Einstein does not fare well in Benedict’s approach, perhaps that is his due, or perhaps more research must be done on his partnership with Marić. An understandable approach since so little effort has been made by the scientific world to research Marić, her life, and her work, and establish what role she played in Einstein’s 1905 breakthrough on relativity. The romance, and subsequent marriage were laden with problems and traumatic events, including the heart-breaking, gut-wrenching death of Marić’s and Einstein’s first born daughter from scarlet fever.īenedict focuses almost entirely on Marić’s thoughts and world view. Eventually, after much soul searching, Marić did allow herself to become romantically involved with Einstein. During this time, Marić helped Einstein with his studies, and allowed him to play his violin at the musical evenings she and her female friends held at her Engelbrecht Pension (student boarding house for women). This conflict played a large part in Marić’s decision to keep her relationship with Einstein platonic for a number of years. Her desire, however, for an academic life, clashed with the uniform goal for women of her day – marriage and children. Serbian, with a supportive father who told her to “be bold” and become a leading woman physicist at a time when most Serbian women (and women of other nationalities) did not even seek university degrees, Marić wanted desperately to make her “papa” proud of her.

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