Текст книги "The Lost Key"

Автор книги: Catherine Coulter

Соавторы: J. T. Ellison
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I have frequently been asked how I could reconcile family life with the scientific career. Well, it has not been easy.

MARIE CURIE

Marie Curie was an intensely private and brilliant woman, winner of two Nobel Prizes, in 1902 and 1911 (in Physics and Chemistry), who discovered both radium and polonium and developed the theory of radioactivity. Her husband and collaborator, Pierre, an extraordinary physicist himself, helped to make sure she got the credit she deserved for her discoveries. She gave birth to a future Nobel Prize winner as well.

Marie Curie was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1867, studied in Paris, barely surviving on very little money, met a professor at the Sorbonne who was a confirmed bachelor, and together they dazzled the world. She died of aplastic anemia, brought on by her exposure to radiation in 1934.

Curie also worked on the front lines in World War I to help bring the benefit of X-rays to the wounded. She was one of the first modern “open-source” scientists, who didn’t trademark her discoveries because she believed knowledge should be shared. And to top it off: she was the first woman professor at the Sorbonne.

A derivative of one of Curie’s discoveries, polonium-210, is famously used for political assassinations. It is a sure and painful death. And this is where truth and fiction diverge. Curie never created any sort of weaponized polonium, but for the sake of the story, she does. When she realizes the enormity of its destructive power, she stops work immediately and hides it away where no one will ever find it. Nor was she a member of the Highest Order, since, alas, the Order did not exist.

The actual Marie Curie was far more impressive. She was an incredible scientist, an incredible human being.

Marie Curie is, of all celebrated beings, the only one whom fame has not corrupted.

ALBERT EINSTEIN