Using long-sealed Curie family archives, Goldsmith offers a well-rounded view of her subject that makes good dramatic use of the considerable intrigue that surrounded Curie's scientific accomplishments and her private life.
Goldsmith's straightforward biography illuminates both the public Curie, a tireless scientist obsessed with work, and the private one, a woman who suffered bouts of severe depression, was distant from her children and scarred deeply by the accidental death of her scientist husband, Pierre, in 1906. I have listened to numerous books she has narrated.So enduring is the reputation of Marie Curie that more than 100 years after she won her first Nobel Prize, for physics in 1903 (she won a second, for chemistry, in 1911), Curie (1867–1934) is still regarded by most as the pre-eminent woman scientist of the 20th century. Foss is a stage actor and award winning audiobook narrator. Eliza Foss does a good job narrating the book. The book was interesting, but there are more in-depth biographies about Marie Curie available. The book was well written and researched. She died on 3 July 1934 of aplastic pernicious anemia caused by radium radiation. Marie Curie discovered polonium, radium and radioactivity. In 1934 her daughter, Irene, discovered artificial radioactivity and won the Nobel Prize. Her daughter then trained technicians to use it. During WWI, she designed a mobile x-ray machine and then trained her daughter in its use. Curie, a winner of two Nobel Prizes, was refused membership in the French Academy of Science because she was a woman. In 1911 Curie, now a widow, won a second Nobel Prize this time in Chemistry for the discovery of Radium. She was not allowed to give the keynote lecture that the winner traditionally gives because she was a woman. She shared this with her husband Pierre for discovering radioactivity.
She won the Nobel Prize in 1903 for Physics. Instead Goldsmith tells how the scientific establishment detested her. Goldsmith’s weakness is her difficulty in attempting to explain the scientific and theoretical aspects of Marie Curie’s work. Goldsmith covers primarily the hatred, bigotry and prejudice Curie had to overcome rather than on her scientific discoveries.
She married Pierre Curie and shortened her name. Curie was born in Russian occupied Poland and the University of Warsaw did not allow women to attend. Curie was one of only two women to graduate from the Sorbonne with a science degree. Goldsmith, a social historian, has chosen to pursue “the real woman”. There have been so many biographies about Marie Curie (Marya Salomea Sklodowska 1867-1934) that any new book is going to either present new material or look at the information from a different viewpoint.
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