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Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout
It Books
January 2011
On Sale: December 21, 2010
288 pages
ISBN: 0061351326
EAN: 9780061351327
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
In 1891, 24-year-old Marie Sklodowska moved from Warsaw to
Paris, where she found work in the laboratory of Pierre
Curie, a scientist engaged in research on heat and
magnetism. They fell in love. They took their honeymoon on
bicycles. They expanded the periodic table, discovering two
new elements with startling properties, radium and polonium.
They recognized radioactivity as an atomic property,
heralding the dawn of a new scientific era. They won the
Nobel Prize. Newspapers mythologized the couple's romance,
beginning articles on the Curies with "Once upon a time . .
. " Then, in 1906, Pierre was killed in a freak accident.
Marie continued their work alone. She won a second Nobel
Prize in 1911, and fell in love again, this time with the
married physicist Paul Langevin. Scandal ensued. Duels were
fought. In the century since the Curies began their work, we've
struggled with nuclear weapons proliferation, debated the
role of radiation in medical treatment, and pondered nuclear
energy as a solution to climate change. In Radioactive,
Lauren Redniss links these contentious questions to a love
story in 19th Century Paris. Radioactive draws on Redniss's original reporting in Asia,
Europe and the United States, her interviews with
scientists, engineers, weapons specialists, atomic bomb
survivors, and Marie and Pierre Curie's own granddaughter. Whether young or old, scientific novice or expert, no one
will fail to be moved by Lauren Redniss's eerie and wondrous
evocation of one of history's most intriguing figures.
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