The Doctor Who Stole Einstein’s Brain
take it upon oneself: to decide to do something yourself, without being asked or told to
When Albert Einstein died in 1955, he had one simple wish. “I want to be cremated so people don’t come worship at my bones,” he once told his biographer. His family followed his wish within a day. Yet the body they burned was not complete, because the most famous brain of the twentieth century was already gone.
Dr. Thomas Harvey took it upon himself to remove Einstein’s brain during the autopsy, without his family’s knowledge. He said it was for science and promised that the world’s best doctors would study it.
Instead he kept it for himself. He never handed the brain over to a team that could truly study it. For more than 40 years, Harvey carried it from state to state. He cut it into 240 pieces and stored them in two glass jars inside a cider box. He occasionally mailed a tiny chunk to other scientists, but he always held on to the rest. One of those small pieces arrived in an old mayonnaise jar.
The brain seemed to act like a curse. Harvey lost his job, his marriage, and eventually his medical license. In the end, he worked on a factory assembly line, but kept the brain for more than 40 years. In a 1994 documentary, he calmly slices off a piece on a cutting board and hands it to a visitor as a souvenir.
Over the years, scientists studied the pieces. They found a few small ways his brain was unusual, but they never found the secret of his genius. The most studied brain in history sat in a box for decades, and it told us almost nothing.
Sample sentences
When our boss was out sick, Maria took it upon herself to answer his emails and keep the team on track.
Nobody asked him to, but my neighbor took it upon himself to clear the snow from the whole street.
The new intern took it upon herself to reorganize the files, and now no one can find anything.
Read More
The strange afterlife of Einstein’s brain (BBC)
How Einstein’s Brain Ended Up at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia (Smithsonian)
After Einstein Died, Someone Stole His Brain and Kept It in a Mayonnaise Jar (IFLScience)
