Marie Curie by Kathleen Krull

Author:Kathleen Krull
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781101024775
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 2012-01-21T19:50:45+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Suddenly Famous

THE YEAR 1903 also brought the Curies the ultimate in gold medals: a Nobel Prize for Physics, shared with Henri Becquerel, for the discovery of radioactivity.

Alfred Nobel, the rich Swedish inventor of dynamite, had established the prizes in 1901 to honor each year’s greatest contributions to society in a number of different fields. (Röntgen won the first Nobel in physics.) The Swedish Academy, which administered the prizes, at first was going to exclude Marie. The committee assumed she merely assisted her husband. But Pierre found out and alerted supporters, who successfully lobbied for Marie as co-winner. Even so, at the award ceremony, the committee referred to Marie in condescending terms as Eve, a helpmate created by God for Adam.

To the committee’s consternation, neither Curie attended the ceremony in Sweden. These awards were only two years old. Like most people, the Curies didn’t seem totally aware of a Nobel’s import. Even though a considerable cash award came with the prize, Pierre didn’t want to give up the extra money he was making from lectures. Plus he was experiencing pain in his arms and legs, starting to have a hard time getting dressed. Rheumatism, he assumed. And Marie had just suffered a heartbreaking miscarriage.

Before 1903, only the Nobel Prizes for Literature and Peace had garnered much attention in the news. The prizes in science had been considered way too esoteric to engage the general public. Now, for the first time, there was buzz about the Nobel for Physics. A lot of buzz. Marie Curie was an object of intense curiosity. A woman contributing to science? Unheard of. A couple involved romantically and professionally? A new concept. Most people didn’t know what to make of the Curies.

Marie was cast as the Polish Cinderella, the beautiful poor immigrant rescued by Prince Pierre, toiling on to discover a shiny something that held promise to cure all the ills in the world. Even serious newspapers started articles on her with “Once upon a time . . .” Others turned this Polish immigrant into a French heroine: “Let’s not quibble about nationality,” wrote one Parisian reporter. Someone in America wanted to name a racehorse after her.

Fame was a jolt. Marie was pursued by an early form of paparazzi eager for any details of her personal life, trying to judge if she was “properly” feminine. Some reporters managed to get into the Curies’ house while Marie was out. She would pick up a paper and read descriptions of Irène, of their black-and-white cat didi, reports of things her daughter talked about.

“We must be interested in things, not in persons,” she lectured a nosy reporter. It got to the point that when people approached her, she sometimes denied being Marie Curie: “You must be mistaken,” she’d say with dignity, then vanish.

Pierre, who required absolute tranquility around him in order to think, was appalled by the post-Nobel frenzy. He called it “the disaster of our lives.” He was in the middle of experiments with radioactivity, passing radium through a magnetic field, and testing the amount of energy it put out by watching it heat water.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.