The National Museum of Health and Medicine in Chicago has built a new iPad app that lets neuroscientists, teachers and the public at large, look at Albert Einstein‘s brain as if under a microscope.

The $9.99 app, called NMHMC Harvey, is based on the research of Dr. Thomas Harvey, the pathologist who performed an autopsy on Einstein back in the fifties. Check it out: “Dr. Harvey removed the brain for study,  segmented the brain into approximately 170 parts, roughly grouped by the various lobes and brainstem, and then sectioned those parts into hundreds of microscope sections.  These sections were mounted on microscope slides and stained to highlight both cellular structure and nerve conductive tissue.”

In 2010, Harvey’s estate donated his research to National Museum of Health and Medicine. This year the National Museum of Health + Medicine Chicago secured financing to digitize his research, much of which has not been available to the public in the past.  The digitizing project is a work in progress and future app updates will include new materials that have been added to the library.