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

by Dava Sobel

On the day of her dissertation defense, June 25, 1903, she appeared at the Sorbonne students’ hall wearing the new black silk-and-wool dress that Bronya, visiting for the occasion, had made her buy. The family—Bronya, Pierre, and old Dr. Curie—sat at the back of the crowded room near a coterie of Sèvres students. Marie had invited these young women to attend, in the hope that their presence would embolden her, and also with the goal of showing them where their own studies might lead. In addition to her mentor Gabriel Lippmann, the three-member faculty jury seated at the oak table included chemist Henri Moisson, who had supplied her with her earliest samples of uranium, and physicist Edmond Bouty. She stood before them, occasionally augmenting her answers to their questions with an equation or diagram sketched on the chalkboard. 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.