Title: Obsessive Genius (The Inner World of Marie Curie)
Author: Barbara Goldsmith
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company (Great Discoveries Series)
Edition: First Hardcover Edition, 2005
Reviewed by: Kevin J. Longo, Undergraduate
This book needs a different title, for the following reasons: It is not true that you need to be obsessive to be a scientist, and it is not true that you need to be a genius to be a scientist. Just be admitted as you are to UCONN, and with your hard work we will make a scientist out of you. It’s that simple. Perhaps it would be more awkward, but a more encouraging title could have been “determined questioner.” This is not to say that Madame Curie wasn’t smart. But it is the overuse of these terms in popular books that leaves people like you and me feeling that we will not succeed in science, when in fact the opposite is true.
I read this book with the expectation that the author would bring 100 years of Women’s Studies to bear upon the life of this important scientist. The book does contain a modern perspective of Marie’s “inner” (private) life, and the many ways in which, as a woman, she had to work twice as hard for funding (or was denied honors, positions, and fellowships in academies). And the scientific approach used by Marie and illustrated by Goldsmith is much more “collaborative” than that which the legend of Marie Curie has passed down to us. But the book remains quite focused on these two themes, leaving sophisticated feminist analysis to be done by other authors.
If you have not heard of Marie Curie, she is a woman who was born in Russian-occupied Poland and who studied for her doctorate in France. She did unimaginably painstaking chemical separations in an unheated shed, reducing tons of radioactive ore to decigram quantities of radium and polonium. She elucidated the source of natural radioactivity (for which she and husband Pierre received the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics) and discovered and isolated radium and polonium, both of which are difficult to separate from other elements in the same column of the periodic table. She received the 1911 Nobel Prize in chemistry for the latter accomplishments. All of this information is detailed in the concise, personal style in which Goldsmith writes. This is an excellent small book about a fascinating topic.
Title: Madame Curie
Author: Eve Curie (Translated by Vincent Sheehan)
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, 1937
Edition: Pocket Books, 1969 (11th printing)
Reviewed by: Kevin J. Longo, Undergraduate
Written in a Victorian, anecdote and quote-filled style, this book is not easy to follow unless you have previously read a shorter biography such as that by Goldsmith. In vibrant and sweeping terms, Eve Curie (Marie’s daughter) describes the familial and historical tumult which provided the setting and perhaps motivation for Marie’s work in chemistry and physics. Eve also gives quite “literary” accounts of the countryside and of the scientific work itself. It is the type of writing a student would expect to confront when taking a class in 19th century English literature.
Marie’s privations, her close collaboration with Pierre, her ability, and her dedication to the creation of new scientific knowledge are all detailed in this book. It is possible that Eve’s book contains a more accurate picture of the life of Marie just because it is written in the style educated people utilized at the time to communicate ideas to each other. This is the kind of book a junior or senior in high school should read, because it strengthens reading and writing ability, and it is one of the very few Victorian biographies about a subject which is worth the effort. (Please pardon my chemistry bias. Majoring in chemistry at UCONN has that effect.)
Eve’s biography, although a century removed from the present (in terms of style), is the superior book because it contains the important information and does not use the terms “obsessive” and “genius” so freely. Yes, a title is that important. The Goldsmith research did make use of recently-unsealed (and, in fact, radioactive) letters, diaries, and other papers. But the material contribution to Curie scholarship is minimal, beyond the effect a popular book like this may have in motivating more women to make careers of chemistry and physics.
If you are considering science as a major, read Goldsmith’s biography first, and then Eve Curie’s book. A hundred years later, the excitement of scientific research is still open to people who believe that similarly magical things can happen to themselves.