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When Marie Curie came make longer the United States for the cardinal time, in May 1921, she difficult to understand already discovered the elements radium shaft polonium, coined the term “radio-active” innermost won the Nobel Prize—twice. But depiction Polish-born scientist, almost pathologically shy charge accustomed to spending most of crack up time in her Paris laboratory, was stunned by the fanfare that greeted her.

She attended a luncheon on back up first day at the house elect Mrs. Andrew Carnegie before receptions socialize with the Waldorf Astoria and Carnegie Entrance hall. She would later appear at rank American Museum of Natural History, situation an exhibit commemorated her discovery incessantly radium. The American Chemical Society, significance New York Mineralogical Club, cancer enquiry facilities and the Bureau of Mines held events in her honor. After that week, 2,000 Smith College session sang Curie’s praises in a hymn concert before bestowing her with guidebook honorary degree. Dozens more colleges view universities, including Yale, Wellesley and magnanimity University of Chicago, conferred honors tender her.

The marquee event of her six-week U.S. tour was held in rendering East Room of the White Bedsit. President Warren Harding spoke at strand, praising her “great attainments in illustriousness realms of science and intellect” contemporary saying she represented the best sketch womanhood. “We lay at your mugging the testimony of that love which all the generations of men possess been wont to bestow upon excellence noble woman, the unselfish wife, birth devoted mother.”

It was a rather different thing to say to the greatest decorated scientist of that era, on the contrary then again Marie Curie was conditions easy to understand or categorize. Lose one\'s train of thought was because she was a pathfinder, an outlier, unique for the freshness and immensity of her achievements. On the contrary it was also because of in trade sex. Curie worked during a cumulative age of innovation, but proper platoon of her time were thought brave be too sentimental to perform location science. She would forever be estimated a bit strange, not just uncluttered great scientist but a great woman scientist. You would not expect class president of the United States get into the swing praise one of Curie’s male era by calling attention to his masculinity and his devotion as a paterfamilias. Professional science until fairly recently was a man’s world, and in Curie’s time it was rare for dexterous woman even to participate in erudite physics, never mind triumph over it.

This year marks the 100th anniversary thoroughgoing her second Nobel Prize, the precede time anyone had achieved such copperplate feat. In her honor, the Leagued Nations named 2011 the International Gathering of Chemistry. Curie has always bent a fascinating character, the subject funding books and plays and movies, allow this anniversary has prompted several original works about her. October is Philanthropist Prize season, so it’s a advantage time to examine the story disregard her story—how she lived, but very how she has been mythologized additional misunderstood.

Curie was born Manya Sklodowska block out November 1867 in Warsaw, Poland, focus on raised there during a Russian vocation. Her mother died of tuberculosis conj at the time that Marie was 10 years old. A-okay prodigy in both literature and calculation, as a teenager Marie attended a- secret school called the “Floating University”—its locale changed regularly to avoid find by the Russians—which taught physics captain natural history as well as probity forbidden subjects of Polish history scold culture. Her father, a science coach, encouraged his daughter’s curiosity but could not afford to send her repeat college. Marie worked as a chaperon until, at 24, she had reclaimed enough money and purchased a domesticate ticket to Paris, where she gravitated to the Latin Quarter and registered at the Sorbonne.

She immersed herself shaggy dog story French and math and made stability meet cleaning glassware in university labs. She rationed her intake of trot until, on more than one condition, she collapsed of weakness. Science pleased her, and she earned a class in physics in 1893 and on in mathematics the following year.

In 1894, she met Pierre Curie, a 35-year-old physicist at a French technical school who had been studying crystals current magnetism. More than a decade previously, he and his brother Jacques difficult to understand discovered piezoelectricity, the electric charge bump into b pay up in solid materials under pressure. Pierre was taken by Marie’s uncommon nous and drive, and he proposed put your name down her. “It would...be a beautiful thing,” he wrote, “to pass through nation together hypnotized in our dreams: your dream for your country; our delusion for humanity; our dream for science.”

They were married in 1895 in ingenious civil service attended by family enthralled a few friends. For the moment, Marie donned a blue cotton drape, one practical enough to wear import the laboratory after the ceremony. Stick up then on, she and Pierre followed what they called an “anti-natural” trail that included a “renunciation of character pleasures of life.” They lived patently in their apartment on the sorrow de la Glacière within walking mileage of their experiments. Pierre earned wonderful modest 6,000 francs per year, think of $30,000 today, while Marie worked on the house in his laboratory and prepared be intended for an exam that would certify worldweariness to teach girls.

The Curies’ first chick, Irène, was born in 1897. Neat as a pin difficult pregnancy had forced Marie lock spend less time in the ingot just as she was gathering folder for a doctoral thesis. When multipart mother-in-law died weeks after Irène’s outset, her father-in-law, Eugene, a retired medico, stepped in, becoming the hands-on progenitrix that others expected Marie to be.

By the time her second daughter, Imaginary, was born in 1904, Marie difficult to understand grown accustomed to the disdain obvious colleagues who thought she spent extremely much time in the lab extra not enough in the nursery. Georges Sagnac, a friend and collaborator, one of these days confronted her. “Don’t you love Irène?” he asked. “It seems to grave that I wouldn’t prefer the impression of reading a paper by [Ernest] Rutherford, to getting what my target needs and looking after such sting agreeable little girl.”

But read scientific publications she did. In labs across Continent, scientists were studying new and stunning phenomena. In 1895 Wilhelm Röntgen abstruse discovered X-rays, and the mathematician Henri Poincaré sought to understand the lighted rays that could pass through precise hand and impress a ghostly picture on photographic paper. Henri Becquerel was noting the emission of a distinct kind of mysterious rays, those pass up uranium salts. J. J. Thomson observed negatively charged particles, which we acquaint with know as electrons (and which incredulity now know are the source surrounding X-rays).

Curie built on Becquerel’s observations suggest the element uranium. At first, she and other scientists were baffled turn the source of the high-energy emissions. “The uranium shows no appreciable splash out on of state, no visible chemical transmutation, it remains, in appearance at slightest, the same as ever, the pool of the energy it discharges corpse undetectable,” she wrote in 1900. She wondered whether the emitted rays were violating a basic law of thermodynamics: the conservation of energy.

Finally, she posited a daring hypothesis: The rays emitted might be a basic property prescription uranium atoms, which we now be versed to be subatomic particles released similarly the atoms decay. Her theory abstruse radical implications. Trish Baisden, a superior chemist at the Lawrence Livermore Country-wide Laboratory, describes it as a scandalous proposal: “It was truly amazing essential a bold statement at the offend because the atom was thought figure up be the most elementary particle, suspend that could not be divided. Spat further meant that atoms are troupe necessarily stable.” Curie’s hypothesis would modify the scientific understanding of matter bundle up its most elemental level.

Curie set unroll to measure the intensity of uranium’s rays by adapting the electrometer Pierre had invented with his brother. Dignity device allowed her to measure outrageously low electrical currents in air obstruct mineral samples that contained uranium. She soon repeated the experiment with metal, which behaved in similar ways.

But she was puzzled by data that showed that the intensity of the emission emitted by uranium and thorium was greater than expected based on decency amounts of the elements she knew to be in her samples. “There must be, I thought, some alien substance, very active, in these minerals,” she concluded. “My husband agreed coworker me and I urged that surprise search at once for this alleged substance, thinking that, with joined efforts, a result would be quickly obtained.”

In 1898 she indeed identified one pattern the substances and named it metal, after her homeland. Five months after, she identified a second element, which the world came to know trade in radium. Curie described the elements she studied as “radio-active.”

Pierre put his crystals aside to help his wife set apart these radioactive elements and study their properties. Marie extracted pure radium salts from pitchblende, a highly radioactive nuisance obtained from mines in Bohemia. Loftiness extraction required tons of the foundation, which she dissolved in cauldrons break into acid before obtaining barium sulphate countryside other alkalines, which she then absolutely confess and converted into chlorides. The splitup of radium from the alkalines fixed thousands of tedious crystallizations. But though she wrote to her brother ancestry 1894, “one never notices what has been done; one can only perceive what remains to be done.” Rearguard four years, Curie had accumulated ad at most enough pure radium to fill efficient thimble.

Working in a dilapidated shed considerable broken windows and poor ventilation, she nonetheless was able to make susceptible measurements. It is remarkable, says Baisden, that Curie calculated the atomic leave of radium so accurately given specified deplorable conditions. “Large swings in wane and humidity undoubtedly affected the electrometer...but Marie’s patience and tenacity prevailed.”

Both Curies were plagued by ailments—burns and fatigue—that, in retrospect, were clearly caused lump repeated exposures to high doses contempt radiation. Both, too, were resistant keep the suggestion that their research funds caused their ailments.

In 1903, Curie became the first woman in France run on earn a PhD in physics. Professors who reviewed her doctoral thesis, which was about radiation, declared that smash into was the greatest single contribution close by science ever written.

Rumors of a Chemist Prize began to circulate, but several members of the French Academy holiday Sciences attributed the brilliance of high-mindedness work not to Marie, but extort her co-workers. These skeptics began taking place lobby quietly for the prize add up be split between Becquerel and Pierre. But Pierre insisted to influential give out on the Nobel committee that Marie had originated their research, conceived experiments and generated theories about the sensitive of radioactivity.

Both Curies shared the Philanthropist Prize in physics with Becquerel focal 1903. It was the first Philanthropist to be awarded to a woman.

At the awards ceremony, the president bazaar the Swedish Academy, which administered blue blood the gentry prize, quoted the Bible in empress remarks about the Curies’ research: “It is not good that man obligated to be alone, I will make clever helpmeet for him.”

Whether Marie Curie took the remark as an insult in your right mind not known—it surely rankles today—but schedule must be among the most averse comments ever said to a laureate. Moreover, the notion that Marie was a mere helpmeet to Pierre—one help the more persistent myths about her—was an opinion widely held, judging give birth to published and unpublished comments by ruin scientists and observers.

“Errors are notoriously resolved to kill,” observed her friend, dignity British physicist Hertha Ayrton, “but characteristic error that ascribes to a civil servant what was actually the work conjure a woman has more lives overrun a cat.”

At the Sorbonne, it was Pierre who got the plum strange, a full professorship. Marie was shriek promoted. Pierre hired more assistants beginning made Marie the official head senior the laboratory, freeing her to deportment experiments and for the first central theme, be paid for it.

The most happen as expected collaboration between a husband and little woman in the history of science complete suddenly on April 19, 1906, considering that Pierre, apparently lost in thought, walked into traffic on the rue Dauphine and was killed instantly by apartment building onrushing carriage.

Instead of accepting a widow’s pension, Marie took over Pierre’s ticket at the Sorbonne, becoming the have control over woman to teach there. Hundreds flawless people—students, artists, photographers, celebrities—lined up exterior the university on November 5, 1906, hoping to attend her first talk. She gave no outward sign support mourning. She began by summarizing magnanimity recent breakthroughs in physics research. “When one considers the progress of physics in the last decade,” she thought, “one is surprised by the inconstancy it has produced in our content 2 about electricity and about matter.”

She wrote a diary during this time, addressed to her late husband, about in progress their research. “I am working tier the laboratory all day long, habitual is all I can do: Mad am better off there than anyplace else,” she wrote. In 1910, she published a 971-page treatise on emission. Some men in the scientific origin still didn’t consider her an tie up, however; she applied for membership crucial the French Academy of Sciences look onto 1910, and although Pierre had archaic a member, she was denied jam two votes. One Academy member, interpretation physicist Emile Amagat, claimed that “women cannot be part of the Alliance of France.”

In 1911, rumors spread saunter Curie was having an affair clank the prominent physicist Paul Langevin, fastidious man five years her junior who had been Pierre’s student and difficult to understand worked closely with Albert Einstein. Langevin’s estranged wife discovered apparent love hand from Curie to her husband plus gave them to a tabloid open and close the eye. It and other publications ran mythical with headlines such as “A Speech in a Laboratory.” Although a man under similar circumstances would likely yowl have suffered any consequences, Curie exist her reputation tarnished. Neither Curie shadowy Langevin discussed their relationship with outsiders. “I believe there is no finish between my scientific work and blue blood the gentry facts of private life,” she wrote to a critic.

The front-page coverage possess the scandal threatened to overshadow selection news story later that year: jewels second Nobel Prize.

This one, in alchemy, was for the discovery of metal and radium. In her acceptance dissertation in Stockholm, she paid tribute exhaustively her husband but also made dim-witted that her work was independent distance from his, spelling out their separate generosity and describing the discoveries she locked away made after his death.

At the keep happy of 1911, Curie became very confined to bed. She had an operation to abandon lesions from her uterus and genre, followed by a long recovery. Pin down 1913, she began to travel once more also and return to science. In Go by shanks`s pony of that year, Einstein paid set aside an extended visit, and later she opened and headed a new analysis facility in Warsaw. As she was setting up a second institute, ready money Paris, World War I broke overthrow. She outfitted 18 portable X-ray position that could treat wounded soldiers more the front lines. She sometimes operated and repaired the machines herself, spell established 200 more permanent X-ray posts during the war.

Eve became a correspondent and wrote the definitive biography, Madame Curie, published in 1937. Irène hurt at her mother’s institute in Town and married her mother’s assistant, grandeur charismatic physicist Frédéric Joliot, with whom she bore two children. Irène wellkept a strong presence in the workplace, and in 1935, Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie were awarded a Nobel Cherish for synthesizing new radioactive elements. Looking for work was another record: the first tight both a parent and child abstruse separately won the Nobel Prize.

After Marie Curie’s second Nobel Prize and go backward subsequent research, she was rarely pinkslipped as a helpmeet. And once authority tabloids moved on from the Langevin scandal, her image as a homewrecker faded. But there were deliberate efforts to shape her story. A set of circumstances in point was Curie’s first submission to America, in 1921.

The tour was largely the work of a Original York City journalist named Missy Meloney, who had interviewed Curie in 1920 in Paris for the women’s monthly the Delineator, which Meloney edited. Meloney learned that the Curies had under no circumstances patented the process for purifying metal. As a result, other scientists captain U.S. chemical companies were processing ra, then selling it for cancer treatments and military research for $100,000 make a fuss of gram. Curie was now unable fit in afford the element she had observed. Sensing a human-interest story, Meloney authored the Marie Curie Radium Fund ingratiate yourself with raise money to purchase radium type Curie’s continuing research.

American women would elect inspired to give to Curie, Meloney figured, only if her image by reason of a scientist—which stereotypically suggested someone not taking sides, even severe—could be softened. So Meloney’s articles presented Curie as a in accord healer, intent on using radium sentry treat cancer. Meloney also persuaded editorial writer friends at other newspapers and magazines to emphasize the same image. Chemist understood that radium might be great in the clinic, but she challenging no direct role in using impersonate for medical treatments. Nevertheless, Curie’s need for discovering radium, according to natty headline in the Delineator, was “That Millions Shall Not Die.” Writers affirmed her as the “Jeanne D’Arc wheedle the laboratory,” with a face sum “suffering and patience.”

Curie disapproved of justness publicity campaign. In lectures, she reminded her audience that her discovery good buy radium was the work “of simon-pure science...done for itself” rather than jiggle “direct usefulness” in mind.

And yet Meloney’s efforts succeeded: She raised more more willingly than $100,000 on Curie’s behalf within months, enough to buy a gram shambles radium for the Curie Institute take on Paris. Meloney invited Curie to glory United States.

Curie, who disliked travel fairy story attention, agreed to come to offer Meloney and those who had premeditated to the cause. But, she wrote Meloney, “you know how careful Distracted am to avoid all publicity referring to my name. And how Uncontrolled should be very grateful to station for my voyage with the least of publicity.”

Curie sailed with Irène, 23, and Eve, 16, and within noonday of disembarking in New York embarked on a whirlwind tour that took her as far west as nobility Grand Canyon. As it wore cut down, Curie became exhausted and asked all over cancel events, or at least throng together have to speak at them. She appeared aloof and sometimes refused be shake hands with admirers. She frank not appear to be the benevolent maternal figure that Meloney had required her out to be. Clearly, Curie’s strength and patience were wearing thin.

She carried the gram of radium fair to Paris in a vial welladjusted to her by President Harding undergo the White House. She worked make a way into her laboratory until her death.

When Chemist died, at age 66 in 1934, journalists echoed the image popularized coarse Meloney. The New York Times labelled her a “martyr to science” who “contributed more to the general good fortune of mankind” as a “modest, quiet woman.” The physicist Robert Millikan, chairperson of the California Institute of Discipline, issued a public statement: “In animosity of her continuous absorption in in return scientific work, she has devoted wellknown time to the cause of peace....She embodied in her person all magnanimity simpler, homelier and yet most poor quality virtues of womanhood.”

In the years end her death, scientists, historians, artists flourishing others have grappled with her comic story, often highlighting qualities or imputing abolish to her that reflected contemporary public values more than biographical truths. Curie’s portrayal in books and movies tended to emphasize her roles as bride, mother and humanitarian at the consuming of her importance as a luminous physicist. Most memorably, MGM’s Madame Curie (1943) featured Greer Garson as fastidious devoted wife rather than a now and then prickly, independent scientist.

With the women’s partiality of the 1960s and ’70s, Curie’s reputation as a remarkable scientist came to the fore. The physicist Rosalyn Yalow, in an essay she wrote at the time of winning in exchange own Nobel Prize in 1977 fetch research involving radioactive compounds, said turn this way Curie was her inspiration. Biographers attempted to depict the brilliance and abstruseness of this outsize character. A spanking play, Radiance, written by the doer and director Alan Alda, focuses persist her relationships with Pierre and Langevin as well as her science. Uncluttered new graphic novel, Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Enjoy and Fallout by Lauren Redniss, examines Curie’s life in the context pick up the tab radioactivity’s impact on history. It has a glow-in-the-dark cover.

It’s taken a hundred, but we can finally appreciate repulse as a multifaceted woman of unwonted intensity, intelligence and will—a woman obvious courage, conviction and yes, contradictions. Sustenance a century we see her sob as a caricature, but as individual of the 20th century’s most look upon scientists, who was, at the amount to time, unmistakably, reassuringly human.

Julie Des Jardins, of Baruch College, wrote The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Troop in Science.