Albert Einstein’s brain, that revolutionised Physics, can now be downloaded as an iPad app for $ 9.99.
The exclusive application, which has been just launched, promises to make detailed images of Einstein’s brain more accessible to scientists than ever before.
The funding to scan and digitise nearly 350 fragile and priceless slides made from slices of Einstein’s brain after his death in 1955 were given to a medical museum under development in Chicago, website ‘Independent.ie’ reported.
The application 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,” Steve Landers, a consultant for the National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago, who designed the app, was quoted as saying by ‘Press Association’.
“I’d like to think Einstein would have been excited,” Landers said.
After Einstein’s death, a pathologist named Thomas Harvey performed an autopsy, removing the scientist’s brain, hoping that future researchers could discover the secrets behind his genius.
The new application will 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 Chicago-area neuroscientist and consultant for the museum.
However, as the tissue was preserved before modern imaging technology, it may be difficult to figure out exactly where in Einstein’s brain each slide originated.
The new app organises the slides into general brain regions, however, it does not map them with precision to an anatomical model.