The secrets of Einstein’s brain
QUESTION Where is Einstein’s brain kept?
What remains of Einstein’s brain is held at the University Medical Center of Princeton in New Jersey, U.S.
albert Einstein, one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century, died on april 18, 1955, of a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm, in Princeton. Einstein wished to have his entire body cremated ‘so people won’t come worship at my bones’, he told his biographer abraham Pais.
But the pathologist who did the autopsy, Dr thomas harvey, disregarded this and preserved his brain. Einstein’s son hans albert confronted harvey, who convinced him to let him keep the brain to investigate whether it had unique features that could explain Einstein’s brilliance.
harvey preserved, photographed and measured the brain, and even commissioned a painting of it. he then had a colleague cut a large chunk of the organ into 240 blocks and mounted other sections on microscope slides. harvey left Princeton, then travelled to Philadelphia and around the Midwest. Periodically, he sent the slides to scientists for research.
as he moved around, harvey kept the jar containing what remained of the brain in a cardboard box. In 1998, harvey returned it to the University Medical Center of Princeton, where it remains.
however, several slides are thought to be hidden away as keepsakes or are lost, and a group of slides is on display in Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum.
a full anatomical study of Einstein’s brain was published in 1999, by a team led by Sandra Witelson, a neurobiologist at McMaster University in hamilton, Canada. Working from harvey’s photographs of the entire brain, Witelson’s team found that Einstein’s parietal lobes — implicated in mathematical, visual and spatial cognition — were 15 per cent wider than normal parietal lobes.
One parameter that did not explain
Einstein’s mental prowess, however, was the weight of his brain: at 1,230 grams, it fell at the low end of average.
E. M. Witty, St Andrews, Fife.
QUESTION Has any UK pop star had a hit abroad by re-recording a song in a foreign language?
IN 1963, the Beatles had the two bestselling singles in the UK up until then with She Loves You and I Want to hold Your hand. Re-recorded in German as Sie Liebt Dich and Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand, and issued as a single in Germany in 1964, it topped the German charts.
By coincidence, the first official recording with the Beatles (as the Beat Brothers backing tony Sheridan) was the 1961 German release of My Bonnie. It was demand for the disc in Liverpool that led Brian Epstein to size up the group.
Until about 1970, other British artists recorded foreign language versions of UK songs; the doyenne was probably Petula Clark. as well as recording foreign language versions of hits by other UK and U.S. artists, she re-recorded most of her own hits in other languages, achieving four European No 1s with Downtown (in both German and Italian) and this Is My Song (in both French and Italian).
however, the popularity of songs in
English by the Beatles and others, and the emergence of English as a lingua franca in Europe, made this redundant.
a belated oddity in 1974 was She, by Charles aznavour. the original version was a UK No 1, with lyrics custom-written in English for aznavour, a Frenchman. he re-recorded it in four other European languages but none achieved anything like the success of the original.
Lyrics often change in translation. Even titles change; a notorious example was the French version of Yellow Submarine, titled Le Sous-Marin Vert (Green Submarine). thankfully, the Beatles left it to the likes of Maurice Chevalier to record. Bob Bell, Croydon, Surrey. QUESTION Is it unhealthy to reuse cooking oil? PROvIDED frying oil is kept below a certain temperature, known as the smoke point, and filtered after use, it can be reused several times without harm.
When frying or deep-frying, aim to keep the temperature around 130-140c. Be careful not to let the oil smoke. When oil smokes and overheats, it changes its chemical composition, loses its flavour and produces harmful free radicals.
It is best to use oil with a high smoke point such as sunflower oil (225c) or refined vegetable oil (210-230c). If you want more complex flavours, use virgin olive oils but you have to be careful as the smoke point is about 190c.
after the first fry, leave the oil to cool, then strain it through a fine sieve and cheesecloth, before storing it in a sealed container in a dark place. Some cooks just leave it in a covered pan and strain out the impurities before second use.
If the oil does overheat, dispose of it after cooking, ideally, by bottling it up for recycling when cooled. Pouring it down drains clogs them up.
Remember that oil takes on the flavour of whatever is fried in it. If you’re cooking fish, meat or something with a strong flavour, keep that in mind when reusing.
the greatest hazard is allowing the fat to become rancid. Besides ruining food fried in it, rancid oils can contain potentially carcinogenic free radicals. they can also form fatty polymers, implicated in cardiovascular disease.
Provided precautions are taken, cooking oil can be reused three to four times.
Mrs Louise Taylor, Wells, Somerset.
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