This was one of my discovery. She was actually asked by the Nobel Academy to not come to accept the Nobel Prize because it would embarrass the king. Uh And she wrote back, I have always believed that my the Nobel Prize was being given from my scientific work, and my private life had nothing to do with it. And
she went and accepted the Nobel Prize. That was author Susan Quinn talking about Marie Curie, the first person ever to be honored with two Nobel Prizes, one for physics in h three and the second one for chemistry in nineteen eleven. I'm a land Ververe and this is Seneca's one women to hear. We are bringing you one hundred of the world's most inspiring and history making women you need to hear. Marie Cury is one of the most
famous scientists in history. As has been noted, she discovered polonium and radium, champion the use of radiation in medicine, and fundamentally changed our understanding of radio activity. To get a picture of who Marie Cury really was, we talked to Susan Quinn, author of the award winning biography Marie Curie, A Life listen and learn why Marie Cury is one of Seneca's one women to hear. I'm here today with Susan Quinn, renowned author, and we're going to be talking
about the great woman scientist, Marie Cury. Welcome, Susan, Thank you glad to be here. Well, you certainly had a worthy subject in your book, Marie Cury a life. Let's talk about her a little bit. How is she best remembered and what were her greatest contributions to science. I think she's best remembered as a courageous woman scientist at a time when that was a very difficult role to have in life, and surmounted great obstacles um in her life.
I certainly think her greatest contribution to science was her discovery of radio activity. Uh. Her discoveries of the um of the elements, first polonium she named her first discovery of an element polonium after her native poland and second
radium are often cited as her great discoveries. But what was even more important than those discoveries of elements and others later on was the underlying discovery that the elements are in a constant state of transformation and that radio activity is the reason and others went on then to really understand the nature structure of the atom and of the nucleus, and that came out of her discoveries which
she shares really importantly with Pierre Cury, her husband and partner. So, in writing your award winning biography, what was some of the most inspiring and surprising things you learned about her? I came to this biography having read her daughter Eve Curie's biography Madame Curie, which I've since learned was read by many many young women. I was very inspired by
that book. I actually quoted in my high school graduation speech. Uh. But having been out in the world and writing about women, UM, I began to suspect that that biography was really an only partial version of her of her life, and that turned out to be very much true. UM. My great discovery in the process of working on this book was that her life did not end when Pierre Cury was tragically killed. He was run over by a horse and
cart in streets of Paris. I died in nineteen o six, not long only a few years after he and Mari Cury won the Nobel Prize or first Nobel Prize. She one another later. So he died in n six and um Eve Curious book portrays that as kind of the end of her romantic life, and in some ways that the film based on the book made it kind of the end of her life. But she's often portrayed as
kind of a tragic grieving widow from then on. But she lived on for a lot of years until nineteen thirty four, and not long after Pierre Dodge, she formed a relationship with his best friend, Pierre Longeva um At Paul Langeva and Paul Lageman was an unhappily married man who was very very conflicted and and and shared a lot of that lury, and she was this grieving widow and they fell in love and they had a love
affair which became a great scandal in France. And one of the things I discovered and the course of working on the book, was that Curie had written her book quickly, and a large part because she wanted to tell the story her way, and she wanted to not tell that story. But I discovered that story to be really evidence of
Mari Cury's great courage. And it became this huge scandal because they were love letters discovered by your Paul launch Abouts wife and all the scandal sheets then attacked Marie Curie um as a foreign woman and a woman who was destroying a French household. All kinds of xenophobic attitudes and hostile attitudes towards her came out largely, I feel, and I argue in my book because she was this
prominent and successful woman. Um. You know, it was not shocking at all for French men to have a love affair, but for her to have a love affair was shocking. And she won a second Nobel Prize in nineteen eleven and was that was exactly at the time of this great scandal, and she was actually this was one of
my discovery. She was actually asked by the Swedish had by the Nobel Academy to not come to accept the Nobel Prize because it would embarrass the being uh and she wrote back, I have always believed that my the Nobel Prize was being given from my scientific work and my private life had nothing to do with it. And she went and accepted the Nobel Prize. Her sister came from Poland to support her. But it was a very difficult experience and traumatic experience for her, and she was
unwell afterwards for a year. So that story became a very powerful story for me, and one that I felt was not scandalous or shocking, but but really evidence of her her courage and one of the numerous times she had to overcome hostility um of the established uh scientists in France towards a successful woman. She also applied to become a member of the French Academy a Science and was rejected. Uh. Never. This is a woman who, you know,
want two Nobel Prizes. So she um very brave woman and tremendously strong, and she had this rich, full life and that was part of it. It's just fascinating to listen to you describe what she was up against. And it's not the first time, of course, so that we know about double standards that affect women so differently from men. So she's in the science field that in and of itself was not the most obvious place for a woman
to get her start in a profession. You mentioned that she had to overcome many obstacles, including the obstacles later in life, But what did she have to overcome to get into science in the first place. I think a lot she was Polish. Grew up in Warsaw in a family of teachers. They were really uh. They came from the gentry, but they had they were impoverished because of the oppressive rule of Russians Are. So she grew up under uh, the rule of the czars, which forbid young
people in school from speaking their native language Polish. They had to do that in secret. Um. She grew up in a passionately patriotic, a family that was very much they're very much Polish matriots, who recited Polish poetry at home, and I had this other public life that they had to maintain. So she learned about resisting authority early on. She and her best friend used to on their way to school every day, they used to pass a monument to the Russians are and they would spit on it.
So she she had, you know, this kind of spirit. She was youngest in the family. They were all interested in science, and their father taught science, and or she would say that they would go to look at the sunset and he would explain to them what caused the sunset. You know, he's always teaching. So she had this background of intellectual family and curiosity, and she was a great student from early on, but they had no money. And secondly, there was no place to go to university in Poland
for women. Um, so the only options were either to go to Russia or to go to Paris. And many many Poles went to Paris, but not that many women. But however, her sister Brown went to Paris and they they formed a pack. Brona went first, and while she was studying and she became a doctor, Marian stayed behind in Poland and worked as a governess under really difficult
circumstances out in the country. Free Um isolated of and endured that for a number of years, saved her money, and then when Bronia had finished um, she supported Brillian. When Bronie was finished, Maria went off to Paris the study. So she already had to overcome being a foreigner and m learning science and math and everything that she learned in a second language, although she was a wonderful linguist um. And then of course she had to overcome uh the
attitudes all around her about about women. And she she was one of the few, one of the few women at the Sorbun studying at the Sorbun, and she graduated at the top of her class and in physics one year and then the next year in mathematics, and that
was around the time that she met Pierre. She had the good luck of meeting a very supportive and loving man who helped out with taking care of children and all the concerns of the household and his of course, his death was was just a devastating blow that she had to overcome also, um and there was a period when she wrote her journal that she didn't want to go on living because she was so the rest So
there was a lot, a lot to overcome. And then I think one of the one of the reasons that she became very she became very involved in the effort during World War One. She really caught up the idea in fact of going to the front during World War
One with X ray bobiles. They were essentially cars fitted out with X ray equipment, which was a very new, very new thing, and she and a team of people she trained went out in these X raymobiles and they were able then to X ray soldiers right close to the front and very quickly, and it saved many lives. And I think that, uh, the motivation for that was of course her patriotism her caring and she considered herself
not just Polish but French. But I also think it was a way of sort of rehabilitating herself and her her reputation after this scandal of the laugen Affre, so once again overcoming, amazingly overcoming up great obstacles. And she had two children, two girls that she raised, both of whom grew up into amazing adults. And of course her daughter Garin became a scientist and herself won the Nobel Prize with her husband there Julio, and then the other
daughter wrote the book Madame Curie. But she was also resist since she was a concert pianist, an amazing woman who lived well past so remarkable life in just a lot of ways. Yeah. And the more the more that you share that with us, the more remarkable she is, obviously, from what I guess most of us know about her, which aren't these kinds of of details, clearly very resilient as well. When she met Pierre, had she intended at that point to go back and live in Poland or
was she comfortable staying in France. Oh, she very much intended to go back to Poland, and she would, she writes to one of her friends, her Polish women friends, you know that she she feels terrible about not going back. Her her sister Brauna went back and found it this sanate at TV Sana territorium Um, and that that was really I think grew out of the fact that they lost their mother to tuberculosis and a sister when they
were young. I had another loss in her life. So anyway, she was very committed to phil to the Polish cause and wanted to go back as a scientist to Poland. And then, uh, she said in this letter, but then I met him and we became attached to each other and we couldn't live without each other. So what was I to do? It feels like it was with a genuine conflict for her, But because of Pierre, she stayed in the front. Seneca has one hundred women to hear
will be back after this short break. And then you had mentioned her resisting authority as a child, growing up in a very Polish nationalistic household at a time when Poland was part of the Russian Empire under disourist authority, she belonged to a revolutionary group as a student. What did that revolutionary group do? And perhaps what did that say about her, her own views, her own determination. It
was came naturally in this family. I mean, her mother had been a teacher in a school, a private school that she attended, and they had two curricula. One was for the every day and then otherwise for the day the Russian inspectors came and on that day, you know, no Polish was spoken and no Polish history was dealt with, But on the other days it was. So it did come naturally. She as a because there was no higher
education for women in Poland. She was part of something called a Flying University, which was an organization of women who met and studied together secretly. I'd say her her sympathies were definitely with Polish nationalism. Her kind of focus was definitely on on finding a way to to get education for herself and to contribute through that that way. Let's go forward a little bit to the time when she has to make her way without her husband after his death, when he was killed in the road accident
that you mentioned. She is able to assume the position he had as professor of general physics at the University of Paris. She became the first woman, I understand, to hold this position. What was she like in that role? What was she like as a leader? How was that transition for her? She hated all the public acclaim and attention and fuss. She always did, and there was something and she suffered miserably from that because after they won the Nobel Prize together um in nineteen o three, she
and Pierre they became a kind of an item. This was you know, in some ways this was the positive side of a public acclaim. Later she got the negative side, um. And it it helped them, um to get a lab um, but it also interfered with their work because everybody wanted to interview everybody in the family, including Pierre complained at one point they even want to interview our cat. And they both hated it, hated it. So But then she was, yeah, the first woman to teach at the sore Bun and
it was also a big publicity event. You know, people came to sit in at the balcony and all their uh and uh and to watch this event. As a teacher, I think she was. I think she was probably very down to earth and matter of fact um, and she
would have been very well prepared um and uh. There was one I really don't know about exactly what her style was in the classroom, but I know that she she had actually for a little while she and some of her scent as friends took their children out of regular school and taught them, And she was very good at at teaching young children with um hands on experiments. You had mentioned that her life went on in many ways. She achieved even greater distinction in some ways, got a
second Nobel prize after her husband's death. But it must have been hard for her to make that transition from working so closely with him, being a co researcher with him, and then moving into working alone. Oh, it was very hard, she um. After he died, she kept a diary which was really very important. Disc It had been there, but no one else had kind of used it as I
did in my biography. But she wrote to in her diary as though he were still alive, and she addressed him in these a long series of letters, and she described the lab and coming back to the lab and bringing some flowers from the country where they've been together, and writing that the flowers are alive my new art, and how is that possible? So her her grief was was immense, Um but her way of dealing with grief was to go to work, and she was a very
hard worker. And her whole isolation of radium in the beginning and radioactivity evolved reducing this large quantities of pitch blend into a very much much much squalor quantity in order to get this radioactive effect. So sherla grew and her fame grew, and she focused on her work, you know. Um And of course she had the comfort for a while if the affair with Paul Lage vain, but mostly mostly she worked and her children attest to that. Eve my Eve Curie whom my interview talked about her mother's
complete obsession with the lab and with her work. You know, that was that was her life and it was her salvation. Really. So you mentioned her daughter who one especially was so involved in her research efforts with her. What was their relationship like very close, playful loving, But her daughter Urine was also like her, all business. So but we have
some letters that they exchanged. She became, her daughter became really first things she became involved in was the X Ray mobiles and she Urine went on her own in X raymobile to the bell in front and she writes back to her mother, and we have some of those letters back and forth. But they were very involved in
each other's work. And when Iran and her husband Pure Jolio discompanied their great discovery of artificial radio activity, they the first person who come and see their successful experiment was their mother was Marie Curie. Uh. So she was deeply involved in her daughter's work. So she dies really at an early age in some ways, in her sixties, mid sixties, I think, and she died from anemia which had to do with her exposure to radio activity. Is
that the case. Yes, that has been pretty much the conclusion and the one that I went along with in my book. But I've since um talked with some people in the field of of of the radio active exposure and think that that her work actually on the X raymobiles and her exposure to X rays may have been actually more harmful than her work in the laboratory. But the combination of things, there can be no doubt um
contributed to her anemia and her relatively early death. Uh. And evidence of that is that her daughter Rana also died fairly young, and Eve, the daughter who didn't work in the lab, lived over one hundred, So I think, you know, probably had they not been exposed to the radioactive elements that they worked with, both both Marie and her daughter Gren might have lived longer lives. So she was clearly remarkable in so many ways. What lessons can we take from her life? What lessons do you take
from her life? Well, stick up for your self for your work, I would say, I mean, I think that that letter she writes where she says, I've always felt the Nobel Prize was being given for my work and my personal life had nothing to do with it. And U don't allow a kind of double standard let's operated in the past to be inflicted on you as a woman. I think that's hopefully it's less likely to happen now, but it still happens, and we still have different expectations. Uh,
you know. I think was Elizabeth Warren who said recently, you know, just remember, you know, being forceful is not a good look. Well, and it's it's an important lessen to today. So we can learn about her own resilience and stick toudo nous if you will, marching forward to U, which is considerably marching forward from these times women were awarded Nobel Prizes last year in both chemistry and physics. How do you think Madame Curie paved the way for
those accomplishments. Well, I think I'm sure those women would tell you that she was inspiring to them. Um. I think we could also ask why did it take so long?
Indeed at uh you know, there were a number of earlier instances of women who should have been recognized and were I mean Rosalind Franklin comes to mind, and Lisa Mikener uh so, um Um, Marie curious a line, having been part of a relationship really probably is what allowed her to be given the Nobel Prize because the first time, um, there was a possibility and nomination, Pierre was nominated alone, and he wrote to them and said, for reasons of symmetry, do you think it would be good to have to
award the Nobel Prize to Marie and me both? So he stuck up for her, and the following year she was named along with Pierre and I'll Rebecca up so uh So, I think one of the reasons that was possible was because of Pierre, this ally she had and because she was a part of part of partnership with the man that took a long time, too long. I'm very glad these women have both been recognized that there were others who should have been in word. Well, she
certainly was pioneering. And Um, it's good to know, albeit so so late in coming, that we are making at least a modicum of progress in this regard. Um, Susan, this has been a fascinating conversation, just learning so much about Marie Curie. I know, before we close, I do want to ask you about the book. I think it's Eleanor and Hick. You want to tell us about that. Yes, it's called Eleanor and Hick, the love Affair that shaped the First Lady. And it's the story of Eleanor Roosevelt's
romantic relationship with a journalist named Lorena Hiccock. Um, and uh it was. It's a very it's a very um touching story, I would say, of a a romance that lasted maybe four or five years, and then for Louie Hiccock lasted for a lifetime. She and the friendship went on until until Eleanor Roosevelt died. Um, and Lorena Hipcock really did help Eleanor Roosevelt to find a way to be a new kind of first lady UM independently UM, have a relationship with the press, and write about her
life in her column My Day. Those were things that wouldn't have happened without Marina Hincock. So that's that's that book. Well, you keep putting out interesting stories about historical figures. Uh. And we're just so grateful to you to have had this chance to learn more through you about Marie Cury today. Thank you so much, Susan Quinn. Thank you. There's so much more to Marie Cury than I ever knew thanks to Susan Quinn. Here are three things I took from
that conversation. First, Marie Curry was strong enough to stand up to anyone who would hold her back because she was a woman. She was asked not to go to Sweden to accept the Nobel Prize because she had been having an affair and that would aris the king. She refused and picked up her prize in person. Second, her vision went beyond the laboratories where she made her great discoveries. During World War One, she came up with the idea of creating mobile X ray units that could be moved
easily to the front lines, saving time and many lives. Finally, the challenges Marie Curry overcame remained an inspiration for women in science today, and her singularity is a reminder of all the women scientists who didn't gain recognition, women like Rosalind Franklin, a pioneer in DNA research, and physicist Lisa Mightner. Women are finally winning novels in science. But as Susan quinness,
what took so long? Tune in next Thursday to hear about our next featured woman and discover why she's one of Seneca's one hundred Women to Hear. Seneca's one hundred Women to Hear is a collaboration between the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio, with support from founding partner PNG Have a Great Day,