Eduard Einstein

Eduard Einstein (28 July 1910 – 25 October 1965) was born in Zürich, Switzerland, the second son of physicist Albert Einstein from his first wife Mileva Marić. Albert Einstein and his family moved to Berlin in 1914. Shortly thereafter the parents separated, and Marić returned to Zürich, taking Eduard and his older brother Hans Albert with her. His father remarried in 1919 and in the 1930s emigrated to the United States under the threat of the German Nazi regime.

A good student, Eduard began to study medicine with the goal of entering the new field of psychiatry. At age 20 he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and two years later was committed to an asylum for the first of several times throughout the remainder of his life. After his mother's death in 1948, he was committed full-time.

Life

Eduard was a good student and had musical talent. After gymnasium, he started to study medicine to become a psychiatrist, but by the age of twenty, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He was institutionalized two years later for the first of several times. Biographers of his father have speculated that the drugs and "cures" of the time did more damage to the young Einstein than aide to him, but schizophrenia can be intractable. His brother Hans Albert Einstein believed that his memory and cognitive abilities were damaged by electroconvulsive therapy treatments.