New Interactive iPad App Shows Einstein's Brain

Albert Einstein is one of the greatest scientists of all time. Einstein's brain was unique and when he died, he left his body to science. Einstein's brain was removed, and researchers made slides to try to determine what it was about Einstein's brain that made him such a huge genius.

A new application has launched for the iPad that sells for $9.99. The app allows users to investigate Albert Einstein's brain as if they were looking through a microscope. The goal of the app is to make slides and images of Einstein's brain more accessible to scientists, students, and anyone else curious about the genius.

The app was produced by a medical Museum in Chicago that was able to obtain funding to scan and digitize 350 fragile and priceless slides made from slices of Einstein's brain after he died in 1955. Einstein's brain was removed by a pathologist named Thomas Hardy during an autopsy after Einstein passed away in hopes that researchers would be able to discover the secrets behind Einstein's unique genius.

The study of Einstein's brain allowed researchers to discover that Einstein's parietal lobe was 15% wider than normal. The parietal lobe is the area of the brain that has to do with understanding math, language, and spatial relationships. The app organizes the slides into general brain regions, but doesn't map them with precision using an anatomical model. This is because when Einstein's brain was removed there were no MRI machines so three-dimensional modeling was impossible.

[via NC Times]