New iPad App Lets You Examine Slices of Albert Einstein's Brain

Posted on September 28, 2012

There is a new app from the National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago (NMHMC) that lets you examine slices of Albert Einstein's brain as if you were sitting in front of a microscope. The slices are from the Harvey collection, which was donated to the NMHMC in 2010.

Dr. Thomas Harvey was the pathologist who performed the autopsy on Albert Einstein in 1955. Dr. Harvey segmented Einstein brain into about 170 parts and then sectioned these parts into hundreds of microscope sections, which were mounted on slides and stained. The NMHMC has since digitized the collection and made it available as an app. The app costs $9.99 and can be found here.

Here is a video from Slate explaining the app: