When Albert Einstein died at age 76 in 1955 of an abdominal aneurysm, the pathologist who autopsied him, Thomas Harvey, kept his brain.
Harvey sliced hundreds of thin sections of brain tissue and placed them on microscope slides, some of which he revealed in the years following his death
However, Harvey kept secret 14 photographs of the brain, which were recently discovered.
A new analysis of those photos suggests Einstein had unusual levels of folding across his cerebral cortex, the gray matter responsible for conscious thought.
Einstein had asymmetric parietal lobes, which may have super-charged his spatial abilities. A 1999 study in the Lancet found that one brain region was completely absent in Einstein, allowing his parietal lobe to take up more space.
The physicist had an extra fold in the frontal lobe, an area of the brain needed for sophisticated tasks such as abstract thought and prediction.
Here, an illustration by the the authors of the new paper shows the four frontal lobe ridges (labeled 1 through 4) as opposed to the three typically found in the human brain.
The red shaded region marks a spot where Harvey accidentally cut through Einstein's brain during the autopsy procedure.
Einstein was probably born with many of the brain differences that contributed to his genius.
However, a lifetime thinking about physics likely also shaped his brain.
