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Love, Stamps, Science, & Scandal
- 1. Love, Stamps, Science, & Scandal! Ashley E. Bowen, PhD Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow Digital Engagement Manager Science History Institute Author’s photograph, Witco Stamp Collection, Box 2. Science History Institute.
- 2. I really love the mail
- 4. ImageviatheLibraryofCongress’Prints&PhotographsDivision Marie Sklodowska Curie • Born in Poland in 1867. • Received two(!) Nobel Prizes. • 1903 for discovering phenomenon of radioactivity (shared) • 1911 for discovery of polonium and radium • Coined the term “radioactive.” • Five (!) duels fought over her in about six weeks in 1911. • Drove a mobile X-ray van during WWI. • Discovered radium and polonium. • Died in 1934 as the result of exposure to radioactive materials.
- 5. La Nézière, Joseph de. “Cuban Postage Stamp Commemorating Pierre and Marie Curie's Discovery of Radium.” Cuba, 1938. Witco Stamp Collection, Box 2. Science History Institute. Documenting a partnership
- 6. Image via Bibliothèque nationale de France Marie is so much more than her lovers
- 7. Marie and Pierre Curie Image via the Wellcome Collection
- 8. “Upon entering the room I perceived, standing framed by the French window opening on the balcony, a tall young man with auburn hair and large, limpid eyes. I noticed the grave and gentle expression of his face, as well as a certain abandon in his attitude, suggesting the dream absorbed in his reflections.” ~Marie Curie on Pierre, 1923 Pierre Curie ImageviatheNobelFoundation
- 9. “It would… be a fine thing.. To pass our lives near each other, hypnotized by our dreams, your patriotic dream, our humanitarian dream, and our scientific dream.” ~ Pierre Curie, quoted in Pierre Curie Image via the Wellcome Collection Marie Skłodowska
- 11. Partners in the truest sense ImagesviatheBibliothèquenationaledeFrance
- 12. 1903 Nobel Prize Image via the Bibliothèque nationale de France
- 14. Tragedy “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… 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.” ~Eve Curie, Marie and Pierre’s daughter, 1937 Image via the Bibliothèque nationale de France
- 16. The Langevin Affair! Image via Getty Images
- 17. Image via the Wellcome Collection Paul Langevin • Born in France in 1872 • Physicist • Invented sonar and ultrasonic echography (ultrasound) • Elected to French Academy of Sciences • Antifascist and anti-Nazi activist • Education reformer • Died in 1946 … also a student of Pierre Curie’s and a married father of four children.
- 18. Image via Flickr user Julie Edgley, licensed via the Creative Commons “I am trembling with impatience at the thought of seeing you return at last, and of telling you how much I missed you. I kiss you tenderly awaiting tomorrow.” ~Paul Langevin to Marie Curie, 1911 “I spent last evening and night thinking of you and the hours we had together. I hold the delicious memory. Still I see your eyes, kind and tender, and your warm smile and I can only dream of the moment that I find again the sweetness of your presence.” ~Marie Curie to Paul Langevin, 1911
- 19. Exposed! Royalty free image via peakpx
- 20. Her next Nobel Image via the Nobel Foundation
- 21. Einstein supports them Image via Benjamin Couprie/Hulton Archive/Getty Images “I will always be grateful that we have people like you and Langevin among us… If the rabble continues to be occupied with you, simply stop reading that drivel. Leave it to the vipers it was fabricated for.” ~Albert Einstein to Marie Curie, 1911
- 22. Duels! “It is idiotic, but I have to do it…” ~ Paul Langevin, 1911 Image via the Bibliothèque nationale de France
- 23. Marie defends herself “In fact, the prize has been awarded for the discovery of Radium and Polonium. I believe that there is no connection between my scientific work and the facts of private life… I cannot accept the idea in principle that the appreciation of the value of scientific work should be influenced by libel and slander concerning private life.” ~Marie Curie to the Nobel Committee, 5 December 1911 HenriManuel,portraitofMarieCurie,ca.1920,viaChristie’s.
- 24. Image courtesy of Getty Images An amicable end
- 25. Image via the Nobel Foundation Awarded the prize after all
- 26. Acc. 90-105 - Science Service, Records, 1920s-1970s, via Smithsonian Institution Archives Scientific (and family) ties
- 27. A Curie-Langevin wedding… in 1948 Hélène Langevin-Joliot, 2012 Michel Langevin, ca. 1960
- 28. Thank you! Ashley E. Bowen, PhD abowen@sciencehistory.org @AEBowenPhD twitter https://digital.sciencehistory.org/collections “First Day Cover Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Marie Curie.” India: India Security Press, November 6, 1968. Witco Stamp Collection, Box 2. Science History Institute. Philadelphia.
- 29. Selected Works Consulted • Bok, Julien, and Catherine Kounelis. “Paul Langevin (1872-1946).” Europhysics News 38, no. 1 (January 2007): 19–21. • Buehler, Emily. “Curie as Celebrity.” American Scientist (blog), February 6, 2017. https://www.americanscientist.org/article/curie-as-celebrity. • Curie, Eve. Madame Curie: A Biography. Translated by Vincent Sheean. Garden City, N.Y: Garden City Pub, 1943. • Emling, Shelley. Marie Curie and Her Daughters: The Private Lives of Science’s First Family. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. • Fredrickson, Anne. “Vanity Unfair.” Distillations, June 16, 2011. https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/vanity-unfair. • Goldsmith, Barbara. Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie. Great Discoveries. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005. • Krulwich, Robert. “Don’t Come to Stockholm! Madame Curie’s Nobel Scandal.” NPR. Krulwich Wonders (blog), December 14, 2010. https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2010/12/14/132031977/don-t- come-to-stockholm-madame-curie-s-nobel-scandal. • Ogilvie, Marilyn Bailey. Marie Curie: A Biography. Amherst, N.Y: Prometheus Books, 2011. • Redniss, Lauren. Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, a Tale of Love & Fallout. New York: !t Books/Harper Collins, 2010. • Wilkie, Tom. “The Secret Sex Life of Marie Curie.” The Independent. June 13, 1995, sec. Science. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-secret-sex-life-of-marie-curie-1586244.html. • Wirtén, Eva Hemmungs. Making Marie Curie: Intellectual Property and Celebrity Culture in an Age of Information. University of Chicago Press, 2015.
Editor's Notes
- Hi everyone thank you for coming out on a Tuesday night.
- Before we start, quick show of hands– does anyone here collect stamps? Does anyone here know where a book of stamps might be in their house? Part of why I like talking about postage stamps is because they’re remarkable little tools, tiny works of art, and forms of currency. If you described the postal system to someone, they’d think you were bananas. You can walk up to any of these blue boxes placed at semi-regular intervals across the city, drop in a piece of paper or small box, and it will show up 2-10 days later half way around the country provided that it has this special sticker in the upper right side.
- Richard M. Lawrence, an analytical chemist, built what is now called the Witco Stamp Collection over about 40 years from the 1940s through the 1980s. In 1962 he told Chemical & Engineering News that it was “probably the greatest collection of its kind ever put on display.” That might be a bit of an over-statement though the collection as a whole includes 1500 of stamps and other postal materials (covers, etc) honoring chemists, physicists, botanical sources of medicines and chemicals, and industrial uses of chemistry. Over 90 countries are represented in the collection.
- https://www.sciencehistory.org/historical-profile/marie-sklodowska-curie Lawrence arranged his collection topically, and had a number of stamps celebrating Nobel Prize winners and that’s where I got extra interested. Marie Curie is all over this collection… How many folks have heard of Marie Curie? How many folks know why she’s just about as famous as Einstein? I will now provide you with the world’s quickest biography of Marie Curie, this will do her a radical disservice but I want to get to the postage stamps and how she’s remembered. But, keep these facts in mind as you look at the stamps to come. Curie was born in Poland in 1867 to two school teachers. Image: Mme. Marie Curie. Undated. Glass negative, 5 x 7 or smaller. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. George Grantham Bain Collection. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2014687674/.
- A lot of the stamps in the Witco collection featured Marie and Pierre together. The stamps celebrated scientific achievements and depict them as a scientific partnership, not just only even really as a romantic one. The two married in 1895 and won a Nobel Prize together in 1903. I got really interested in these stamps depicting Marie Curie, both with and without Pierre Curie included in the artwork. I had a bunch of questions about how and when women are shown as scientists in the late 19th and early 20th century, what kind of iconography is used to signal SCIENCE to a casual observer, and the ratio of stamps that featured Marie as an individual v. positioning her as part of a partnership that involved a male collaborator. These were all the very serious, scholarly questions that I had… Remember that line on her biography slide a moment ago? Yeah, so some love letters instigated 5 duels fought over her. So clearly I had to drop everything I learn about that part of her life and correspondence. La Nézière, Joseph de. “Cuban Postage Stamp Commemorating Pierre and Marie Curie's Discovery of Radium.” Cuba, 1938. Witco Stamp Collection, Box 2. Science History Institute. Philadelphia. https://digital.sciencehistory.org/works/vh53wv76t.
- The UN set aside today, February 11, as the International Day of Women and Girls in Science! Marie Curie is, without a doubt, the quintessential woman in science– in fact, in 2009 L’Oreal sponsored a poll to identify the “most inspirational female scientist of all time.” Curie won easily (Wirten1). She’s so well-known that she’s almost not a real person anymore. But she was a person, full of contradictions and desires as well as an unbeatable intellect and ambition. Of course, because today is a day for celebrating the achievements of women in science, especially those like Marie Curie who overcame incredible cultural barriers to her full participation in science, it does feel a little… squicky… to talk about her in relationship to the men in her life. If it’s not already obvious, she really is so much more than her lovers. She was a truly remarkable scientist and is interred in the Pantheon in Paris. She lived in a world of double standards– her love life was fair game while men, more or less, were allowed to have lovers so long as they were quiet about it. You’ll see what I mean later but I think we should stop and note that it’s revealing that we’re all so interested in Marie Curie’s scandalous sex life when we aren’t, necessarily, as interested in the sex lives of her male peers. She would warn people, typically journalists, who pestered her with too many questions that “in science, we must be interested in things, not in persons” (quoted in Wirten 9). Which, sure… but y’all, do you want to hear about a sex scandal that threatened her second Nobel Prize?! 12/26/23, 25th anniversary of radium at the Sorbonne, [Mrs.] M. Curie [surrounded by MM. Alexandre Millerand and Léon Bérard]: [press photography] / [Agence Rol] https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53123447f
- Marie’s scientific partner, husband, and father of her two daughters, Pierre Curie, was not her first love but he was almost certainly her greatest. The two met after Marie had decided against love and marriage, there simply wasn’t room in her busy intellectual life. Writing later, he daughter would say that “Marie was obsessed by her dreams, harassed by overty, over-driven by intensive work. She did not know leisure and its dangers” (Eve Curie 119). The two met in 1894, when Pierre was in his mid-30s and Marie in her late 20s. She was in desperate need of laboratory space to complete her research and Pierre, luckily, had some space available. A mutual friend introduced them and the rest, as they say, is history. Marie and Pierre Curie (centre) with a man, using equipment in their laboratory, Paris. Photograph, ca. 1900. Image via the Wellcome Collection: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/zq4nm2kg?wellcomeImagesUrl=/indexplus/image/V0030700.html
- Described by one of his biographers as having a kind of “careless grace,” Pierre curie
- He began to pursue Marie, sending her a reprint of his latest publication (NERD LOVE) but I’m sure in a way that wasn’t too braggy and then began to call on her regularly (Eve Curie 127). He asked her to marry him just as she prepared to return to Poland after completing her examinations. Throughout the summer after she finished school, he wrote to her to convince her to return to Paris, to him, to science. She did return to Paris and Pierre in October 1894. Deeply smitten by this point, he offered her “a room of her own.” He said that if she had no love for him, could “she resolve upon a purely friendly arrangement at least, and work with him ‘in an apartment in the Rue Mouffetard, with windows giving on a garden, an apartment which could be divided into two independent parts’?” (Even curie 134). He also offered to move to Poland with her and teach French, if needs must. Completely smitten at this point, he offered a number of arrangements and had to wait 10 months until she agreed but… reader… SLIDE Pierre and Marie Curie at work in their laboratory. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY https://wellcomecollection.org/works/yt9t44t5
- Pierre and Marie were wed on July 26, 1895. The bride wore a navy suite (she wanted something “practical and dark” that she could wear in the laboratory after the wedding (Eve Curie 137). There was no white dress, gold ring, no ‘wedding breakfast,’ no religious ceremony, and no lawyers. They wed at city hall, neither were religious, and had a small party at his parents’ home. (ibid) They purchased new bicycles the day before their wedding and took them on their honeymoon on the coast of Brittany. It was a bicycling trip and her handlebars were “festooned with flowers.” According to her daughter, the two “lunched on bread and cheese, peaches and cherries, seated on the moss of some woodland glade” (138). Marie Curie and Pierre Curie in front of their house, 1895 © https://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/histoire/images/index.php?refphot=pall0384
- The Cuie’s worked together before and after their marriage. I am especially impressed by the degree to which the two truly shared authorship. One study of the Curies and their relationship to intellectual property explains at great length the degree to which the two partners– intellectual and emotional– move between “I” and “we” in their writings. In their laboratory notebooks, their handwriting intertwines and overlaps, the two making notes of their own. An extension of the dialogue that passed between them so easily. LEFT: Pierre et Marie Curie. Papiers. III — CAHIERS DE LABORATOIRE ET CAHIERS DIVERS. CXII-CXV Cahiers de laboratoire. CXII Comptabilité des corps radiants . 1900-1903 https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b105362803 RIGHT: Pierre and Marie Curie. Papers. III - LABORATORY NOTEBOOKS AND MISCELLANEOUS NOTEBOOKS. CXXIV-CXXVIII Notebooks or draft notebooks. 1895-1896. Years 1895-1898. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10536330d
- In 1903, just 8 years after they married, the two won the Nobel Prize for discovering phenomenon of radioactivity. Diploma of Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded in december 1903 to Pierre and Marie Curie. Both shared this distinction with Henri Becquerel, whose name is mentioned on the document. Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. NAF 18505 (2). https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b52509283v
- The two had been well-known scientsits before winning the Nobel, but it was this prize that really Price, Julius M. (Julius Mendes). “Radium.” Chromolithograph on paper, December 22, 1904. Science History Institute. Philadelphia. https://digital.sciencehistory.org/works/k3569485t.
- Detail of La Matin page 1 on April 20, 1905 https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k567943p
- {Intentionally left blank} Marie is devastated by Pierre’s loss. Writing decades after his death, her daughter Eve said that “From the moment when those three words, ‘Pierre is dead,’ reached her consciousness, a cope of solitude and secrecy fell upon her soulders forever. Madame Curie, on that day in April, became not only a widow but at the same time a pitiful and incurably lonely woman” (Eve Curie 247). She didn’t return to the laboratory for a month, focusing instead on her grief and her children. Her friends said that he’d become an “automaton” (or robot), she was stiff and absent minded. Though not yet dead herself, she was hardly among the living. She did eventually return to her work– motivated in part by plans to build a laboratory worthy of Pierre’s dreams where researchers could study radioactivity– and she taught, raised the couple’s two children, and cared for her father-in-law continued to make tremendous breakthroughs in the study of radioactivity. She assumed Pierre’s position at the Sorbonne (this was a minor scandal in its own right). She refused to weep in front of anyone (Eve Curie 264)
- In the spring of 1910, four years after Pierre died, Marie began an intense love affair with the Physicist Paul Langevin. They were an intellectual match and their affections were quite strong. They would meet in a rented room not far from the Sorbonne. A few years younger than Marie, and a former student of Pierre Curie’s, Paul Langevin was perhaps an unsurprising match for Marie. French Physicists Marie Curie & Paul Langevin French physicists Paul Langevin (1872 - 1946) and Marie Curie (1867 - 1934) (front left) stand in front of a group of women on steps, Paris, early 1910s. (Photo by Albert Harlingue/Roger Viollet via Getty Images). URL: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/french-physicists-paul-langevin-and-marie-curie-stand-in-news-photo/71423855
- Paul Langevin might be the most interesting man in the world, I can’t say I blame Marie for falling for him. “He has been a principal player in all the major scientific revolutions of his time: Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and Statistical Physics” (according to Julien Bok and Catherine Kounelis writing in Europhysics News) By the age of 30, he was moving in the most elite circles of French science. A briliiant physicist, he was also a dedicated social activist. He worked tirelessly for human rights, labor rights, scientific cooperation, and against nationalism. During World War II, he became one of the founding members of the Committee of Vigilance of Antifascists Intellectuals. Although the bulk of his political work, certainly the work that he’s most known for, happened in the 1930s and 1940s, he began his political commitment in the 1890s. He was married to a woman named Jeanne Langevin and it was not a happy marriage by all accounts. He described his home life as being in a constant state of “latent hostility” (Redniss 128)– there were accusations of domestic abuse by both parties and Paul had affairs with other women. The relationship with Marie, apparently, caused Jeanne special concern. Detail from image “Lunch in honour of Albert Einstein, with (front row) Langevin, Einstein, Comtesse de Noailles, Painlevé.” Photograph. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY https://wellcomecollection.org/works/y58p7zqy
- Paul and Marie wrote some really beautiful letters to each other, full of longing and love (not to mention lust). The lovers through thy were relatively discrete, meeting in their rented rooms and taking at least basic precautions against being followed or spied on. Unfortunately, Jeanne had the letters stolen from their love nest and taunted them with exposure for about 8 months. For both, the consequences of exposure would be pretty severe but particularly so for Marie– France was particularly sexist and Marie pushed on all the boundaries of what was seen as appropriate for women, even accomplished women, to do. She did not fit easily into a category and behavior like this, despite it being common among men, would have put her beyond the pale of acceptable female behavior in early 20th century Paris. Additionally, as Pierre’s widow, Marie carried both of their reputations with her scientifically, professionally, and as a public figure. These letters are really beautiful but there were also letters that did make Marie out to look… not exactly the romantic. In one, she advises Paul on how to extract himself from his marriage, which she thought could threaten his career, and warns him against reconciling with her and getting her pregnant again that was particularly offensive to conservative French readers. (Werten 65) Image via Flickr Commons https://flic.kr/p/5zk9Dj Quotes from Redniss, Lauren. Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, a Tale of Love & Fallout. 1st ed. New York: !t Books/Harper Collins, 2010. p 123
- In early November 1911 a journalist visited Paul’s home where he spoke with his mother-in-law, Jeanne’s mother. A woman all-too happy to expound on the state of her daughter’s failing marriage, that Paul and Marie had left Paris together (this was true, they were at a Physics conference together in Belgium along with 20 or so other people), and that her family had their letters in their possession. Once that story hit the papers, on November 4, other newspapers jumped on the wagon. Le Journal (the largest circulation paper in Paris). The headline was “A STORY OF LOVE: MADAME CURIE AND PROFESSOR LANGEVIN.” In the following days, the story became about a foreign woman trying to “steal“ a loyal French woman’s husband. It was just dripping with anti-Semitism, though Curie was not Jewish, and anti-foreigner language. Langevin responds to these newspaper stories from the conference in Brussels, he confirmed that he and his wife had separated a few months earlier (though, notably, not before he began his affair with Marie) and denied the charges of domestic violence by saying that she once threw a bottle at him (Wirten 60). Marie issues a separate statement to the press in which she basically says that she will sue for libel anyone who makes accusations against her and use the money in the pursuit of science. She very carefully put the newspapers on notice but made clear that she was first and foremost a scientist, not a scorned or wronged woman. Image from https://www.peakpx.com/22044/newspaper-lot
- Three days after the story of her affair with Langevin breaks in the Paris newspapers, on November 7, 1911, the Swedish Academy awarded Curie her second Nobel prize for her discovery of polonium and radium. What could have been the crowning moment of her career, becoming the only person to win a Nobel Prize twice (and before she was 45-years old), was over-shadowed by the intensifying scandal. Newspapers around the world, not just in Paris, reported on the developing “Langevin affair” and two fellow scientists urged delay in awarding the prize. They feared that if she arrived in Stockholm while the scandal was ongoing, it would not only damage the reputation of the prize but could cause “difficulties at the ceremony.” Olof Hammarsten, a biochemist, feared that her presence would “create difficulties at the ceremony, in particular at the banquet. It would be quite disagreeable and difficult for the Princess apparent as well as for other royal figures in attendance and I odn’t know who could have her at their table” (quoted in Redniss 133). These leading scientist didn’t want to not give her the prize, they just didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that they were giving her the prize now. Several people urged her to remain in Paris until after the Langevins’ divorce hearing was settled and her name cleared. Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marie_Sk%C5%82odowska-Curie%27s_Nobel_Prize_in_Chemistry_1911.jpg
- This photo, taken in 1911 at the Solvay Conference shows Curie and Langevin together just before their affair became public knowledge. It was upon their return from this conference that the media circus really got going. Anyway, so while folks associated with the Nobel prize fret about what it would mean for a woman involved in a sex scandal to attend a ceremony in her honor, Einstein cheers her on. This could be, of course, because he himself had what we might call a “complicated” personal life. Marie’s affair, admittedly with a married man, pales in comparison to Einstein– who had fathered a child with a former student outside of marriage nearly a decade earlier and, though married, would have an affair with his first cousin not long after the Curie-Langevin affair. (Redniss 135) Einstein eventually divorced his first wife to marry his cousin. Particularly scandalously, he apparently considered breaking off the engagement to his cousin to marry her daughter from her first marriage (Overbye). At any rate, he quickly lost interest in her as well. He would go on to cheat on her a great deal over the course of their marriage. These were somewhat open secrets and did not seem to impact his career trajectory in the way that Marie’s affair did. FWIW, Langevin and Einstein would work together on anti-fascist causes in the 1920s. Potograph of participants of the first Solvay Conference, in 1911, Brussels, Belgium. Seated (L-R): Walther Nernst, Marcel Brillouin, Ernest Solvay (he wasn't present when the above group photo was taken; his portrait was crudely pasted on before the picture was released), Hendrik Lorentz, Emil Warburg, Jean Baptiste Perrin, Wilhelm Wien, Marie Skłodowska-Curie, and Henri Poincaré. Standing (L-R): Robert Goldschmidt, Max Planck, Heinrich Rubens, Arnold Sommerfeld, Frederick Lindemann, Maurice de Broglie, Martin Knudsen, Friedrich Hasenöhrl, Georges Hostelet, Edouard Herzen, James Hopwood Jeans, Ernest Rutherford, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, Albert Einstein, and Paul Langevin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1911_Solvay_conference.jpg Quoted in Redniss, Lauren. Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, a Tale of Love & Fallout. 1st ed. New York: !t Books/Harper Collins, 2010. p 135
- FIVE duels were fought over her in the month after excerpts from Marie and Paul’s love letters are made public on November 23, 1911. All of them involved journalists. Paul Langevin fought only one, he realized that it was “idiotic” but nevertheless felt that he codes of French masculinity required that he challenge the editor of the newspaper that published their letters to a duel. On November 25, two days after the press shared excerpts from their letters, Langevin and Tery arrived at the Though this reeks of toxic masculinity to us today, at the time this wasn’t so uncommon. Langevin and the editor arrived at the velodrome (bicycle track) at the Parc des Princes, shown here (though a few years before the duel). They had seconds, and just as a side note one of Langevin’s seconds was a future Prime Minister of France, prepared their pistols, and prepared the walk 25 meters before firing. They paced, counted, and… nothing happened. After a few tense seconds, one of Tery’s seconds fired into the air. It was over. The next day, the journalist’s paper published a detailed account of the duel, referring to Marie Curie only as “the widow of the celebrated inventor of radium” CAN YOU IMAGINE THE GAUL… The journalist Langevin challenged wrote that he was satisifeid that Langevin showed up but that he would not fire at him because he was a “family man” and that he held him in too high esteem to actually shoot him. This was theater, more or less, and they had satisfied the Langevin quoted on p. 70 of Eva Hemmungs Wirtén, Making Marie Curie: Intellectual Property and Celebrity Culture in an Age of Information. University of Chicago Press, 2015. Image URL: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b6912717f
- The Royal Swedish Academy kept close tabs on just what was happening in Paris and some people expressed real concern that her personal life would overshadow the Nobel prize. Even friends and allies of hers on the committee suggested that she not accept the prize until after the Langevin divorce trial demonstrated clearly that the accusations against her, that she had intentionally and maliciously wooed a man away from his wife, were untrue. To that, Marie Curie responded that the facts of her private life had no bearing on the scientific work she completed. Quoted in Eva HemmungsWirtén, Making Marie Curie: Intellectual Property and Celebrity Culture in an Age of Information. University of Chicago Press, 2015. 72-23. Image URL:
- Just a few days after Marie wrote to the Nobel Committee, on December 8, 1911, Paul and Jeanne’s divorce is finalized. It does not mention Marie at all. Their relationship did not survive long after his divorce, for reasons we can only speculate about, but by all accounts they remained collegial and friendly for the duration of their lives. My sense is that science at such an elite level in Paris at this moment was a very small world, I can’t imagine it would have been easy to avoid each other and remain professionally active. French Physicists Marie Curie & Paul Langevin French physicists Paul Langevin (1872 - 1946) and Marie Curie (1867 - 1934) (front left) stand in front of a group of women on steps, Paris, early 1910s. (Photo by Albert Harlingue/Roger Viollet via Getty Images). URL: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/french-physicists-paul-langevin-and-marie-curie-stand-in-news-photo/71423855
- Despite urging by her colleagues, Marie did travel to Stockholm on schedule to accept the Nobel Prize. Pointedly and poignantly, the acceptance speech she gave acknowledged the contributions of her late husband explicitly but was full of “I” and “me,” a woman who took credit for the work that she did and refused to be overshadowed by the men in her life. (Wirten 74).
- In 1940, the Nazis placed Langevin under house arrest. In 1944, he escaped to Switzerland using false papers obtained by another Nobel prize winner, Frederic Joliot-Curie (shown here on the left) with his wife, Iréne Joliot-Curie. He was Marie Curie’s son-in-law. (Bok and Kounelis, 19). https://www.flickr.com/photos/25053835@N03/4406405576/
- Hélène Langevin-Joliot, a nuclear physicist and the granddaughter of Marie (Irene’s daughter), and Michel Langevin, also a physicist and the grandson of Paul Langevin, married in 1948. Image of Langevin-Joliot via Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A9l%C3%A8ne_Langevin-Joliot#/media/File:Conf%C3%A9rence_Pierre_et_Marie_Curie_15_septembre_2012_06.jpg Michel Langevin photo via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michel_Langevin.png
- “First Day Cover Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Marie Curie.” India: India Security Press, November 6, 1968. Witco Stamp Collection, Box 2. Science History Institute. Philadelphia. https://digital.sciencehistory.org/works/2v23vt40n.