Perspectives of Marie Curie’s Life and Research
Marie Curie is a two time Nobel Prize recipient, one in Physics and one in Chemistry. From the outside looking in, many people may know Marie and her husband Pierre Curie as these brilliant scientists who basically coined radioactivity. But what were they like as people? How did they live their day to day lives? In the book Radioactive: Maries & Pierre Curie, a tale of love and fallout the audience gets a closer look into the personal lives of these scientists who are held in such high regards for their achievements. The book is mostly centered around Marie Curie and her experiences that led her to be the courageous and curious women she was.
She starts her adventure into the scientific field by being one of the 23 women in the entire student body of 1,800 people, this on it’s own really shows how there was a large gap between men and women in the scientific field. Education was not easily accessible for women and this can lead to a divide in what information is available for individuals who don’t hold as much social capital as scientists and scholars. This concept of uneven spread of information is discussed in the publication Feminist standpoint theory and science communication, Halpern states “This is the value of standpoint theory: not to tell science why it is wrong, but to see, through the eyes of those without access to the knowledge and social capital we have as scientists or scholars, how our own knowledge is limited and privileged by our position.” This statement really made me think about my own life, I never really fully understood what people meant when they say that I’m lucky that I get to study science at a more formal level until I read this piece by M. Halpern. I really liked the concept of looking through the eyes of those without access to knowledge and social capital that we have as scientists- I never really felt like I had the opportunity to do this while being surrounded by others who are also scientists.
Marie Curie had a multitude of experiences that I found to be extremely impactful on her life and her work as a scientist. A few of these events are listed below:
1. I think that being hired into the laboratory of Gabriel Lippmann was pretty life changing for Marie Curie. She got hired in and met her husband Pierre Curie, she even gave up going back home to Poland to be able to stay with him. She wrote a note to her friends and it said “’It is a sorrow to me to have to stay forever in Paris, but what am I to do? Fate has made us deeply attached to each other and we cannot endure the idea of separating.’”
2. She was able to do Nobel prize winning work with her husband Pierre. The couple seemingly loved to work together in the lab.
3. She then lost her husband and then took over his professorship. She was the university’s first women professor in the 650 years the university had been open.
4. She met another lover named Paul Langevin-he was a student of her late husband. The only problem with their love story was that Paul was married…
5. Right before learning that she was the first EVER 2 time Nobel Prize winner, the husband of her lover released their love letters and accused them of having an affair. This resulted in Paul losing custody of his kids (he had visitation rights) and losing Marie. The pair remained in contact but their romance was over.
6. A war started in Europe in the summer of 1914. Marie found herself working on the front line for her adopted country France; her daughter Irene also became a nurse and radiologist. Marie and her daughter both were exposed to a lot of radiation.
7. Marie Curie died of overexposure to radiation July 4th 1934 at the age of 66.
8. On the one-year anniversary of her death, her daughter Irene and her husband (who started as Marie’s assistant) found out that they had won a Nobel Prize for their work in artificial radioactivity.
Of the above events that I pulled from Radioactivity: Marie & Pierre Curie I think that when Marie took her lover Paul Langevin who was married, was one of the most impactful societal moments in her career. The wife of Paul told everyone about the affair and people hounded Marie for being with a married man. In my experience, one bad experience can outweigh even the biggest accomplishments and I’m sure that Marie Curie felt similarly when she was painted as a homewrecker. This “blemish” on Marie Curie really was a situation that depended on the perspectives of those who knew about the affair; those who didn’t know her and only saw the stories in the newspaper just thought that she was some random scientist who was sleeping with another woman's man. This relates to the basic principles of the feminist standpoint theory which are: “(a) all knowledge is situated, interpreted, and thus local; and (b) those belonging to marginalized groups are situated in ways that allow them to see more than those who are not” people from the outside weren’t in the position to see that Paul was in an unhappy marriage and Marie wasn’t maliciously trying to break up a marriage. Another anecdote that I thought was extremely important was that in the 650 years the university that Pierre Curie taught at there was never a women professor until Marie took Pierre’s position. Marie Curie lived a surprisingly long time for an individual who consistently slept with radium next to her bed every night and worked with radioactive substances on a daily basis; she helped make it possible for women such as her daughter to pursue a career in the scientific field.
References
Halpern, M. (2019, October 02). Feminist standpoint theory and science communication. Retrieved from https://jcom.sissa.it/archive/18/04/JCOM_1804_2019_C01/JCOM_1804_2019_C02
Redniss, L. (2015). Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, a tale of love & fallout. London: Dey Street Books, an imprint of HarperCollins.
