Did Einstein Steal His Wife’s Ideas?

Do Einstein’s discoveries owe a hidden debt to his first wife, Mileva Marić? We separate myth from evidence. Mileva was a trained physicist—one of the few women in her cohort—who studied and argued physics with Albert in Zurich. Their letters show real intellectual companionship (you’ll hear about the famous “our work on relative motion” line), but the paper trail for 1905—photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity—shows Einstein as sole author. We explain what historians actually agree on, why the “Einstein-Marity” signature story doesn’t hold up, and why Einstein promised Mileva his future Nobel Prize money in their 1919 divorce.

No fluff, no takedowns: just a clear, balanced look at what contribution means, how influence can matter without a byline, and why telling Mileva’s story honestly makes the science—and the people behind it—more interesting.