If history keeps crediting men for women’s discoveries, how much knowledge has humanity been robbed of?

When history favors men over women: what might we learn from Marić’s story?

In this essay, I will mainly focus on Mileva Marić, while also addressing the broader issue of women’s work being attributed to men. Although I will not center my analysis on the famous annus mirabilis papers—whose authorship has been widely debated—I aim to explore the larger question of how Marić’s relationship with Einstein reflects systemic patterns of erasure of women‘s work.

Mileva Marić: The Woman who taught Einstein to think?

Let’s start with some basic facts about Mileva Marić. Mileva was born into a wealthy family on 19 December 1875 in Titel, Austria-Hungary (today Vojvodina, Serbia). She showed intellectual aptitude from a young age and studied at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich (today ETH Zurich) in a highly male-dominated field, where she met her future husband, Albert Einstein. She was one of the first women to attend physics/mathematics courses here. Her studies included differential and integral calculus, descriptive and projective geometry, mechanics, theoretical physics, applied physics, experimental physics and astronomy. She then failed the final teaching diploma examinations because of the mathematics component (theory of functions), which she tried two times (1900 and 1901) and failed both of them. The reasons for her failure are debated, but it is well known, that she not only faced gender discrimination from her male professors but also struggled with personal burdens at the time. After her failed exams, Marić did not pursue a teaching career but continued to engage in scientific discussions and supported Einstein during his early research and career- contributions that many historians believe influenced his work. Letters between the two suggest that Marić and Einstein discussed his scientific ideas together from early on, often using the phrase ‘our work’ in their discussions. While the extent of her contribution remains debated, it is clear that she was more than just a silent partner.

Her career was further disrupted in 1901, when she became pregnant with her first child, Lieserl, whose fate remains uncertain: she may have died young or been given up for adoption. Afterward, her professional ambitions were increasingly sidelined. She died on 4 August 1948 in Zürich, Switzerland (aged 72). Marić’s story already reflects a broader pattern: women’s contributions being overshadowed or erased, while men’s achievements dominate the narrative. Marić’s role in Einstein’s formative years is one of many examples where history may have overlooked an important female mind.

In the next section, I am trying to show you the connection and work relationship of Marić and Einstein during their studies and after.

the silent collaborator:

Albert Einstein remains the most famous physicist to this day, his name synonymous with genius. His work between 1901 and 1921 is considered one of the most significant contributions to physics by a single individual, surpassing even Isaac Newton. Yet behind the success of the “father of relativity” stood a woman whose contributions are often overlooked: Mileva Marić, his first wife.

Eyewitnesses, including Marić’s brother and other relatives, reported that the couple regularly discussed physics together. Their first son, Hans Albert, recalled that after her marriage in 1903, his mother gave up her own scientific ambitions, although “scientific collaboration continued into their marriage,” and he often saw them working together at the same table.

Letters from Albert Einstein further suggest a close intellectual partnership. He wrote, “How lucky I am that I have found in you an equal creature that is as strong and independent as I am!” and “How happy and proud I will be when we both have successfully completed our work on relative movement together.”

Additionally, correspondence shows that Marić actively cooperated with Einstein by reviewing papers and providing supporting material. While Einstein also discussed his ideas with male colleagues, such as Michele Besso, Marić never received formal recognition, unlike Best who was named as a partner in several of Einstein’s papers.

The traditional view portrays her primarily as an intelligent wife and sounding board—a perspective shared by most historians. Feminist science historians, however, argue that her role has been systematically marginalized. Notably, many of the most prominent historians of Einstein’s work, including John Stachel, Abraham Pais, Gerald Holton, Albrecht Fölsing, and Alberto A. Martínez, were men. This raises the question of how male-dominated historical narratives may have undervalued the contributions of women like Mileva Marić.

learning in the shadow of men:

To understand Marić’s situation, we first need to consider the social perception of women in science at the time. Women in the 19th and early 20th century were largely defined by their roles as wives and mothers. In fact, women were not permitted to vote in most of Europe during these centuries; the first occurrence of women’s suffrage in Europe was in Finland in 1906, and the last was in Liechtenstein in 1984. The 19th century was very much a time of change for women’s rights, but it would be a very slow change indeed.

Women had no civil rights and suffered institutionalized sexism: administrators doubted their intellectual capacities and even their right to participate in university education. Matthias Tomczak, in a paper entitled “Mileva Maric, an unfulfilled career in science” ,points out that there is confusion about the enrollment status of women between 1867 and 1917 at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zürich. The official student statistic of the institution does not show any enrolled women before 1917. In view of the official student statistics, this has to be understood to mean that before 1917, women were enlisted as Gasthörer (or auditors) within University life. This meant that much of a woman’s student life during this period was without academic credit. In fact, the first woman in modern Europe to earn a Ph.D. was Sofia Kovalevskaya in 1874 at the University of Göttingen. Even after this breakthrough, women were still not really allowed to receive formal certificates for their studies until 1917, which, if we look at the year in which Marić studied, isn’t for another 16 years. So, when Marić entered ETH Zurich in 1896, she was not just a student—she was a rare exception in a system that barely acknowledged women at all. She attended as an auditing student, as women were not fully enrolled yet.

This context helps explain why Marić’s career path was so precarious, and why her contributions could so easily be overlooked.

Many people think that the first study published by Albert Einstein was not published under the name of his wife because women were not taken seriously at the time, her credibility would have been questioned, and Mileva herself did not have a bachelor’s degree. This context helps explain why her contributions were overlooked, but it does not excuse the systemic barriers and personal circumstances that further limited her recognition. Even if Marić was really not a major contributor to Einstein’s scientific output, the circumstances of her life still robbed her of opportunities and acknowledgment. She had to care for the children, her professors never considered a woman in her field „good enough,“ and Einstein did not actively support her career. Instead, he seemed to regard her primarily as support for his own work- even though he once described them as ‘equal’ partners. Isn’t that contradiction deeply troubling?

Due to the pervasive sexism of the time, Einstein probably didn’t even perceive this as unfair—it was simply expected that Mileva would sacrifice her own ambitions so that he could pursue his. Marić was born into privilege, received a strong education, and became known through her association with Albert Einstein—a man. But not every woman had such advantages, and countless others who shared her talent were held back simply because they were female. This pattern of women’s work being erased or minimized is not unique to Marić, as history shows us again and again.

When history steals her work:

Felix Mendelssohn published six of his sister Fanny Hensel’s compositions under his own name, and in 2010 a manuscript long thought to be his was proven to be hers.

Judith Leyster, one of the first Dutch women admitted to an artists’ guild, enjoyed fame during her lifetime, but after her death in 1660 her works were attributed to her husband.

Caroline Louisa Daly, a nineteenth-century artist, saw her paintings credited to several men—one of whom was not even an artist.

In science, Nettie Stevens established through experiments on mealworms that sex is determined by chromosomes rather than environment, yet the discovery is usually credited to Thomas Hunt Morgan, who even corresponded with Stevens to request details of her research, but then published findings without crediting her work.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin’s revolutionary finding that the sun is predominantly composed of hydrogen was long overshadowed by her male supervisor.

These are only a few of the countless misattributions to men. And this problem is not confined to the past—it is still very real today. A large-scale survey of scientific authorship shows that women’s contributions are systematically less likely to be recognized. Women are less often credited on publications and patents, even when they are part of the team producing them. While some argue that women publish less because of family responsibilities, unwelcoming work environments, or limited access to resources, recent research suggests the issue lies not in productivity but in recognition. The evidence shows that women’s work is undervalued and that they are significantly less likely to be named on a given article or patent compared to their male peers.

the gendered life of ideas

Based on these facts, one can see that Marić’s story is not an isolated case but part of a recurring pattern of undervalued female contributions. At the turn of the twentieth century, the British engineer and physicist Hertha Ayrton remarked: ‘while errors overall are notoriously hard to kill (…) an error that ascribes to a man what was actually the work of a woman has more lives than a cat.’

Her observation remains strikingly relevant. Society has long found it easier to accept men as intellectual pioneers while women’s work was dismissed, minimized, or reassigned.

The issue is therefore not only about individual figures such as Albert Einstein or Mileva Marić, but about the broader structures that shaped and continue to shape recognition in science and the arts. Research shows that women are still less likely to be credited for their contributions, not because of lower productivity, but because of systemic undervaluation. This suggests that the challenge lies less in individual intentions and more in institutional frameworks that favor male visibility.

Recognizing these dynamics is crucial, because each case of misattribution represents not only an injustice to an individual woman but also a loss for humanity as a whole.

The consistent underestimation of women’s contributions limits the knowledge we preserve and the voices we choose to amplify. As such, the question is not simply who deserves credit, but why such imbalances persist and what steps can be taken to address them.

And perhaps, the most unsettling thought remains: if a figure like Einstein had been forgotten simply because of his gender, would history still regard it as a coincidence—or as a tragedy?

reference list:

• Asmodelle, E. (2015). The collaboration of Mileva Maric and Albert Einstein. arXiv. Available at: https://arxiv.org/abs/1503.08020 Accessed 12 Sep. 2025.
• Criado Perez, C. (2019). Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. London: Chatto & Windus.
• Fembio (n.d.). Mileva Marić – A Life. Available at: https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/biographie/mileva-maric-einstein/ Accessed 5 Sep. 2025.
• HerStory (2022). Mileva Marić: The Genius beside Albert Einstein? Podcast / Blog. Available at: https://herstorypod.de/podcast/mileva-maric/ Accessed 10 Sep. 2025.
• Math! Science! History (2020). Einstein’s Equal: The Genius of Mileva Marić Podcast. Available at: https://mathsciencehistory.com/einsteins-equal-the-genius-of-mileva-maric/ Accessed 11 Sep. 2025.
• University of Heidelberg (n.d.). Mileva Marić – The Almost Forgotten Einstein. Available at: https://www.uni-heidelberg.de/de/universitaet/heidelberger-profile/historische-portraets/mileva-maric-die-fast-vergessene-einstein Accessed 5 Sep. 2025.
• Wikipedia (2025). Mileva Marić. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MilevaMari%C4%87 Accessed 5 Sep. 2025.
• Zhang, Y., Zhou, Y. & Liu, L. (2022). Mileva Marić and the early history of Einstein’s relativity: A review. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PMC). Available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9352587/ Accessed 5 Sep. 2025