E=MC(to the power of 2) is the supreme creation of the man whose mathematical genius may bring about the obliteration of our species. Regarding himself as a pacifist, Albert Einstein was sorry about the atomic bomb, although he had urged President Roosevelt to get it made. What sort of brain was able to achieve such a brilliant calculation and a miscalculation potentially so horrendous? Was Einstein's brain physically different from any other?
When Einstein died in 1955, the pathologist who performed the autopsy at Princeton Hospital, Dr Thomas Stoltz Harvey, scooped out the brain and kept it for further study. Then he retired, and he and the brain went missing. He chopped it into 240 pieces, gave a third of them away and kept the others in formaldehyde.
Many years later, Michael Paterniti, a talented American freelance writer, managed to trace the peripatetic Dr Harvey, who, at the age of 84, surprisingly asked to be driven from New Jersey to California to deliver the remains of the brain to Einstein's grand-daughter Evelyn. Paterniti was glad to oblige and to write about the bizarre trip for Harper's Magazine and now, in this detailed account, for his first book.
So many books have been written about American coast-to-coast journeys that Paterniti deserves congratulations for having given the subject new life. The story abounds in curious asides. "However barbaric-seeming," he writes, "the preservation and reclamation of human body parts are as ancient as human history. From this century (the 20th), the most famous reside under glass, in luxury, temperature-controlled mausoleums: Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Sung, the Mongolian revolutionary hero Sukhe Bator . . . During the Romantic era of the eighteenth century, hearts were the craze. After his death, Chopin's was taken to Poland. The hearts of Shelley and Byron were cut from their bodies and preserved. And the writer Thomas Hardy had his removed, too, though, when returned to his wife, it was eaten by a dog . . .
"The brains of John Dillinger and John F. Kennedy, among others, have vanished, too."
Paterniti adds further incidental colour of a sombre hue by calling on William Burroughs, who was a neighbour of Dr Harvey when he lived in Kansas. There is a brief visit to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where Einstein's theories were put to practical use in the Manhattan Project. In Las Vegas, when Paterniti speaks of Einstein, a casino manager replies, "Haven't seen him in here tonight. Sorry".
The author wonders whether the brain will be cloned or shot into space, auctioned for millions (Michael Jackson is said to be interested), rebuilt and taken on an exhibition tour, or stolen by a madman or terrorists. It has already become something of a pop icon, at least in Paterniti's imagination. "Microsoft employees," he notes, "glug potions of herbal energy elixirs called Einstein's Brain at company parties."
Paterniti reports a couple of the actual brain's peculiarities that may be of significance. According to Dr Sandra Witelson and her Canadian colleagues, in an article written for The Lancet, "Einstein's inferior parietal lobe, the region that governs mathematical ability and spatial reasoning, is 15 per cent larger than normal, while his Sylvian fissure is much smaller than average, suggesting an interconnection of neurons that may have allowed the scientist's brain to work more effectively."
"Her study is simplistic," in the opinion of Dr Elliott Krauss, Dr Harvey's successor in the Princeton Hospital autopsy room. "It's one step away from phrenology. You know, the ancient study of bumps on the head."
After its arduous journey across the country, Einstein's brain - or what's left of it - is back in Princeton. Paterniti never explains why they didn't leave it in California, but he does ask Dr Krauss his plans. Dr Krauss says he is going to protect the brain until advanced knowledge and technology enable it to "yield important fruit of some kind".
"What do you mean?" Paterniti asks. "Clone another Einstein?" " `Why not?' asks Krauss, smiling. "We may be able to recover the DNA."
Patrick Skene Catling is an author and critic