"A Conversation with Einstein's Brain" is an interesting essay by Douglas Hofstadter. I believe it was originally in GEB, but also appears reprinted in The Minds I.

Einstein died in 1955. A pathologist named Dr. Thomas Harvey took his brain and keeps it to this very day. Don't believe me? Read the book, Driving Mr. Albert, by Micheal Paterniti.

When Einstein died, they examined his brain... they found some unusual differences between it and the average brain... most notably that the parts of the brain responsible for dealing with spatial relations and mathematical logic were linked in an interesting and unique way. I doubt that anyone was suprised.

In response to Wonder Llama, Einstein though a deeply religious man was not a practicing Jew. Brought up in a Bourgoise Jewish family he attended a Catholic school and in his early years (pre twenties) flirted with both religions.

Eventually he abadoned the idea of a personal God, in his own words: "It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropomorphic concept which I cannot take seriously. I also feel not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near to those of Spinoza: Admiration for the beauty and belief in the logical simplicity of the order and harmony which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content urselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem - the most important of all human problems".

I'm sure that he would not have cared at all where his brain ended up as long as people were not fighting over it.

His contribution to the cause of Zionism was huge and he felt a great affinity for his Jewish heritage but he was not religious in the practicing sense.

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