The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science

by Dava Sobel

A century would pass before the term “glass ceiling” gained currency as a metaphor for invisible barriers to women’s advancement, but Marie Curie toiled under an actual glass ceiling from 1899 to 1902, the years she spent in that “poor, shabby hangar,” spinning pitchblende into radium.

At length they congratulated Mme. Curie on her historic success as the first woman in France to receive the PhD degree in physics. Automatically she became the first wife—as well as the first mother—to own that achievement. And although most of the audience remained ignorant of the fact, she was also the first person to defend a dissertation while pregnant.

Marie would preside as chef de travaux (chief of operations).

lab manager? lol

“We have verified, Mme. Curie and I, that the beta rays carry with them negative electricity. The alpha rays . . . behave like projectiles one thousand times heavier and charged with positive electricity.” A third type of radioactivity—“gamma rays,” more penetrating than the other two combined—had been discovered in 1900 by French physicist Paul Villard, and shown to be electrically neutral.

“I am one of those who believe with Nobel,” Pierre said in closing, “that mankind will derive more good than harm from the new discoveries.”

Her fully credentialed recognition as first female professor set a precedent, not only in France but in all of Europe as well.

Her husband had called her by the tender nickname B.G., for Beautiful Genius.

What have such words as radioactivity and gamma rays to do with such sweet lips?”

🤮

Element number 91, proto-actinium, had only lately come to light, in 1917, through the work of physicist Lise Meitner and chemist Otto Hahn at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin.

Radium emanation had at last gained an official name, “radon,”

Everyone drank tea out of beakers, with pipettes for stirrers, and ate cakes and cookies served in basins borrowed from the photography darkroom.

God, no wonder they all had cancer

And this is what we have to do: do things so well that no one would dare to say, “this is good work for a woman,” but that everyone will say, “this is good work.”

No public outcry attended this infidelity, or the illegitimate birth.

yeah, pretty gross double standard. but I'm glad for the kid's sake

In another innovation, Paul pressed the several designated speakers to submit their written reports in September, allowing time for these to be translated and distributed to the entire group for reading beforehand.

honestly wish for more elaboration on how Paul basically invented the modern scientific conference?

Irène, only the second female physicist ever admitted to the closed circle of a Solvay Council, encountered a third one there, Lise Meitner.

“Mme. Pierre Curie died at Sancellemoz on July 4, 1934,”

Madame Curie, published in 1938 in French (1939 in English), established Ève’s reputation as a writer.