Born: 19 December 1875, Serbia
Died: 4 August 1948
Country most active: International
Also known as: Mileva Marić-Einstein, Mileva Marić-Ajnštajn, Милева Марић, Милева Марић-Ајнштајн
Mileva Marić’s career as a brilliant mathematician ended before it ever truly began. The only woman in her class at Zürich Polytechnic and the second woman to finish a full program of study at the Department of Mathematics and Physics in the 1890s, her studies were interrupted when she became pregnant in 1901 by a classmate – Albert Einstein. She would work, uncredited, with Einstein for years before he divorced her in 1919 to marry his cousin.
Although her husband never publicly acknowledged her contributions, contemporaneous sources, including witnesses and letters between the two, indicate that much of his work was the result of collaborations with her. For example, he wrote to Mileva on 27 March 1901: “How happy and proud I will be when the two of us together will have brought our work on relative motion to a victorious conclusion.” He also reputedly declared at a social gathering, “I need my wife. She solves for me all my mathematical problems”.