| Fans of his wife, a physicist herself, are still struggling to get her contributions recognized. When Mileva Marić met Albert Einstein, she was the groundbreaker. The only woman in their class of six students at Zurich’s Polytechnic Institute in 1896, she was a studious nerd, sitting in the front of the class, raising her hand at every opportunity. In contrast, her friend Einstein rarely attended classes and was poorly regarded at the institute. Letters that came to light in the 1990s paint Einstein as an enfant terrible in school, but a man besotted by his classmate. In one letter, he describes Marić as “a creature who is my equal, and who is as strong and as independent as I am.” The reality though was not so romantic. It would see a promising physicist’s career cut short and superseded to her husband’s work, a process that women who see her as a role model continue to fight long after her death. | 
