'MARIE CURIE': A LIFE SPARKED BY DISCOVERY AND DESPAIR
Author: By Usha Lee McFarling, Globe Staff
Date: Tuesday, April 4, 1995
Page: 69
Section: LIVING
Most Americans know only the broadest outlines of the life of legendary
French scientist Marie Curie: She, along with her husband, Pierre, helped
usher in the nuclear age by discovering the radioactive element radium. She
was awarded two Nobel prizes -- one for physics and one for chemistry. And in
the end, she died, poisoned by the very radiation she labored to understand.
Over time, and with the help of family members who sought to shape her
historic legacy, Curie has become something of a scientific saint, a widow
clad in black who toiled endlessly in an austere laboratory. Susan Quinn's new
biography "Marie Curie: A Life" fleshes out this tale. More important, it
provides a window into the many untold stories in Curie's life.
In her introduction, Quinn relates her reasons for writing Curie's
biography, which took her seven years. "I wanted to peel back the layers of
myth and idealization which had grown up around Marie Curie's story," Quinn
writes. She succeeds.
The book describes not only the triumphs of Curie's life, but also the
profound difficulties she faced as a woman scientist in turn-of-the-century
France -- where political machinations nearly robbed her of her first Nobel
Prize in 1903. The biography also delves into Curie's personal tragedies --
from the untimely death of Pierre to an affair Curie later had with a married
colleague, Paul Langevin. The affair erupted into one of the biggest scandals
of the time, nearly cost Curie her second Nobel Prize and, Quinn argues,
profoundly altered her life.
Through letters written during and about the affair, the book paints a
surprising picture of the scientific legend, of a passionate, jealous Curie, a
woman who could write to Langevin: "But when I know you are with her, my
nights are atrocious, I can't sleep." It also shows a vulnerable Curie facing
death threats from Langevin's wife and "reduced to wandering like a beast
being tracked." Quinn's discussion of how the press feasted on the scandal is
a tale that still bears reading in today's O. J. Simpson-saturated media
environment.
Quinn's biography is most riveting when she focuses on three aspects of
Curie's life: her affair, her science and her marriage. Through Quinn's
accounts of Marie and Pierre's day-to-day encounters in the lab, in public
life and in their modest home, we see a remarkable marriage of equals,
described at the time as an "exchange of energy" and not just ideas and as
''an idyll in a physics lab."
The biography is especially moving when we follow Curie, through diary
passages that did not become available to researchers until 1990, into
mourning after Pierre's death. It may surprise readers that Pierre did not die
from radiation sickness. He died in a Paris street in 1906 after his skull was
crushed by the wheel of a heavily loaded horse-drawn wagon.
After the accident, Curie confides to her diary that she wonders how she
will continue to work in their laboratory, "where I never thought I would have
to live without you."
The work in that laboratory -- the study of mysterious X-rays, the
isolation of glowing radium, the probing of the chemistry of radiation -- are
complicated science topics that Quinn describes deftly and clearly, making the
book accessible for both those who are familiar with the scientific work and
those who aren't.
From a present-day perspective, it is horrifying to read about Curie and
other scientists handling uranium with their bare hands and having no fear of
the substances that were burning the tips of their fingers. But their cavalier
attitudes fit into the craze over radiation that was gripping the world at the
time.
I would have liked to know more about the element that fascinated Curie.
Elsewhere in the book -- especially the parts concerning the early years --
readers face a frustrating lack of detail about her life. We learn very
little about her first love, "a hot-and-cold relationship" with an employer's
son that occupied years of her life.
Much of the detail is lacking because Marie Curie, stung from her
experience with the French media during the scandal, requested that friends
destroy her letters. Pages are torn from her diary about Pierre -- perhaps a
form of self-censorship. And an earlier biography of Curie, written by her
daughter Eve, devotes only a few paragraphs to the scandal. Given this
relative dearth of material, Quinn weaves together a compelling portrait of
one of the most important women in history.
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