Genius app: Download Einstein’s brain to your iPad

The brain that revolutionised physics can be downloaded as an app.

But it won’t help you win at Angry Birds.

While Albert Einstein’s genius isn’t included, an iPad application launched yesterday promises to make detailed images of his brain more accessible than ever before.

A medical museum under development in Chicago obtained funding to scan and digitise nearly 350 fragile and priceless slides made from slices of Einstein’s brain.

The app will allow researchers and novices to peer into the eccentric Nobel winner’s brain as if they were looking through a microscope. “I can’t wait to find out what they’ll discover,” said Steve Landers, a consultant for the National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago, who designed the app. “I’d like to think Einstein would have been excited.”

After Einstein died in 1955, a pathologist named Thomas Harvey performed an autopsy, removing the great man’s brain in hopes that future researchers could discover the secrets behind his genius. Harvey gave samples to researchers and collaborated on a 1999 study. It showed a region of Einstein’s brain — the parietal lobe — was 15% wider than normal. The parietal lobe is important to the understanding of maths, language, and spatial relationships.

The app may allow researchers to dig even deeper by looking for brain regions where the neurons are more densely connected than normal, said Dr Phillip Epstein, a neuroscientist and museum consultant.

However, because the tissue was preserved before modern imaging technology, it may be difficult for scientists to figure out exactly where in Einstein’s brain each slide originated.

Researcher Jacopo Annese said: “They didn’t have MRI. We don’t have a three-dimensional model of the brain of Einstein, so we don’t know where the samples were taken from.”

Proceeds from sales will go to the US department of defence’s National Museum of Health and Medicine and to the Chicago satellite museum, due to open in 2015.