Albert Einstein has long been a celebrated figure in history, lauded for his academic achievements, specifically his Theory of Relativity.
But history has conveniently ignored a troubling fact about the German-born physicist – he was something of a misogynist, who imposed a series of downright offensive and controlling demands on his first wife, Mileva Maric.
Einstein met Maric – an accomplished mathematician in her own right – while they were both studying at Zurich Polytechnic.
They married in 1903, when Einstein was 24 and Maric was 28.
Some historians even claim Maric contributed to some of Einstein’s most famous work, including his Theory of Relativity. Feeling threatened by her talents though, he allegedly omitted her name from his studies.
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I interpret the demands very differently. To me this just sounds like his introversion acting up. Now, introverts can be highly social and enjoy company (from time to time), but they need their alone time to recharge, and they hate to be interrupted during those times. Depending on how his interactions with his wife went, he may have strongly felt that she had encroached on his alone time and space, so he started making a bunch of demands.
The part about belittling him in front of his children sounds like she did it at least once (or he felt so), and he stubbornly kept a grudge (it's nothing special, most of us remember at least one thing that soured our relations with at least one person).
Finally, there's the cleaning part. It sounds like he's terrible at housework himself, but wants to enjoy an orderly life, so he told his wife to do it. Frankly, the concept of shared housework wasn't really a thing back then.
That doesn't excuse his behavior, and certainly not his cheating, but the root cause may not be misogyny.
A lot of it seems pretty standard for the time period, the rest due to his dedication to his work.
Many people at those sorts of IQ levels are a little 'quirky'.