The Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia has received a donation of 46 slides containing part of Albert Einstein’s brain, which will be displayed publicly.
The display comes more than 50 years after the brain of Einstein was carefully preserved, partitioned and distributed to the private collections of various hospitals and researchers, reports AP.
Lucy Rorke-Adams, a neuropathologist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, donated the precious samples of the famed theoretical physicist’s brain on Thursday.
A colleague gave the slides to Rorke-Adams in the mid-1970s, having received them from the widow of a physician who had helped arrange for the brain samples to be prepared in 1955, AP reports.
Rorke-Adams, 82, continues to work at Children's Hospital after 47 years but said she wanted to ensure the slides were safely stowed in a museum before she passes away.
"They are a very important part of medical history," the physician said.
Several sets of slides were prepared, but Rorke-Adams said the whereabouts of the others was unknown, reports AP.
The majority of the brain remains preserved at Princeton’s University Medical Center, where the autopsy on the German-born scientist was performed.
