I really am not the type to dig in to the personal lives of people, famous or not, and take delight in viewing their dirty laundry. But I take interest in the Einstein and Mileva controversy, because it extends to few of the most important works in science to date. It is disputed that she played a major part in forming and prooving the molecular and relativity theories that Einstein proposed.
Along with many other articles on the subject, I was reading up the article "Einstein's Wife", on the PBS website, and found something very confusing. Actually, contradictory! Images of excerpts, rather small scanned parts - not the whole, of letters 'Einstein to Mileva' and 'Mileva to Einstein' are pasted along with the write-up. The funny thing is both Einstein and Mileva seem to have the exact same handwriting! I think this an extreme coincidence. Surely, even if they loved each other so much they could not have kept their handwriting exactly same! Each handwriting is different in some way. Well, graphologists swear that no two handwritings can be exactly same. To start with, both their 'y's and 'I's are exactly same. Same for the spacing and style of each letter. This raises doubts on the authenticity of the images of the Letters. Hence, the entire column.
A certain Allen Esterson seems to have rebutted. The article on a dialogue between him and the PBS people can be found here.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
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2 little blighters howled thus:
I have to exonerate PBS on the handwriting issue! The original letters would have been in German, so for US readers it was necessary to provide mock-facsimiles in English.
I would, however, not exonerate PBS on any other account. It has fallen abysmally below its editorial standards policies on accuracy. See:
http://tinyurl.com/2ex28y
Ha ha.. alright. It kind of misleads the audience, you see, especially if they forget to remember Einstein and Mileva did not converse in English.
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