Madame Curie: A Biography

"Biographies , sometimes starting with autobiographies , are essential for consecration and canonization. For example, readers mostly took Darwin’s own autobiography at face value as testament to his greatness—until a close reading by Janet Browne disclosed how it was evidently not written for his immediate family, although it claimed to be so. Einstein similarly used biography and autobiography very effectively to crown himself as an exceptional thinker. The first Einstein biography to consecrate him in this way was actually pseudonymously written by his son-in-law, predictably portraying him as a lonely and modest (even shabbily dressed) genius. Like Darwin before him, Einstein was so concerned with his self-image that when his ex-wife proposed to write her memoirs of their life together, he threatened to give her a good thrashing if she went through with her plan. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Madame Curie also serves a hagiographic function, but the biography is different because the reason for her worship is not confined to her work and mind, or even to her roles as Polish immigrant, wife, or mother. It is movingly written by her daughter, Eve, and the author convinces us to care about her because she is human and fragile: “exceptional not only in her genius, but by her humanity, by her innate refusal of all vulgarity and littleness.” I hope not—she is such a tragic role model. I do believe that the book does offer a different picture of “the mind” than we are used to in biographies of scientists. It is much more embodied. Eve’s descriptions of her own fleshy-and-boney scientists-parents comes with a strange upside for readers. There is more gore in her book than I have ever read in scientists’ biographies. Of her father’s death, she writes: beneath the feet of the powerful horses. Pedestrians cried “Stop! Stop!” The driver pulled on the reins, but in vain: the team of horses kept on. Pierre was down, but alive and unhurt. He did not cry out and hardly moved. His body passed between the feet of the horses without even being touched, and then between the two front wheels of the wagon. A miracle was possible. But the enormous mass, dragged on by its weight of six tons, continued for several yards more. The left back wheel encountered a feeble obstacle which it crushed in passing: a forehead, a human head. The cranium was shattered and a red, viscous matter trickled in all directions in the mud: the brain of Pierre Curie. The retelling of her mom’s difficult death is no less chilling. It is no surprise to me that one of the first biographies of a scientist that emphasized general human qualities in its subject was of a female scientist, written by her female offspring. Yes, there is a joke among historians of science that funding needs to be added to the so-called scientific method. Getting money (and the relation of science to capitalism more generally) is one of many aspects of science, along with the self-fashioning practitioners engage in, that is often obscured in accounts about them."