The elements of Marie Curie How the glow of radium lit a path for women in science

Preeminent science writer Sobel (The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars, 2016) brings forward a new array of female scientists in this vital portrait of Marie Curie and the women who joined her in her world-altering Paris laboratory. As Sobel recounts the enormously influential two-time Nobel laureate's many firsts as a female student, professor, lab director, researcher, war hero, and mentor, she meticulously elucidates Curie's tireless experiments, discoveries of polonium and radium, coining of the term "radioactive," and perseverance through the death of her husband, scandal, the raising of two impressive daughters (Irène also won a Nobel), and the debilitating ailments caused by her radiation exposure. Sobel also incorporates--as no one has before--the lives of the women who worked with Curie, her "laboratory daughters," linking each to the element she investigated. Those drawn to Curie's lab from Europe, Canada, and the U.S. by "the allure of the radioelements, the camaraderie of the lab, the chance of making a new discovery" included Ellen Gleditsch, May Sybil Leslie, Eva Ramstedt, Jadwiga Szmidt, Catherine Chamié, and Marguerite Perey. As Sobel vividly tells their tales of valor, diligence, and brilliance, she fuses elements human and scientific to create a dramatic group portrait encompassing passion, struggle, poignancy, and triumph.

This disappointing history from science writer Sobel (The Glass Universe) comes up short in examining how Marie Curie (1867--1934) kick-started dozens of women scientists' careers at her University of Paris laboratory. After her husband's death in 1906, Curie replaced him as laboratory director and began hiring women assistants. Her protégés included Ellen Gleditsch, who determined the half-life of radium, and Marguerite Perey, who discovered the element francium. Unfortunately, Sobel doesn't provide much discussion of Curie's working relationships with her assistants, making each scientist's biographical chapter feel curiously siloed from the others. This is likely because, as Sobel notes, a "vaguely diagnosed kidney ailment" brought on by prolonged radiation exposure kept Curie out of the lab for long stretches of time (several would-be protégés quit over the years, "frustrated by the lack of contact with Mme. Curie"). Sobel highlights the enraging sexism women scientists had to endure (Harriet Brooks worked in Curie's lab around 1906 while taking a break from her teaching duties at Barnard College, which had forced her to break off her engagement because the dean believed a married woman couldn't adequately serve both her students and her husband), but Curie's role in the women's lives remains largely opaque. This feels like a missed opportunity. Photos. Agent: Michael Carlisle, InkWell Management. (Oct.)

Admiring biography, by the noted popular historian of science, of the extraordinarily accomplished Madame Curie. As of now, notes Sobel in her opening pages, Marie Curie, née Marya Salomea Slodowska, is "the only Nobel laureate ever decorated in two separate fields of science." Sobel points to Curie's brilliance across a range of disciplines, encouraged by her progressive father, a math teacher at a Warsaw high school, who encouraged all his children to enjoy the sciences but also read Dickens aloud to them in English, "translating the text into Polish on the fly." Fortunately, at least some of the French scientific establishment was just as progressive, with the Sorbonne admitting women into medical school, and there Marya, now Marie, went, changing her study track to physics. That was a hard slog; as Sobel writes, she still had some catch-up work to do in math, and in French, a language not her own. Still, in 1893, two years after arriving in Paris, she came in first in her class and began studying for a doctorate, her topic the relatively unexciting "magnetic properties of dozens of varieties of steel." Enter Pierre Curie, with whom Marie would have a binding love until his unfortunate death; modest to a fault, he made sure to credit her for her work, even if international organizations too often did not. Indeed, Sobel makes plain that Marie was Pierre's equal and more, making critically important discoveries at the dawn of our understanding ofradioactivity--a term that Marie coined. Moreover, Sobel notes, though known as a martyr of science, dying of radiation poisoning in the form of aplastic anemia, Marie Curie should just as properly be recognized for helping dozens of women advance in the sciences. A lucid, literate biography, celebrating a scientific exemplar who, for all her fame, deserves to be better known. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.