When Mileva Maric and Albert Einstein met, they fell madly in love. She was a physics student at Polytechnic and became his sounding-board during the time he discovered special relativity and lay the groundwork for quantum theory.
All good things come to an end, and when the passion faded and the relationship became too rocky, Einstein wanted a divorce. He could not afford the money Mileva wanted for child support of their two sons. Confident that he would win the Nobel Prize for his 1905 work, he promised her that he would give her the prize money when he won, if she would grant him a divorce.
It took her a week to calculate the odds in consultation with other scientists. She considered risk neutral probability; information asymmetry; mortality risk and counter-party risk, to name but a few. Being a good scientist, she took the gamble.
Sixteen years later, in 1921, Einstein won the Nobel Prize for his work on the photon (not for relativity theory). He kept his promise and gave all the money to Mileva Maric, holding up his end of the contract. She bought three apartment buildings in Zurich, one for her and one for each son.
