Einsten's wife's kin want her reburied in Serbia

Maric's remains lay largely forgotten in the communal Swiss grave until last June then the Serbian embassy put up a commemorative plaque.

BELGRADE, February 9, 2010 (AFP) - A cousin of Albert Einstein's first wife is campaigning to have her remains repatriated to Serbia from Switzerland, a daily reported Tuesday.

Mathematician and physicist Mileva Maric, married Einstein in 1903 but the couple divorced in 1919 three years after Einstein formulated the theory of relativity.

Maric died in 1948 in Zurich, Switzerland, and was buried in a communal grave.

Her cousin Dragisa Maric told Vecernje Novosti daily that Serbia should bring back her remains.

"The remains of Mileva should be buried along with her parents Milos and Marija in Novi Sad or Titel," her native town in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina, Maric told the newspaper.

Maric's remains lay largely forgotten in the communal Swiss grave until last June then the Serbian embassy put up a commemorative plaque, the daily said.

She was born in 1875 in Titel, studied in Novi Sad and nearby Sremska Mitrovica before enrolling at the Zurich Polytechnic school, where she met Einstein and started working with him.

Maric said that by repatriating her remains Serbia could contribute correcting injustice towards Mileva, who has often been mentioned only as Einstein's spouse and not as his collaborator.

The importance of Mileva's contribution to her husband's remains a point of scientific debate.