[BOOK REVIEW] Dava Sobel - The Elements of Marie Curie 

Big thanks to @groveatlantic and @netgalley for an eARC of this book!

This book begins with a truth:

“Even now, nearly a century after her d*ath, Marie Curie remains the only female scientist whom most people can name”.

Marie Curie was a trailblazer for women in science. She has indebted the world in so many aspects that calling her one of the greatest scientists of all time would be an understatement.

While I was familiar with Marie Curie there were so many aspects of her life I knew nothing about. Thankfully, Dava Sobel takes us a on a journey of her life. This is my second book by this author, the first being The Glass Universe, in which she also gave voice to women in science and which I also kindly recommend.

But back to this book. We follow Marie Curie from her childhood in Poland all the way to Paris where she went to study because in Poland women were banned from attending University. It’s incredible how she achieved such incredible things so fast. It was a great time for great discoveries, and nearly every person mentioned in this book is a name I easily recognized. The central theme of this book is Madame Curie’s devotion to the science she was doing. She spent every free moment in the lab, extracting and describing new elements, risking her own life to research a new field in physics, the one of radioactivity. When WW1 started, she didn’t waste her time and invented mobile X-ray units to help wounded soldiers.

Also, this book tells not only about Madame Curie but also the women who came through her lab, who were pioneers in science and research. She didn’t make differences between s*xes, she gave all the women the chance to work in science, knowing what it’s like to be discredited simply for being a woman.

This is very good and insightful book, it doesn’t go too hard on science so it’s easy to follow and it’s a fascinating insight into the world of Madame Curie and the birth of new science. I recommend!

This biography of the famous scientist also highlights the many women who would work in her Paris labs and their further careers in science. The author had a huge scope of material to incorporate - Curie's personal and professional lives, the state of science at the time, the danger of radioactive materials, the accomplishments and lives of so many other female scientists, and the X-Ray work and training during World War I. A fascinating and inspiring book.

If, like me, Marie Curie and her legacy fascinates you, look no further! After reading Half Life by Jillian Cantor last year, I have been searching for a non-fiction book about Marie Curie that is fun and engaging to read. I'm thrilled to share that this book delivered! Marie Curie lived a fascinating life, and she touched the lives of many female scientists during her career. I really enjoyed learning more about her and her proteges in this very well-researched book! Highly recommend!

Marie Curie (1867-1934) is arguably one of, if not the, best known women in science. She is the only person to have won a Nobel Prize in two different fields (physics in 1903 with her husband Pierre and chemistry in 1911 by herself). Her husband and collaborator died in a Paris street accident in 1906, leaving her with two young daughters. She took his place as professor of physics at the Sorbonne, devotedly raised her children, drove a vehicle she outfitted with x-ray equipment to the front lines of World War I, and inspired generations of women to pursue scientific careers.

The acclaimed Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestselling author, Dava Sobel approaches her biography of Marie Curie through this last, lesser-known aspect of her life and career. With chapters titled with the names of female proteges as well as elements or isotopes discovered, Sobel astutely weaves a narrative of Curie’s remarkable discoveries and fame alongside the women who became her legacy – from Norway’s Ellen Gleditsch, who determined the half-life of radium, and France’s Marguerite Perry, who discovered the element francium, to Curie’s own daughter Irene, who won the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Sobel does a good job explaining Curie’s scientific achievements to a non-scientific audience. She also describes the cognitive dissonance that all “radioactivists” lived with, because far from being an unmixed good, radioactivity (even during Curie’s lifetime) became recognized as a dangerous, potentially lethal entity. Curie herself suffered from various radiation-induced illnesses (numb fingers, kidney ailments) and eventually succumbed to aplastic pernicious anemia.

While the author catalogues the many lives that Curie helped to transform, it is disappointing – and a missed opportunity – that Sobel doesn’t probe Curie’s working relationships with her students and assistants. This makes each scientist’s biographical chapter feel oddly isolated from the others. In part, this is likely due to Curie’s many absences from the laboratory due to illness brought on by prolonged radiation exposure. Nevertheless, Curie’s role in the women’s lives remains largely opaque. This feels like a missed opportunity to examine how a woman-led laboratory nurtured new talent.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Atlantic Monthly Press for the ARC in exchange for this review.

Dava Sobel's The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science offers another portrait of one of the most iconic figures in the history of science. Marie Curie, the only woman to win Nobel Prizes in two different scientific fields—Physics and Chemistry—famously displayed persistence and resilience in the face of significant societal and scientific challenges. Sobel's inclusion of Curie's work during World War I, where she equipped a van with X-ray equipment to assist soldiers on the front lines, adds depth to Curie's character, showcasing her dedication to using science for humanitarian purposes.

However, the book falls short in several key areas. One notable issue is the absence of Polish diacritics when referring to Polish names, including Maria Skłodowska's own name, which detracts from an authentic portrayal of her heritage. Additionally, while Sobel touches on the theoretical implications of Curie's discoveries, the treatment of these aspects feels somewhat superficial. Moreover, despite the promise of the book's title, it does not significantly address the enduring issue that Marie Curie remains the most recognizable female scientist even a century after her death. This is a missed opportunity to delve deeper into why other women scientists have not achieved the same level of recognition and what can be done to change that narrative.

Overall, The Elements of Marie Curie is an engaging and informative read, particularly for those new to Curie's story or interested in the history of women in science. However, readers looking for a more in-depth exploration of the scientific theories behind Curie's work or a more critical analysis of her legacy may want to seek out another biography.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

This was a fascinating and easy-to-read biography. Like the other non-fiction works by Dava Sobel that I have read, this book is understandable to the layperson but still includes enough scientific detail to keep you intrigued and curious. The Curies were an amazing couple and left an amazing everlasting legacy and two very successful daughters. I highly recommend.

This is a well written and interesting book. Coupled with noting Marie Curie’s life and accomplishments, a good majority of the book focuses on her science and its explanations. It does a good job of explaining these science of these discoveries. It also mentions or showcases the many, many scientists who were a part of progressing the research of radioactivity, a term which she and her husband coined, at the time. It’s amazing what she accomplished and the Nobel prizes she won while being a mother, housekeeper, cook, teacher, and researcher. Thank you NetGalley and Atlantic Monthly Press for giving me the opportunity to read this galley.

Starting with her displacement from diminishing homeland of Poland to her travels to France and tracing all the revolutionary “firsts” she was able to accomplish, The Elements of Marie Curie is a wonderful history of one of the most incredible figures in scientific history. Still only one of the few female scientists most can came and a twice Noble laureate, what Curie achieved in her life was immense. From the first inklings of a curiously tuned mind to her discovery of an entire facet of chemistry yet to be discovered to her fatal diminishing by what she spent most of her time with - the history of Curie becomes both a history of passionate scientific zeal as well as just being that of radioactivity. Not only did she repeatedly stand out as the only dress among hoards of suits, but under her precise tutelage, many many more girls were able to step into science’s room, sit at the table barred for them till now, and create many more “firsts” in their own countries. Sobel, thus, does a wonderful job marrying Curies’ own particular history with all the lives they changed for the better. Through quoting letters, recorded conversations, biographies from her own daughters as well as photographic records, the author masterfully weaves a worthy tapestry of an extraordinary life.

With chapters entitled with names of the girls as well as the elements or isotopes discovered, I really enjoyed the way in which Sobel arranged this work. Even though we were acquainted with so many names by the halfway point - so many lives had Curie helped transform - that one would expect to get muddled, but Sobel successfully manages to keep them quite distinctive by assigning them particular characteristics that made them easier to identify. Even still, none of them really felt like caricatures and even with the very brief encounters with some of them, the author managed to show us the humanity and the sense of wonder that propelled these girls forward.

The only gripe I had with the work - and this is quite superficial - was the sheer amount of names of institutes that Sobel repeats quite frequently throughout. Don’t get me wrong, of course I understand that those institutions play as much a part in the history but I wish it wasn’t peppered throughout so much - especially since most of them are in French - that they hindered an otherwise smooth reading process. I would be totally immersed in a great narrative that I was eagerly following only to be bumped up and down by having to pause to digest the names of the institutes. There were some chapters where this was a bigger issue than others, but like I said, it was just a shallow gripe that hampered my overall enjoyment just a little bit.

To quote Eve Curie in her biography of her mother. “There are, in the life of Marie Curie, so many great moments that one is tempted to tell her story as a legend.”, and I agree. It seems impossible to not mythologize such a figure but Sobel again does a great job of combining her admiration with an acknowledgement of her profoundly simple humanity. Moreover, she returns again and again to Marie and Pierre’s wishes against celebration and adoration - in their eyes they were simply doing what they must. Despite being the first woman to enter so many esteemed rooms of science, Marie was never “seeking uniqueness”, Sobel says. She continuously admitted girls to her laboratory, making it a haven for women who were otherwise turned away from places like Harvard and Yale. Along with acquainting us with the women and their brief histories, I also loved how Sobel checked in on them from time to time, even if they left Curies’ lab or science entirely, looking into how they spend their lives after Curie.

To us now, it seems obvious that the highly disastrous and dangerous radium is not something to be intimate with as much as the Curies were. Fingers numbed and roughened, Marie surely realized the effects her beloved discovery was having on her but never went beyond a simple getaway to get some fresh air as the cure. Sobel describes thus the “cognitive dissonance” in which all radio-activists lived. Though they were actively learning about and experiencing the destructive, decaying effects of radio-active elements, the allure of discovery always kept them coming back.

All in all, this biography - brief but all encompassing - did a masterful job of portraying all that her life was both within and outside science’ realms. Pierre too is ever-present in the first half before his unfortunate demise, and is given all the credit due for his immense support for his wife and his repeated clarifications on the part she played when the committees and tables of men would have preferred to assign her only the assistant’s role. Thus her immense loss, though insurmountable, stoked the fire for her to assume both their roles and live the life of innovation and discovery they dreamed of. To Curie, whose only definition of scientific enquiry was to simply follow where one curiosities led and to figure out how Nature worked, science became the means through which she loved and lived. This was a wonderfully told narrative, if a little clunky at times, but that too can be forgiven for what Sobel was able to achieve. Highly recommend.

Dava Sobel, a renowned science writer, offers a compelling portrait of Marie Curie in "The Elements of Marie Curie". This book aims to encapsulate not only Curie's scientific achievements but also her personal struggles and triumphs. As someone coming from a more theoretical background in physics, my review will focus on the accuracy of the scientific content, the depth of analysis, and the broader contextual understanding Sobel provides of Curie's work and its impact on science.

Sobel excels in presenting the scientific achievements of Marie Curie with commendable accuracy. The descriptions of Curie's discovery of polonium and radium are detailed yet accessible, making complex scientific concepts understandable to a broad audience. However, for a reader like me, the book might seem to lack the deeper mathematical and theoretical explorations that underpin Curie’s discoveries.

Curie's pioneering work in radioactivity is pivotal in the field of physics, leading to significant advancements in quantum theory and nuclear physics. Sobel touches on these connections but does not delve into the intricate theoretical frameworks that would interest a more specialised reader. For instance, the mathematical formulations of radioactive decay laws and their implications for quantum mechanics are only briefly mentioned.

One of the book's strengths lies in its contextual analysis of Curie's work within the broader scientific community of her time. Sobel effectively portrays the challenges Curie faced as a woman in a male-dominated field, highlighting her perseverance and resilience. The narrative provides a balanced view of her professional and personal life, illustrating how her discoveries were both a product of her genius and her extraordinary determination.

The book also discusses the historical context of Curie's research, including her collaboration with her husband, Pierre Curie, and the subsequent solo endeavors following his untimely death. This contextual background is essential for understanding the full impact of Curie’s work and the obstacles she overcame.

Sobel's writing is engaging and accessible, making the book suitable for both general readers and those with a scientific background. Her ability to humanise Curie, portraying her as a multi-dimensional figure rather than a distant scientific icon, is particularly effective. This approach makes the book an inspiring read, although it may sacrifice some depth in the scientific discussions.

From a critical standpoint, the book could benefit from a more rigorous exploration of the theoretical implications of Curie's discoveries. A deeper dive into the theoretical models and their subsequent influence on later scientific developments would provide more substantial content for readers well-versed in physics. Additionally, a more thorough examination of how Curie’s work laid the groundwork for future breakthroughs in quantum mechanics and nuclear physics would enhance the book's appeal to a specialised audience.