Physics of birds and bees – sincerely, Albert Einstein A newly discovered letter reveals that Einstein predicted recent bee research seventy years ago. Extract from Einstein's letter to Davys. Credit: Dyer et al. 2021, J Comp Physiol A / The Hebrew University of Jerusalem In 2019, a group of RMIT researchers were in the midst of publishing a series of grand discoveries about how bees use their brains, when they got an unexpected surprise from Albert Einstein. Led by Scarlett Howard as part of her PhD, the team had shown that, despite their small size, bees could understand the concept of zero, and even perform simple arithmetic.