Einstein's brain slices go on public display at Philadelphia museum

London, Nov 25 (ANI): Tiny slices of famed physicist Albert Einstein's brain have been put on public display for the first time at a Philadelphia museum.

The ultra-thin slices were taken from the physicist's brain in an attempt to find out what made him so extraordinary, the Daily Mail reported.

Philadelphia's Mutter Museum and Historical Medical Library are exhibiting 45 of the samples in their original slides as well as one under a microscope.

Einstein's brain was removed as part of a routine autopsy following his death in 1955 at the age of 76 from an abdominal aneurism.

But Thomas Harvey, the pathologist who carried out the autopsy, had failed to put the brain in the skull, claiming that Einstein's son had given him permission to keep it for study.

However this was disputed by Einstein's family, which led to Harvey losing his job. ut he kept hold of the brain, preserving it in a jar of formaldehyde and divided it into 240 sections, which he kept in jars at his house.

He gave a box containing 46 slides to his pathologist colleague William Ehrich, for letting him create the samples in his lab.

One neuroscientist found Einstein brain to be 15 per cent wider than average as his inferior parietal regions on both hemispheres were far more developed than average.

The brain slides on display were donated by Dr Lucy Rorke-Adams, the senior neuropathologist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, who had received them from a local doctor Allen Steinberg who in turn had been given them by Ehrich after his death in 1967.

"He was a unique individual, and to have the organ that's most associated with intelligence of this great man is a wonderful opportunity," Museum curator Anna Dhody told Live science.

"What we're hoping to do is to showcase this and to really talk about the brain and the physiology.

"He died at the age of 76, so he was an older individual, but Dr. Rorke-Adams said looking at his brain, you would think it was the brain of a younger person," Dhody stated. (ANI)