“Marie Curie: A Life”, by Françoise Giroud

 

291 pages, Holmes & Meier, ISBN-13: 978-0841909779

Einstein said she was “the only person to be uncorrupted by fame”, which in and of itself would make Marie Curie – born Maria Salomea Skłodowska in Warsaw in 1867 – unique, indeed. But it is her work as a physicist and chemist for which she is known for, as well as:

• conducted pioneering research on radioactivity
• being the first woman to win a Nobel Prize
• being the first person (and only woman) to win the Nobel prize twice
• being the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields
• being the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris
• and, in 1995, being the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris

You came a long way, baby.

We learn all of this and more in Françoise Giroud’s Marie Curie: A Life, a brief and little-known work that is an inspirational biography on the significant accomplishments made by this remarkable woman. The book addresses aspects ranging from her influences, her fame, her scandals and the impression she left on society, while focusing on her complex character in a fascinating, highly personal study. It explains in great detail the resistance and hardships that Curie had to go through to finally distinguish herself as a woman scientist; the private hardship when young Marie Skłodowska left Poland (where the university was closed to women) to continue her education in France; her life as a wife and mother while establishing, with the greatest difficulty, her famous laboratory; and her perseverance in carrying-on their research following the tragic death of her husband, Pierre, aged only 46. In addition, there is much information about how she influenced the many people in her presence, as well as the societal price she paid for her renown when, for example, she was subject to merciless public scrutiny and criticism in the aftermath of her liaison with Paul Langevin.

This story should be read because it is inspiring to see how a young, middle-class Polish woman made her way to the top – in a foreign country in during a time when a woman scientist was a fluke, no less. While grounding her work in historical context, Giroud thus provides a fresh human perspective on the life of the renowned yet enigmatic precursor of today’s atomic scientists.