An artful account of a scientific genius and her female disciples leaves Marie Curie’s inner life an enigma
o write a biography of a figure as well known as Marie Curie and still offer something fresh or surprising is no easy undertaking. The double Nobel prizewinner is, as author Dava Sobel acknowledges, the only female scientist most people can name. She has inspired more biopics and biographies than I can count, including those written by her two daughters.
She met her husband, the physicist Pierre Curie, in 1894, while conducting research into the magnetic properties of steel. As newlyweds, they collaborated on Marie’s doctoral thesis studying the unusual energy exuded by uranium. During their investigation of what they would later term radioactivity, they discovered two new elements – polonium and radium – and helped upend everything scientists understood about the material world.
What was behind this, I wondered? What did Curie make of it all? We don’t find out. Sobel is unable to tell us much about Curie’s relationships with others in her lab. Many seem to have worked more closely with her colleague, André-Louis Debierne, than with Curie, who was frequently grief-stricken or unwell or occupied with her own work.
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