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Thank you Branka Babic, for this awe inspiring contribution.  Mileva Maric Einstein has truly captured my heart.

There is no simple way to tell Mileva's story.  I have been at it all day; copying and pasting, writing, deleting, and finally I found everything to do this lady justice.

I present to you 

MILEVA MARIC EINSTEIN

Serbian Cyrillic:  Милева Марић

December 19, 1875 - August 4, 1948

Mileva Maric was born just before Christmas. Her parents doted on her and nicknamed her "Mitza." She limped because of a displaced hip, a birth defect unusually common in the region. As a youngster, she showed a gift for math and languages, painting and music. Mileva's family was well-to-do, and she received superior schooling.

When Mileva turned 15, her father got special permission for her to take classes at an all-male prep school. She kept to herself and earned the highest grades in both math and physics. To continue her education, Mileva went to Zurich, one of the few European cities, at the time, with a university that accepted women.

In the summer of 1896, she began studying medicine. By October, she had switched to the prestigious Zurich Polytechnic, which later became known as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH). She was nearly 21, and only the fifth woman to be accepted by the ETH. One of her classmates was Albert Einstein. He was 17, a boy barely worth noticing. Her first two years were an academic success. She spent a semester in Heidelberg. Mileva and Albert exchanged letters while she was away. She described, in great detail, the satisfactions of her studies. In return, Albert called her a "little runaway," telling her to "come back soon." See Note 1

She returned and, by the spring of 1899, all formality was gone. He called her Dollie. She dubbed him Johnny. They embarked on a "modern" love affair. Her parents were tolerant, knowing that Mileva's marital prospects were few, due to her intelligence and disability. His parents opposed the relationship on every level. She was too old, too bookish, lame, a Serb, not Jewish.

The greater the opposition, the more the couple was drawn together. Mileva became fiercely protective of Albert; they were inseparable. But after a promising start to her academic studies, Mileva's performance began to falter. In the summer of 1900, she failed her final exams. Although the final grades for both Maric and Einstein fell below the 5 point average that was necessary to pass, Einstein's 4.9 was rounded up to a 5, so he squeaked by. Mileva's 4 was dragged down by a miserable 2.5 average in the theory of functions--though she had received high marks in physics. Einstein earned a diploma, but was one of the few graduates without a job waiting. He joined his family for a summer holiday. See Note 2

After failing her first round of exams, Maric stayed in Zurich, working as a lab assistant and preparing to retake her exams. In May, they rendezvoused at Lake Como for three or four days. Several weeks later, Mileva discovered that she was pregnant. In July, she failed her exams again. Now, more than ever, her hopes were tied to Albert. He could give her child a name, and provide an outlet for Mileva's scientific ability. That fall, Einstein, who secured a poorly paid job as a substitute teacher in Schaffhausen, 20 miles north of Zurich, began to make up excuses to avoid seeing her.

In late January 1902, Mileva gave birth to a daughter she named Lieserl, at home in Novi Sad. There is no record of Albert ever going to see the child.

As 1902 drew to a close, Mileva turned 27. In the petit bourgeois world of Habsburg Serbia from which she hailed, Mileva's academic failure and illegitimate child would have made her feel like something of a family disgrace. Albert, on the other hand, was 23 and by then an employee of the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. He was on the brink of his most productive scientific years.

Wedding Day January 6, 1903

Albert and Mileva were married at Bern City Hall on January 6, 1903. She was just 28. Einstein was almost 24.

Sometime around the date of their marriage, Lieserl contracted scarlet fever. What finally became of her is unknown. No record of Lieserl's birth or death survives. She may have died as a result of her illness, or she may have been put up for adoption.

When Mileva joined Albert in Bern, the child was no longer with her. The marriage began with Einstein working six days a week at the Patent Office, and spending his free time on physics. Mileva tried to cope with the loss of her daughter and the failure of her academic dreams. Just before their second anniversary, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Marie and Pierre Curie, in what must surely have been, for Mileva, a stinging reminder of her own academic failure.

But the next year went well. Albert got a raise. The couple had a baby, Hans Albert. And 1905 was even better. It was Einstein's annus mirabilis, the miracle year. Albert published his four scientific papers that each marked an important breakthrough. Mileva told a Serbian friend, "we finished some important work that will make my husband world famous."

In 1909, Einstein resigned a post at the University of Bern, quit his job at the Patent Office, and became an associate professor in Zurich. He also corresponded with a former girlfriend. The Einsteins' marriage was showing strains. To restore peace, the Einsteins went on vacation. Their second son, Eduard, was born in 1910.

The next year, Albert moved his family to Prague where he had been appointed full professor at the Karl-Ferdinand University. For Mileva, the move would have been painful; as a Serb, she would have been particularly sensitive to the tensions between the German nationalist elite and the Czechs, with whom she identified. In 1912, the Einsteins returned to Zurich, a move that Mileva hoped would help respark her marriage. It did not. By then, Albert had a new math collaborator, Marcel Grossman. He also had a new lover, his cousin, Elsa Loewenthal. On his 34th birthday, he got a card from Elsa. That evening, Mileva was absent from a party.

The crisis came in spring 1914, when he accepted the position of a permanent member of the prestigious Prussian Academy of Sciences, as well as a full professorship at the University of Berlin. At first, Mileva resisted accompanying Albert; for one thing, Elsa lived in Berlin. Still, the Einsteins moved in April. Albert delivered a long list of rules to Mileva, with commands such as, "you must answer me at once when I speak to you." In July, the day before the outbreak of World War I, Mileva packed her bags and took the boys back to Zurich.

Mileva and her sons moved into a boardinghouse; Mileva hoped--though not very realistically--that Albert would return. Albert eventually moved in with Elsa and finished his General Theory of Relativity.

In 1916, he demanded a divorce. Mileva collapsed and was hospitalized. Albert thought, at first, that she was faking. In August, Helene Savic came to check on Mileva and found her friend bedridden. So Helene took the boys for a month, giving Mileva time to recover. Mileva was still ill in October. So, her sister, Zorka, came to care for the boys. But Zorka had a psychotic break during her stay in Zurich. She spent the next two years in a Swiss psychiatric clinic. See Note 3

When the war finally ended, Mileva agreed to a divorce. And Einstein agreed to sign over to Maric any future Nobel Prize money as part of the divorce settlement. He was now free to marry Elsa.

As 1919 wound to a close, observations of a solar eclipse proved the General Theory of Relativity. Newspapers ran banner headlines: "Men of Science More or Less Agog." Mileva was 44, divorced, and chronically ill. Hans Albert was 15 and bitter. Eduard was 9 and confused. Albert was 40, a world-famous figure and a newlywed--but he never again produced physics on a par with the work of 1905.

By the age of 45, Mileva had survived the loss of her daughter, her husband and her professional dreams. She had some cash from the divorce settlement, and earned a little more by taking in boarders and giving lessons in math and music. Life was tolerable.

But at the start of 1920, Mileva was called to Novi Sad. Her aging parents couldn't deal with Zorka's growing paranoia and hostility. Mileva stayed for three months. The autumn of 1922 found Mileva back in Serbia again: Zorka had incinerated a large sum of cash hidden in an empty stove. Events followed in rapid succession: Zorka suffered another psychotic break; Mileva's father, Milos, died of a stroke; Mileva had her sister legally certified as an incompetent - and Albert won the Nobel Prize.

Albert was on a lecture tour in the Far East when news of the Nobel Prize reached him. He couldn't attend the December ceremony. It was 1923 before a Swedish ambassador personally delivered the 1921 prize. Albert quietly routed the cash to Mileva. It was the smallest sum the Nobel Foundation had ever distributed, just 121,572 Swedish kronor (worth about $348,000 U.S. in 2003). Mileva invested in three properties, including an apartment house on Huttenstrasse, where she lived with her teenage sons.

The next year, Albert fell in love with a friend's niece. To keep her in Berlin, he hired her as a "secretary." Elsa permitted Albert to see his mistress twice a week, in exchange for keeping a low profile. Albert grew bored within a year. In April 1928, he hired a genuine secretary, Helen Dukas. She remained with Einstein until his death.

In 1929, Mileva was 53. Over the next 10 years, she would lose everything that mattered. First, Eduard was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Then Albert escaped the anti-Semitism of Nazi Berlin by emigrating to America with Elsa and his secretary. The following New Year's Day, Mileva's mother died. Three years later, Mileva went home for the last time, to bury Zorka. Then Hans Albert, his wife, and Mileva's two grandsons moved to the U.S., and within months her youngest grandchild was dead. By 1939, the world was in economic collapse, teetering on the brink of war.

Mileva asked Albert for help. She had sold two buildings, and faced foreclosure on the third. She couldn't pay for Eduard's care and maintain the Huttenstrasse apartments too. Albert took ownership of the property. After eight years, he abruptly sold it for 85,000 Swiss francs, on the condition that Mileva could stay. But on New Year's Eve, she received official notice that her lease was up. A friend attempted to get an extension and during the bureaucratic confusion, the buyer's 85,000 Swiss francs were accidentally paid to Mileva. Albert was livid. He threatened to cut Eduard out of his will if she didn't send the money to him instantly. But Mileva had a legal advantage: she held Albert's power of attorney in Switzerland, and she kept the money.

The following spring, Mileva collapsed during one of Eduard's violent episodes. She died in the hospital three months later and was buried in Zurich's Nordheim Cemetery. Her newspaper obituary didn't mention Albert. He was now a retired widower of 69. Johnny would outlive Dollie by seven years.

I cannot end this week's tribute without including the following:

The extent of Mileva's contributions to Einstein's Annus Mirabilis Papers is controversial. According to Evan Harris Walker, a physicist, the basic ideas for relativity came from Mileva.  Senta Troemel-Ploetz, a German linguist, says that the ideas may have been Albert's, but Mileva did the mathematics.

Sources: 

 http://www.pbs.org/opb/einsteinswife/milevastory/early.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mileva_Maric