Discovering Marie Curie
- Femspec
- 18 minutes ago
- 7 min read
Marie Curie
Dr Irena Kuzmina
“I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.”
Mary Wollstonecraft
One Polish woman revolutionised not only the Sorbonne University but also global science, as well as ordinary people's lives.
We all undergo X-ray screening when our health state gets critical but not everybody knows who invented it and what the context was. Let us look into it.
In Poland, on the outskirts of the then Russian Empire, in the Kingdom of Poland, there was a young lady wishing to study but could not: higher education was prohibited to girls in those times everywhere in Europe. It was the 19th century. Women had no legal rights and the suffragette movement had not appeared yet (6).
Under the oppressive czarist regime, before the Bolshevik Revolution giving rights to all, including the fairer sex, clandestine universities emerged along with various underground resistance movements preaching the end of oppression. They demanded more equality like across the European Continent: Poland, Germany, Austro-Hungary, France and others. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) by Mary Wollstonecraft still was a source of inspiration for the European feminist movement (6, 12).
In 1867 the daughter of two teachers, née Maria Skłodowska, enrolled in one of those colleges pursuing her dream of Enlightenment. She was inspired, in particular, by her father’s scientific stance in mathematics and physics: Maria had received “some scientific training from her father” (8). She studied at the so-called Warsaw's Uniwersytet Latający (‘Flying University’), which was illegal, exposing herself to the risk of persecution by the authorities for both teachers and students. This is how she started, not knowing yet what her contribution to scientific progress and its consequences would be.
Finally, Skłodowska followed her sister, who was based in Paris, to study at the academically renowned Sorbonne University founded in the 13th century as a faculty of theology excelling in a long and glorious tradition of scholarly disputes (débattre en Sorbonne, 11), in other words, scientific and philosophical debate. Skłodowska obtained “two degrees – one in maths and one in physics, studying by day and tutoring by night to pay for her education” (8).
It was at La Sorbonne that Maria Skłodowska started becoming Marie Curie, a truly global brand. Her name turned into a synonym for a woman in science, representing the old alchemy tradition of extracting secret knowledge of what nature gives us, and the phenomenon of le savant fou.
She also became a good illustration of what her feminist predecessor Wollstonecraft formulated: “My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to sit and talk alone” (12).
However, Skłodowska would have probably never succeeded on her own, without the support of her soulmate, Pierre Curie, with whom she shared her entire life, both professional and private. The tandem became as symbolic as the other famous couple: Mary Shelley and her poet husband (1). A good example of cross-border love and solidarity, it was the encounter of fine minds but also a romantic love story of a couple of scientists whose lives were so intertwined. Monsieur Curie, “a tutor at the School of Physics and Chemistry” (8) married Maria Skłodowska in 1895.
Their symbiotic collaboration at the lab extracting new elements from mysterious black powder has become truly iconic worldwide. As research partners, and somewhat partners-in-crime, as highlighted in Marjane Satrapi’s film Radioactive (2019), the Curies explored the unseen world (10): the invisible light of uranium rays – a new scientific phenomenon which had recently been discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel. The scientists became convinced that they found a new, unknown element. They shared that chemistry as well as the Nobel Prize in 1911. They won together, assisting each other, for scientific partnership, in Stockholm.
Skłodowska ”rose from humble beginnings to become the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person – and only woman – to win it twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences,” physics and chemistry (8) in a predominantly male Academia. In 1903, Marie and Pierre Curie were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics, jointly with Henri Becquerel. Observations of elements, discovery of radioactivity, pieces of scientific equipment, microscope, results of element measurings, unstable atoms: that was the life at the Lab (10).
Maria’s discovery of the elements polonium and radium (PO, RA) and her research on radioactivity turned out both beneficial and disastrous.
Maria contributed not only to global science but also to women’s legal rights and the power of representation. Well-known, like Mary Shelley, she struggled with identity issues and preferred “to keep the Polish part of her name, rather than simply take her husband’s” (8). The new element the Curies extracted was named polonium, after Poland’s denomination in Latin. She also preached the Polish superiority over Paris when confronted with dislikes, xenophobia, misogyny and lack of respect at the male-dominated French Academia, like Marija Gimbutas. Just like Copernicus’s theory of the 16th century, which placed the Sun rather than Earth at its centre, Curie’s explorations “had important consequences for later thinkers of the Scientific Revolution” (4). At the same time, Marjane Satrapi’s biopic with the English actress Rosamund Pike, representing the female scientist, is also clearly a love letter to Paris and its intellectual elite.
However, similar to Coco Chanel, Marie was struck by a personal tragedy when in 1906 Monsieur Curie had a street accident and got killed by a horse and a car. Like Chanel, Curie had to go through mourning and loss, as well as doubt and inner struggle, before establishing her name and her place in the academic world as well as worldwide frontpages of newspapers. Later on, she took her husband’s place “as Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences, the first time a woman had held this position” (8) thanks to her “indomitable spirit” (8). In 1914, she rose to the Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris. She was also promoted to Professorship at the Sorbonne to replace Pierre, to develop a lab of her own, and continue her work on particles. She became the first female Professor at the Sorbonne, as Marjane Satrapi brilliantly depicts it in her film: “I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves” (12), she famously said.
Then World War I broke out. To assist in the War, Marie developed mobile X-ray units that could be used to diagnose injuries. She also founded the Red Cross Radiological Service in charge of medical supplies and vehicles funded by wealthy Parisians’ donations. She drove the “petites curies” (8, 10) with her daughter Irène to help the wounded in the battlefield and at the hospital: a sort of ambulance and salvation to so many soldiers on the battlefield, as well as patients in the hospital halls waiting to find out about vital diagnoses. Skłodowska-Curie also directed research on cancer treatment using neoplasm to save lives.
While Marie often faced lack of respect in French academic circles, as we can see in Radioactive (2019), Joliot-Curie became actively involved in promoting women's education, serving on the Comité National de l'Union des Femmes Françaises and the World Peace Council.
Finally, the late Sklodowska-Curie received a significant number of prizes for her scientific achievements: 'Argenteuil (1923) and Edinburgh University’s Cameron Prize (1931). Unassuming and dignified, Marie Curie is admired and respected by scientists throughout the world. Not only did Curie’s work make an immense contribution to human knowledge, but her pioneering life also advanced the role of women in science and society. The prominent scientist died in a French sanatorium in 1934 due to illness attributed to radiation exposure during the course of her scientific research as well as during her work at field hospitals during World War I: it was discovered that too much radiation made people sick.
Skłodowska turned her modest background and its prohibitions into a life of scientific research inspired by a multimillenial tradition of good old witchcraft. She was also lucky to find love in an egalitarian marriage based on support and solidarity.
In popular culture, Curie’s iconic thoughtful look was popularised by the rebellious Swedish pop group Army of Lovers: The Ballad of Marie Curie, which tell the story of the free-spirited Curies’ adventures in a somewhat humourous way (2).
Skłodowska-Curie’s disobedient stance was also brilliantly represented in cinematography: Radioactive (2019) enlightens us, in particular, on the dangers of nuclear weapons using documentary images of the weapons of mass destruction used in August 1945: these weapons were, actually, as a result of Curies’ discovery and invention, based on the extraction of black powder giving birth to “her children, radium and polonium” (2).
Was she ever in doubt about the consequences of her actions? What was making her tick? Did she happen to be aware of the responsibility every scientist and savant fou must remember while working in a lab? In answer, perhaps, she said, ”Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less” (8). However, unveiling the secrets of nature, in particular, the research on uranium, a powerful source of energy, and, eventually, an atomic bomb, the complications of radiation all had the potential to be harmful. The Curies’ research work involved health risks that they, actually, never understood themselves. As always, scientific discovery can usually be both helpful and harmful.
Thanks to her profound faith in scientific progress and humanity, Marie Curie’s legacy changed science forever: her parcours was ambiguous, she has been through mourning, loss and internal struggle herself, from which there is no cure per se.
However, Curie who passed away in 1934 in Paris because of exposure to radiation, remains an iconic image of outstanding women and their endeavors along with Joan of Arc, Mary Wollstonecraft, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Margareth Thatcher, Marija Gimbutas with their creative forces and a strong voices of their own.
List of Cited Works:
1. Al-Mansour, Haifaa. Mary Shelley. 2017. Film.
2. Army of Lovers. The Ballad of Marie Curie. 1993. Song
3. Besson, Luc. Joan of Arc. 1999. Film.
5. Capote, Truman. Other Voices, Other Rooms. 1948.
6. Gavron, Sarah. Suffragette. 2015. Film.
7. Hemingaway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. 1929.
8. Maria Skłodowska-Curie | Europeana https://share.google/bcbOdGgGnE2TsNy2x
9. Remarque, Erich Maria. All Quiet On Western Front. 1928.
10. Satrapi, Marjane. Radioactive. 2019. Film.
12. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. London: J. Johnson, 1792