Quotation Sources
Chapter 1
Marie’s autobiographical essay is included in her biography of Pierre, Pierre Curie, published in 1923. All of her reflections quoted in this chapter are taken from that essay.
Excerpts from her letters to her childhood friend Kazia and cousin Henrietta appear in Ève Curie’s 1937 biography, Madame Curie. Letters from Wladislaw Sklodowski to his daughters are also excerpted in Madame Curie.
Chapter 2
The texts of Marie’s letters to and from her brother, Józef, are preserved in Ève Curie’s biography, Madame Curie.
Marie recorded her first impressions of Pierre in Pierre Curie.
Fragments of Pierre’s diary are held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. This passage is quoted in Madame Curie.
Pierre’s letter refusing a decoration, also preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale, can be read on-line at the Gallica site.
Chapter 3
Marie’s letters in Polish to her brother, her father, and her friend Kazia are quoted in Ève’s Madame Curie.
Marie recorded her impressions of the gorge of the Truyère and the Brittany coast—and the quality of her married life—in Pierre Curie.
Her letters to and from Pierre are quoted in Madame Curie, Pierre Curie, Marie Curie: A Life by Susan Quinn, and Marie Curie: Une femme dans son siècle.
British industrialist and inventor Rookes Evelyn Bell Crompton (1845–1940) made the very positive comments about Marie’s work on magnetized steel at a 1904 meeting of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. He was quoted in “Domesticating the Magnet: Secularity, Secrecy, and Permanency as Epistemic Boundaries in Marie Curie’s Early Work,” by Graeme Gooday, in Spontaneous Generations: A Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science 3, no. 1 (2009) 68–81.
Chapter 4
Marie noted her observations of Irène’s development (and later Ève’s as well, over a period of fifteen years) in her cahier des enfants, preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale. It can be read on the Gallica website.
Marie’s paper “Rays Emitted by the Compounds of Uranium and Thorium” appears in English in Alfred Romer’s Radiochemistry and the Discovery of Isotopes, as do two other papers of hers, “On a New Radio-active Substance Contained in Pitchblende,” coauthored with Pierre, and “On a New, Strongly Radio-active Substance Contained in Pitchblende,” coauthored with Pierre and G. Bémont.
The congratulatory letter about the Prix Gegner is preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale and can be read on the Gallica website.
Marie’s letters in Polish to her sister Bronya are excerpted in Madame Curie.
Chapter 5
Marie’s assessment of the need to isolate polonium and radium, as well as her descriptions of that work and the “poor, shabby hangar,” are taken partly from her biography of Pierre and partly from her doctoral dissertation, which can be read in French or English online.
Recollections from Marie’s students at Sèvres are quoted in the book by her star pupil, Eugénie Feytis Cotton, titled Les Curie et la radioactivité.
Marie’s exchanges in Polish with her father, brother, and sister Bronya are quoted in Madame Curie.
Pierre’s letter to Henri Poincaré about the 1903 Nobel Prize is quoted in Pierre Curie Correspondances by Karin Blanc.
Chapter 6
Marie’s letters to her brother in Polish are quoted in Madame Curie.
Pierre’s correspondence with his friend and fellow physicist Louis Georges Gouy is held at the Bibliothèque nationale and quoted in Ève’s Madame Curie.
Wilhelm Ostwald’s assessment of the hangar is quoted in Marie Curie by Robert Reid.
Dmitri Mendeleev’s complaints about radioactivity are quoted in Michael D. Gordin’s A Well-Ordered Thing: Dmitrii Mendeleev and the Shadow of the Periodic Table.
Marie’s official reply to W. Marckwald, “On the Radioactive Substance ‘Polonium,’” was originally published in German in Physikalische Zeitschrift 4 (1902–03) and appears in English in Radiochemistry and the Discovery of Isotopes.
The text of Pierre’s Nobel lecture can be read on the Nobel Prize website.
Marie’s journal of her grief is held at the Bibliothèque nationale and can be read on the Gallica website.
Chapter 7
Marie’s first lecture at the Sorbonne is quoted in Obsessive Genius by Barbara Goldsmith.
Harriet Brooks’s letters to Ernest Rutherford are held in the Rutherford Collection of Correspondence at the Cambridge University Library.
The conversation between Rutherford and Soddy in the privacy of the McGill lab is recounted in Muriel Howorth’s Pioneer Research on the Atom: Rutherford and Soddy in a Glorious Chapter of Science – The Life Story of Frederick Soddy, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S., Nobel Laureate.
Harriet’s exchange of letters with the Barnard dean is held in the Barnard College Archives and quoted in the biography Harriet Brooks: Pioneer Nuclear Scientist by Marelene and Geoffrey Rayner-Canham.
Harriet conveyed her impressions of Mme. Curie in an April 1910 address to the McGill Alumnae Society, which is reprinted in full in the Rayner-Canham biography.
Marie’s letter to Eugénie Feytis is held in the archives of the École Normale Supérieure and quoted in Eugénie Cotton (1881–1967): Histoires d’une vie—Histoires d’un siècle by Loukia Efthymiou.
Rutherford’s letters to Prof. Arthur Schuster at Manchester University recommending Harriet Brooks for the John Harling Fellowship are held at the Royal Society and quoted in the Rayner-Canham biography.
Harriet’s handwritten letter of resignation from the Curie lab is reproduced as a photocopy in Les femmes du laboratoire de Marie Curie by Natalie Pigeard-Micault.
Frank Pitcher’s letters to Harriet Brooks were preserved by their son Paul Brooks Pitcher and loaned to Marelene and Geoffrey Rayner-Canham for inclusion in their biography.
Chapter 8
Letters between Marie and her daughter Irène are collected in Marie / Irène Curie Correspondance: Choix de lettres (1905–1934). Another collection, Lettres: Marie Curie et ses filles, includes letters to and from both Irène and Ève.
The gossip columnist’s assessment of the cooperative school is quoted in Madame Curie.
Eyvind Bødtker’s correspondence is quoted in “Ellen Gleditsch: Pioneer Woman in Radiochemistry” by Annette Lykknes, Helge Kragh, and Lise Kvittingen, published in Physics in Perspective 6 (2004); and also in Anne-Marie Weidler Kubanek’s biography of Ellen Gleditsch, Nothing Less Than An Adventure.
Ellen spoke of being trusted with a fortune’s worth of radium at the Curie lab in a 1911 interview with Urd, a Norwegian women’s magazine, quoted in Lykknes et al.
Ellen reported her observations of Mme. Curie’s work ethic in an article she contributed to Kvinnelige Studenter 1882–1932, quoted in Kubanek.
Émile Armet de Lisle’s letter to Marie, September 21, 1908, is preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale and quoted in Soraya Boudia’s Marie Curie et son laboratoire.
Chapter 9
The entire text of Lucie Blanquies’s Traité de Physique can be read on the Gallica website, the digital library of the Bibliothèque nationale.
Lucie’s study, “Comparaison entre les rayons alpha produits par différentes substances radioactives,” was published in the Comptes rendus: CRAS, T148 (1909): 1753–55.
Ellen commented on the way problems travel from lab to lab in her article for Kvinnelige Studenter 1882–1932, quoted in Lykknes et al, “Ellen Gleditsch: Pioneer Woman.”
Bertram Boltwood’s correspondence with Ernest Rutherford is collected and edited by Lawrence Badash in Rutherford and Boltwood: Letters on Radioactivity.
Hertha Ayrton’s letter to her daughter, Barbara, is quoted in Evelyn Sharp’s Hertha Ayrton: A Memoir. Her letter to the Westminster Gazette appeared on March 14, 1909.
Madame’s letter to Jacques Danne, preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale, is quoted in Marie Curie et son laboratoire.
Chapter 10
Marie notes Dr. Curie’s illness in her cahier des enfants, her vigil with him in Pierre Curie.
May Sybil Leslie’s letters to Arthur Smithells are reproduced with the permission of Special Collections, Leeds University Library, Brotherton Collection.
Marie’s description of Irène’s grief appears in her cahier des enfants.
Harriet Brooks’s April 1910 address to the McGill Alumnae Society is reprinted in full in Harriet Brooks: Pioneer Nuclear Scientist by Marelene and Geoffrey Rayner-Canham.
Marie’s letters to Paul Langevin were made public in the November 23, 1911, issue of l’Oeuvre, which biographer Susan Quinn described as “a scurrilous weekly” aiming “to publicly disgrace and humiliate Marie Curie.” Nevertheless, Quinn’s study of the letters as printed convinced her, as she noted in Marie Curie: A Life, “that they are in fact genuine excerpts.”
Chapter 11
Ernest Rutherford’s letter to Bertram Boltwood following the Brussels congress appears in Badash’s collection of Letters on Radioactivity.
Marie’s letter to Paul Langevin is quoted in Quinn.
Jean and Henriette Perrin each prepared a testimonial account of events related to the Langevin marital difficulties. These were held at the school of physics and chemistry, and restricted until 1990, when Quinn saw and quoted from them in Marie Curie: A Life.
Chapter 12
Marie’s thoughts on Ève’s musical talent appear in her cahier des enfants.
Sybil’s June 8, 1911, letter regarding “too much radioactivity” is quoted with the permission of Special Collections, Leeds University Library, Brotherton Collection, MS 416/1a.
Irène’s letter home from Zakopane appears in Correspondance, Ève’s in Lettres.
Ellen declared chemistry her “everything” in an interview published in Urd on January 14, 1911.
H. A. Lorentz’s remarks at the first Solvay Council are quoted in The Solvay Councils and the Birth of Modern Physics.
Jacques Curie sent his defense of Marie, dated November 9, 1911, and quoted in Quinn, to the director of the school of physics and chemistry for submission to a newspaper.
Gustave Téry’s remarks in l’Oeuvre are quoted in Robert Reid’s Marie Curie.
Svante Arrhenius’s December 1, 1911, letter to Mme. Curie is held at the Mittag-Leffler Institute and quoted in Quinn. Marie’s reply, held at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Center for History of Science, is also quoted in Quinn.
Marie’s 1911 acceptance speech can be read on the Nobel Prize website.
Chapter 13
Ernest Rutherford’s letters to Bertram Boltwood regarding his opinion of Mme. Curie and his trip to Paris for the comparison of radium standards appear in the Badash collection.
Marie’s “silkworm” letter to her niece Hanna is quoted in the French edition of Ève’s Madame Curie but excluded (perhaps accidentally?) from Doubleday’s English edition.
The 1912 correspondence between Hertha Ayrton and Marie Curie appears in Evelyn Sharp’s Hertha Ayrton: A Memoir.
The letter inviting Mme. Curie to head a radium institute in Poland is reproduced in Ève’s Madame Curie.
“Mme. Sklodowska’s” letters to Ellen Gleditsch in the summer of 1912 are held at the National Library of Norway and can be viewed on its website.
Hertha’s regrets about being too politically active are quoted in Sharp.
Irén Götz’s goodbye letter is reproduced as a photocopy in Les femmes du laboratoire de Marie Curie.
Chapter 14
The report coauthored by Mme. P. Curie and H. Kamerlingh Onnes, “The Radiation of Radium at the Temperature of Liquid Hydrogen,” appeared in Communications from the Laboratory of Physics at the University of Leiden 135, 1537 (1913), and is reprinted in Oeuvres de Marie Sklodowska Curie.
Marie’s sympathy note to Ellen, dated May 1, 1913, is held at the National Library of Norway and quoted in Kubanek.
Ève recollected the conversations between her mother and Albert Einstein in Madame Curie.
Einstein’s letter of November 23, 1911, is published online in English translation by Princeton University Press, The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein.
An account of Margaret Todd’s coining of the word “isotope” appears in Women in their Element.
Chapter 15
These letters between Marie and her daughters appear in Lettres: Marie Curie et ses filles.
Boltwood’s letter about Ellen Gleditsch, dated September 12, 1913, is reproduced in Badash. His letter to Ellen herself, dated the day before, is quoted in Kubanek.
Ellen recalled and paraphrased Theodore Lyman’s rejection in a 1964 interview with Dagbladet, quoted in Kubanek.
Boltwood’s article “The Origin of Radium” appeared in Nature 76, no. 1978, 544–45 (1907).
Chapter 16
Marie’s letters to and from her daughters regarding the First World War are collected in Lettres: Marie Curie et ses filles.
The wartime disposition of Mme. Curie’s radium was stated in a letter to her from cabinet chief Pierre Guesde, held at the Bibliothèque nationale and quoted in Marie Curie: Une femme dans son siècle.
Danysz’s letter from the front is held at the Institut Curie and quoted in Quinn.
Maurice’s wartime reports to Marie are held at the Bibliothèque nationale and quoted in Quinn.
Marie’s wartime letter to Paul Langevin is quoted in Ève’s Madame Curie.
François Canac’s February 1915 letter is held at the Institut Curie and quoted in Quinn.
Marie reported her experience of planting bulbs while bombs fell in Pierre Curie.
Chapter 17
Hertha’s description of and comments about the Ayrton fan are quoted in Sharp.
Maurice’s letter to Marie is held at the Bibliothèque nationale and quoted in Quinn.
Marie reported the difficulty of preparing emanation bulbs in Pierre Curie.
Marie’s letter of June 22, 1916, asking Ellen to work at Sels du Radium, is preserved in the National Library of Norway and quoted in Lykknes et al., “Ellen Gleditsch: Pioneer Woman.”
Ève’s letter to Marie appears in Lettres: Marie Curie et ses filles.
Excerpts from the text by Ellen Gleditsch and Eva Ramstedt appear in “Ellen Gleditsch: Duty and Responsibility in a Research and Teaching Career, 1916–1946,” by Annette Lykknes, Lise Kvittingen, and Anne Kristine Børresen, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 36, no. 1 (2005): 131–88.
Sir Ernest’s May 18, 1917, letter to his wife is quoted in Rutherford: Being the Life and Letters of the Rt. Hon. Lord Rutherford, O.M. by A. S. Eve.
Marie’s January 27, 1918, letter to Ellen, held in the National Library of Norway, is quoted in Kubanek.
Irène’s letter to Marie appears in Lettres.
Fernand Holweck’s letter is quoted in Quinn.
Eugénie Feytis Cotton’s observations on peace appear in her 1967 biography of her husband, and are quoted in Loukia Efthymiou’s Eugénie Cotton (1881–1967).
Chapter 18
Marie expressed her revulsion to war in Pierre Curie. Her reflection on injustices done to Poland also appears in Pierre Curie.
Her report co-authored with Dr. Regaud is quoted in “Marie Curie and the Radium Industry: A Preliminary Sketch” by Xavier Roqué, in History and Technology, 13 (1997).
Her December letter to her brother is quoted in Ève Curie’s biography.
Stefan Meyer’s description of postwar privations in Vienna appears in A. S. Eve’s Rutherford: Being the Life and Letters.
Ernest Rutherford’s June 14, 1919, thank-you note to Ellen Gleditsch is quoted in Kubanek.
Marie’s August 1 letter to Ellen is in the National Library of Norway and on its website. She expressed her dream of an ideal lab in Pierre Curie.
Her letters to her daughters appear in Lettres: Marie Curie et ses filles.
Chapter 19
Ellen Gleditsch’s letter describing Randi Holwech is quoted in Kubanek.
Marie spoke of her occasional “discomfort” from handling radium in her autobiographical sketch.
She extolled radon above radium for cancer treatment in Pierre Curie.
Mrs. Meloney recalled her first meeting with Mme. Curie in the introduction she wrote to Pierre Curie.
The June 12, 1920, postcard to Marie from Ellen, Eva, and Sybil is quoted in Kubanek.
Ellen’s comment about the value of study abroad is quoted in “Appreciated Abroad, Depreciated at Home—The Career of a Radiochemist in Norway: Ellen Gleditsch (1879–1968)” by Annette Lykknes, Lise Kvittingen, and Anne Kristine Børresen, Isis 95 (2004): 576–609.
Chapter 20
Marie’s letter to her daughters from Brussels appears in Lettres: Marie Curie et ses filles.
Her letter to Henriette Perrin is quoted in Madame Curie.
Ève recorded her memories of the trip to America in Madame Curie.
Marie praised American women’s colleges for their emphasis on sports in Pierre Curie. Her disgruntled letter to the rector at the Sorbonne is quoted in Quinn.
She described the radium presentation ceremony in Pierre Curie.
Bertram Boltwood’s account of Mme. Curie’s visit to America appears in Badash’s collection of Letters on Radioactivity.
Marie’s brief summary of her life story is quoted in Mrs. Meloney’s introduction to Pierre Curie.
Chapter 21
Welcoming remarks by Dr. Anatole Chauffard are quoted in Madame Curie.
Catherine Chamié’s correspondence is archived at the Institut Curie and quoted in Les femmes du laboratoire de Marie Curie. Her observations of Marie’s technique are quoted in Madame Curie.
The 1922 letters between Albert Einstein and Marie Curie regarding the ICIC are collected in Albert Einstein: Correspondances françaises, by Michel Biezunski, and quoted in Quinn.
Marie’s letters to her daughters appear in Lettres: Marie Curie et ses filles.
Ève described the décor of the family apartment in Madame Curie.
Marie’s letters to her sister Bronya are excerpted in Madame Curie.
Chapter 22
A copy of the Academy of Medicine report, written by Dr. Regaud, is preserved with Mme. Curie’s papers at the Bibliothèque nationale.
Ève assessed Marie’s parenting style in Madame Curie.
Frédéric Joliot’s early impressions of Irène Curie are quoted in two biographies, one by his scientific colleague Pierre Biquard and the other by his acquaintance Maurice Goldsmith. (See Bibliography.)
Marie’s letters home to her daughters appear in Lettres.
Harlan Miner’s 1925 letters to Mme. Curie are held at the Bibliothèque nationale.
Chapter 23
The February 19, 1926, “Fred” postcard is included in Lettres: Marie Curie et ses filles.
Emilie Roederer Joliot’s impressions of Marie and Irène Curie were recorded in her diary and quoted in the Goldsmith biography of Frédéric.
Marie’s letters to Ève appear in Lettres.
Frédéric’s letters to Irène are quoted in the Goldsmith biography.
Nobuo Yamada’s letters are quoted in “Nobuo Yamada (1896–1927)—Marie Curie’s First Japanese Disciple” by Keiko Kawashima of the Nagoya Institute of Technology, published online at https://www.ne.jp/asahi/kaeru/kawashima/yamada/yamada.html.
Chapter 24
Irène and Frédéric’s first joint paper was “Sur le nombre d’ions produits par les rayons alpha du RaC’ dans l’air.” CRAS, T186 (1928): 1722–24.
Frédéric’s letters are interspersed with Irène’s in Marie / Irène Curie Correspondance.
Marie’s letters to Ève appear in Lettres.
Irène’s notebook about her children is held by the Curie and Joliot Curie Association, and quoted in Irène Joliot-Curie by Louis-Pascal Jacquemond.
Marie’s letter to her brother is held at the National Museum, Warsaw, and quoted in Quinn.
Marie’s comments to reporters about the dial painters appeared in the New York Journal, May 26, 1926.
Chapter 25
An interview with Ellen Gleditsch appeared in the Oakland Tribune on April 3, 1929.
Ellen’s letter to Marie is held at the National Library, Oslo, and is quoted in Kubanek.
Ellen wrote up her experiences abroad in her memoir “Female Students 1882–1932,” quoted in Lykknes et al., “Ellen Gleditsch: Pioneer Woman.”
Ellen’s comments to her fellow university women in Norway were reported in Dagbladet on October 7, 1929, and quoted in Kubanek.
Marie’s letter to Ève appears in Lettres.
Chapter 26
Marie’s letters to and from her daughters appear in Lettres.
Ellen’s comments at the 1930 jubilee are quoted in Lykknes et al, “Ellen Gleditsch: Pioneer Woman in Radiochemistry.”
Frédéric’s letter to Marie appears in Correspondance.
Chapter 27
Marie’s and Ève’s letters to Irène from Spain appear in Lettres.
Marie’s letters to Ève from Geneva, to Irène from Rome, and from Irène in the mountains also appear in Lettres.
Chapter 28
Ernest Rutherford’s disbelief regarding the Paris findings on gamma radiation was reported by physicist Pierre Radvanyi, a former student of Frédéric Joliot, and science historian Monique Bordry in their book La radioactivité artificielle et son histoire.
Frédéric’s comments on discovery and the hidden riches of old laboratories appeared in an interview for the Gazette de Lausanne of June 29, 1957, and are excerpted in the Goldsmith biography, as are his letters to his mother.
Letters between Irène and Marie appear in Lettres.
Pieter Zeeman’s letter of recommendation for Willy Lub, dated January 23, 1932, is quoted in Les femmes du laboratoire de Marie Curie.
Marie’s letter to Bronya is quoted in Madame Curie.
Chapter 29
Marie’s article “Sur l’Actinium” appeared in the Journal de Chimie Physique 27 (1930) and is included in Oeuvres de Marie Sklodowska Curie.
Marie’s letters to and from Ève appear in Lettres.
Marie’s remarks at the Madrid conference are quoted in Les Curies by Eugénie Feytis Cotton.
Paul Langevin’s welcoming remarks were recorded in the official proceedings of the seventh Solvay Council and quoted in The Solvay Councils and the Birth of Modern Physics. Lise Meitner’s negative comment about the positrons of transmutation is also quoted there.
Frédéric’s reaction to the criticism is quoted in Radvanyi’s Les Curie: Pionniers de l’atome.
Chapter 30
Marie’s letter to Ève appears in Lettres.
Frédéric’s memory of Marie’s reaction to the discovery of artificial radioactivity is quoted in Radvanyi and Bordry, La radioactivité artificielle.
Marie’s letter to Bronya is excerpted in Madame Curie.
Dr. Tobé’s announcement of Marie’s death is quoted in Madame Curie.
Marie’s obituary appeared in the New York Times on July 5, 1934.
Irène’s and Frédéric’s Nobel Prize lectures (“Artificial Production of Radioactive Elements” and “Chemical Evidence of the Transmutation of Elements”) can be read on the Nobel Prize website.
Epilogue
Marguerite Perey’s debt to Mme. Curie is quoted in Cotton’s Les Curies.