The Mind Creative FEB 2014
In 1997, Harvey did last weird thing. He put the brain in Tupperware
bowl, the bowl in a duffel bag, the duffel bag in the trunk of his Buick
Skylark and drove to California with journalist Michael Paterniti to
hand over the preserved pieces to Einstein’s granddaughter, Evelyn.
The lady was apparently very annoyed and refused to accept
Harvey’s “gift”.
Harvey in the later years, with Einstein’s brain
pieces
During its long journey,
Einstein’s
brain
was
distributed to any scientist
who wanted to study it.
Among them, Harvey’s
mentor, Harry Zimmerman
ended up with one-sixth of
the brain while Marian
Diamond,
a
research
scientist
at
Berkeley,
received four portions. The
unlucky man was, of course,
the poet Burroughs who
desired it the most and got
nothing.
Dr. Diamond concluded from
her research that one part
of Einstein’s brain had a lot
more glial cells (support
cells for neurons) than any
other brain. This hardly
proved anything since the
section of the brain had
more to do with speech
control.
There were other studies that concluded that Einstein’s brain was
smaller and wider than normal and apparently had more folds. None
of these observations could decipher the reason behind the man’s
extraordinary genius.
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