and Mileva devoted much of her later life to his care in Zurich, where she died on 4 August 1948.