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

by Dava Sobel

Marie’s early estimate of a 1 percent polonium content in pitchblende had been wildly optimistic. Since sizable lumps of pitchblende had yielded only barely discernible traces of the desired end products, the proportion by weight veered toward one-thousandth or even one-hundred-thousandth of one percent. And so, instead of a mere hundred grams of pitchblende, they now ordered one hundred kilograms (about 220 pounds) from the mine in Bohemia and paid for it with Marie’s prize money. Clearly their operations would no longer fit into the tiny lab space on the ground floor of the industrial school. Once again the accommodating director, Paul Schützenberger, found room for Marie’s activities. Across the courtyard from the school stood an old wooden shed that had once served as an anatomy theater for medical students. A cast-iron stove, a blackboard, and a few worn pine tables were the only furnishings left in the place, which looked more like a hangar than a laboratory. It had an asphalt floor and a glass roof that leaked. 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.