MARIE CURIE

From bestselling biographer Walter Isaacson, this is the morally inspiring tale of the passionate scientist who pushed through all obstacles to set the stage for the modern world.

The only person in history to win Nobel prizes in two different sciences, Marie Curie ushered in the 20th century by discovering that certain elements – she dubbed them radioactive – spontaneously spew particles from deep within their atoms.

Her groundbreaking work led to life-saving applications, most notably treatments for cancer that are still being used. But these practical payoffs were not what motivated her. Instead, her career is a testament to the value of curiosity for its own sake.

Curie became an icon, put on pedestals and placed in the Pantheon. Isaacson goes behind the symbol by studying her hundreds of notebook pages and letters, still so radioactive that you must wear gloves and sign a waiver before handling them, to see how her mind worked and what motivated her.

She was a person who refused to be constrained. As a woman, she was not allowed to go to university in her native Poland, so she moved to Paris penniless and became the first woman to get a doctorate from the Sorbonne. After reaching the heights of scientific glory, she endured a fall from grace because of an affair with the favorite student of her late husband, which became a page-one scandal the same week she won her second Nobel. The Nobel authorities told her it would be best if she did not come to accept the prize, but she defied them. Then, emitting energy from deep inside herself, she achieved a comeback through her work and wartime service.

This book provides a welcome dose of inspiration at a time when we are faced with new fire-of-the-gods technologies, notably gene editing and artificial intelligence. In grappling with them, we should be guided by the moral compass of Curie. She was able to temper her audacity with humility, be guided by evidence rather than dogma, be curious rather than arrogant, and care deeply about friends and family, country and humanity. Like a child in a fairy tale, which is how she described herself, she did it all with a sense of wonder that allowed her to be humbled and awed by the cosmos in which she found herself.