Does Einsteins brain (and his mind) have anything to teach us

Does Einsteins brain (and his mind) have anything to teach usDoes Einsteins brain (and his mind) have anything to teach usAfter analyzing lost photographs of Einsteins intact brain from his 1955 autopsy it became irrefutable that every lobe of his brain differed from the human norm. Weighing in at 1,230 grams the brain welches not bigger but the cortical architecture was exceptional. More important than his gray matter, Einsteins mind taught us about the intern workings of the Very Small (quanta) and the Very Big (space-time curvature of the Universe). The journey of that mind throughout Einsteins 76 years may prove instructive today.Einsteins mind never ceased to be a work in progress which overcame numerous setbacks on its way to scientific immortality.To wit The real Baby Einstein did not begin to talk until well after his second birthday. He did not pass his college entrance exam for what is now called Zurich Polytechnic and had to wait a year for admission. He was called a lazy dog by his math professor, Hermann Minkowski. In 1900, he graduated fourth out of five students in the program to train teachers in math and physics. The following year he got his girlfriend pregnant and to this day the fate of their daughter, Lieserl, is unknown.He was refused an assistantship at more than one university and did not get regular employment until 1902 when he became a patent clerk third class in Bern. He remained at the Swiss Patent Office until 1909 although in his spare time he was writing (without access to a university library) the six brilliant papers that skyrocketed him during his annus mirabilis (Miracle Year) of 1905.His Nobel (1921 but given in 1922) was awarded not for his Theory of General Relativity (arguably one of the supreme achievements of the Mind of Man) but for his work on the photoelectric effect which was a forerunner of quantum mechanics. Ironically, Einstein vociferously rejected quantum mechanics believing that God does not play dice.So, we landsee that Einstein encountered more than a few bumps in the road but he most certainly made his way to Scientific Valhalla. Can we hope that his Mind and Brain will teach us how he overcame the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune more than six decades after his death? A few possible lessonsGrow a 4th mid-frontal lobe gyrus. Most human brains have 3 such gyri (ridges) and Einstein had 4 (see Lepore, F., Finding Einsteins Brain, Rutgers U. Press 2018). Although we all can grow about 1,400 new hippocampal neurons daily, a whole gyrus (and its wiring) is not an option).Exploit your familys strengths. Einsteins father and uncle were both mathematically inclined and brought Maxwells equations of electromagnetism to life with electric utility start-ups in Munich and Milan. Einstein did not become the engineer his father wanted but the natural sciences were his familys table talk.Apply what you learn at your job. Being a patent clerk is very different from being a theoretical physici st. Einstein had to judge the merits of patents for synchronizing railway clocks throughout Europes growing railway systems. This workaday task led him to think deeply about Time and set the stage for his Theory of Special Relativity which dispelled Isaac Newtons myth of absolute universal time.Pick the right aufgabe. Measuring the shift (precession) of Mercurys orbit at 43 arc-seconds per century did not fit with Newtons Law of Gravitation. The time was ripe for a new vision of gravity not as a force but as a field, and the problem of Mercurys orbit was solved by Einsteins Theory of General Relativity.Learn to use new tools. Even with a Miracle Year under his belt in 1905. Einstein did not know enough math to pull off his Theory of General Relativity With a little help from his friends, mostly Marcel Grossman, he learned the arcane mathematics of non-Euclidean geometry and tensor calculus, and the upshot was when General Relativitys spot-on prediction of the bending of starlight ma de the World agog in 1919.Not everyone benefits from a mentor. At least Einstein didnt. He avoided indoctrination to the received wisdom of the existing scientific paradigms by not attending graduate school, writing his doctoral thesis while fully employed as a patent clerk outside academe, and not apprenticing himself to senior faculty for a post-doc year. Einstein was free to pursue his own profound thoughts and he thought outside the kasten simply because he was never permitted to go inside the box.Embrace your cognitive style. By his own admission, Einsteins relied on visual and muscular imagery in his thought (Gedanken) experiments. Once he had visualized the equivalence of gravity and acceleration experienced by the occupant of an accelerating box hauled up by a rope in interstellar space, he could then proceed with mathematical formalisms and write the equations. People think in words, images, abstract symbols, or, as archly intoned by Maynard Keynes thoughts. Choose what is best for you.Stay curious. When Einstein was given a compass at age 4 or 5 he felt that something deeply hidden had to be behind things to account for the compass needle unerringly pointing to magnetic North. His curiosity never wavered and in the fullness of time ushered in his radically different view of the universe. The ability to step back and ask why? or how? can fuel the sense of wonder that transforms the daily routine into a path of discovery.Persevere. On the day he died, next to his hospital bed were 12 pages of equations that Einstein had written in a further attempt to reconcile quantum theory with gravity a unified field theory. Einstein struggled throughout the last decades of his life but failed to find this Holy Grail of physics. Were still looking and the latest iteration of this Theory of Everything is String Theory with 11 dimensions (10 spatial and 1 temporal) Was there a point to Einsteins last doomed struggle to wrest an Ultimate Truth beyond Robert Louis St evensons encouragement that to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive? You bet there was that selfsame dogged determination brought forth the coruscating brilliance of the Theory of General Relativity after 10 years of unsuccessful attempts from 1905 to 1915.If you adopt these 9 lessons (some fanciful) from the life of a visionary 20th-century theoretical physicist, your personal success is not assured (and Einstein would be the first to tell you so). He was most certainly a genius and possibly the foremost genius of our times but on a human scale, his ability to confront his personal and professional problems will serve well as a North Star 63 years after his death.Frederick E. Lepore MD is a professor of Neurology and Ophthalmology at Rutgers/Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey. He is a clinical neuro-ophthalmologist, the author of a biography of a brain - Finding Einsteins Brainand over 125 scientific articles, and designer of the Optic Nerve Test Card. D r. Lepore is also the father of Ladders Deputy Editor, Meredith Lepore.