Thursday, November 12, 2015

Einstein's Kids and Cruel, Mean Regression

IQ is highly heritable, and that heritability is largely driven by genes (from 50% to more than 70% according to most estimates, some going as high as 90%). Since it is hard to define, intelligence is harder to track. Einstein's progeny is instructive--and alarming. (Remember, Mileva Marić, Einstein's wife, was also really smart; in fact she contributed to some of Einstein's work.) 
Einstein had three children:
Lieserl, who died in infancy, Eduard, who was a promising medicine student, but then started developing schizophrenia. He was institutionalized for a large part of his life and the primitive treatment methods he was subjected to deeply affected his cognitive abilities. Hans Albert was a pretty brilliant scientist. He was a professor of hydraulic engineering at UC Berkeley and the world's foremost expert on sediment transport.
Hans Albert had four biological children, but only one of them, Bernhard Einstein, ever survived to adulthood. He became a physicist, worked in engineering for Texas Instruments and Litton Industries, and received half a dozen US patents in his life.
Bernhard Einstein has five children, the only info was that one is an anesthesiologist.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Mike Nichols was a second cousin of Einstein