Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science
By (Author) Dava Sobel
HarperCollins Publishers
Fourth Estate Ltd
16th October 2024
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
Atomic and molecular physics
Nuclear medicine
Medical imaging: radiology
540.92
Paperback
336
Width 153mm, Height 234mm, Spine 28mm
440g
A new biography from the acclaimed and bestselling author of Longitude and Galileos Daughter, chronicling the life and work of the most famous woman in the history science, and the untold story of the young women who trained in her laboratory.
For decades Marie Curie was the only woman in the room at international scientific gatherings, and despite constant illness she travelled far and wide to share the secrets of radioactivity, a term she coined. She is still the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields.
Her ingenuity extended far beyond the laboratory walls; grieving the death of her husband, Pierre, she took his place as professor of physics at the Sorbonne, devotedly raised two daughters, drove a van she outfitted with x-ray equipment to the front lines of World War I; befriended Albert Einstein and inspired generations of young women to pursue science as a way of life.
Approaching Marie Curie from a unique angle, Sobel navigates her remarkable discoveries and fame alongside the women who became her legacy from Norways Ellen Gleditsch and Frances Marguerite Perry, who discovered the element francium, to her own daughter, Irene, a Nobel Prize winner in her own right. Elements of Marie Curie illuminates the trailblazing life and enduring influence of one of the most consequential figures of our time.
Dava Sobel is the author of the international bestseller, Longitude, the bestselling Pulitzer Prize finalist Galileo's Daughter, The Planets, A More Perfect Heaven, And the Sun Stood Still, and The Glass Universe, and co-author of The Illustrated Longitude. She is the recipient of the Individual Public Service Award from the National Science Board, the Bradford Washburn Award, the Kumpke-Roberts Award from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other honors. A former New York Times science reporter and current editor of the "Meter" poetry column in Scientific American, she lives on Long Island.