Mileva Marić Einstein

1875 - Scientist, researcher, mathematician and physicist Mileva Marić (married Einstein) was born in Titel (then Austro-Hungarian Empire) to affluent parents. The Marić family house at 20 Kisačka Street in Novi Sad is protected under the state law.

1886 - She starts attending the female gymnasium in Novi Sad.

1888 - She transfers to the gymnasium in Sremska Mitrovica, where she graduates in 1890 as the best in her class in mathematics and physics.

1890 - She attends the Royal Serbian School in Šabac. When she moved to Zagreb, she received a special permission to attend a boy’s school. Her father strongly supported her education despite the patriarchal pattern prevalent in the society.

1896 - In summer, she starts studying medicine at the University of Zurich. In October, she transferred to Zurich’s Polytechnic to study mathematics and physics, as the only woman in the Department of Physics and Mathematics. In the period between 1864 and 1872, some two hundred women from Switzerland, Germany, Austria, England, the USA and Russia attended the University of Zurich, speaking in favour of the university’s openness. It was there that the student from Kać met a colleague three years her junior, who later became her husband. We find out about the beginnings of this love relationship from the letters published in 1986. Einstein’s parents were against this relationship for two reasons: because Mileva was older than Albert and because she was not Jewish.

1902 - Mileva gives birth to their illegitimate daughter Lieserl, whose fate is unknown. Some speculate that the baby girl was given for adoption, while others believe that she probably died of scarlet fever.

1903 - After the wedding in Bern, Mileva dedicates herself completely to her husband and children. She gives birth to sons Hans Albert and Eduard, both of whom showed signs of mental illnesses. Having suffered from schizophrenia, Eduard died in 1965 in a Swiss asylum where his aunt, Mileva’s sister Zorka, died too. The scientific collaboration of the married couple is a controversial one. Mileva’s correspondence to Helene Savić (née Kauffler) and Milana Bota, as well as granddaughter Evelyn Einstein’s letters, published in 1922, speak in favour of Mileva’s scientific contribution to the theories of Albert Einstein.

1911 - The Einstein family moves to Prague, where Albert becomes full professor at Charles University. Mileva took some time to adapt, for she was sensitive to tensions between the German and the Czech, with whom, as a Slav, she identified.

1914 - Having secured a position at The Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin and after a series of love affairs, including that with his cousin Elsa, Albert leaves Mileva, who stays in Zurich in poor health.

1919 - The Marić-Einstein couple is officially divorced on 14 February 1919.

1921 - Albert gives the money from the Nobel Prize to Mileva as a part of their divorce deal. Later, Mileva lived off private mathematics lessons.

1930 - In his early twenties, Eduard Einstein was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

1938 - Mileva’s sister Zorka dies. Mileva’s older son Hans Albert leaves for the USA, with his family. Mileva stays in Switzerland with her younger son.

1948 - Mileva dies from stroke in Zurich on August 4, 1948. She was buried at Nordheim Friedhod cemetery in Zurich. Her resting place became known to a wider public in 2004 thanks to Petar Stojanović, founder of the Nikola Tesla Memorial Centre in St. Gallen.