}Einstein was wrong. He didn?t discover mind-boggling secrets of the cosmos by being, as he claimed, much more ?curious than others?. Rather, it was his brain that was suited to the job.

In this week?s issue of Nature, Professors Claudia Kerbs and Christian Steinhauser at the University of Bonn report that their analysis of samples from the inferior parietal lobe (the area that handles mathematical reasoning) of Einstein?s brain reveals that they contain an exceptionally large number of cells known as glia, which are as essential as neurons in thinking.

The finding resolves a riddle: why were Hendrik Antoon Lorentz, Henri Poincare or David Hilbert pipped to the post in inventing special relativity exactly 100 years ago? The answer: only an Einstein could overthrow Isaac Newton?s ideas of space and time. pathik guha / bonn, march 12