How Marie Curie’s Genius Shaped Science | Dava Sobel [Ep. 478]

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Science, Physics, Natural Sciences

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥 How did Marie Curie go from being rejected by the French Academy to winning two Nobel Prizes? In this episode of Into The Impossible, Dava Sobel, author of “The Elements of Marie Curie,” takes us on a journey through Curie’s life, from having an angry mob outside her house to making revolutionary discoveries that would change the course of history. Dava Sobel is an acclaimed author with a particular talent for telling the stories of historical figures in science and highlighting the human elements behind their groundbreaking achievements. Through Sobel’s incredible storytelling, we gain insight into the resilience and brilliance of one of history’s most iconic figures. Join us as we explore how Marie Curie’s legacy still shines today! — Key Takeaways: 00:00 Intro 00:26 Marie Curie’s scandal and public backlash in 1911 02:07 Her wartime efforts creating mobile X-ray units 04:28 Judging a book by its cover 07:40 Marie Curie’s work on magnetism 09:52 Explaining the names of the chapters 17:14 Curie’s success in breaking gender barriers 20:22 Dangerous misconceptions surrounding radium 23:10 Marie and Pierre Curie’s work 29:15 The distinctions between physics and chemistry 30:54 Galileo’s daughter and the human side of scientists 42:26 Galilean moons and solving the longitude problem 45:02 The Pope’s argument 50:46 What’s next for Dava Sobel 56:37 Outro — Additional resources: ➡️ Learn more about Dava Sobel: 📚 The Elements of Marie Curie: https://a.co/d/gEyX6qI 💻 Website: https://www.davasobel.com/ 📚 Galileo’s Daugther: https://a.co/d/fVkwQLW ➡️ Follow me on your fav platforms: ✖️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 🔔 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 📝 Join my mailing list: https://briankeating.com/list ✍️ Check out my blog: https://briankeating.com/cosmic-musings/ 🎙️ Follow my podcast: https://briankeating.com/podcast — Into the Impossible with Brian Keating is a podcast dedicated to all those who want to explore the universe within and beyond the known. Make sure to follow/subscribe so you never miss an episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	There's widespread misogyny even now.
0:02.9	There's a general belief that women just don't do science.
0:06.5	Marie was certainly not the first.
0:08.6	She was never the only.
0:10.0	She didn't want to be.
0:10.8	And her failure to get into the French Academy of Sciences,
0:14.3	they themselves said immutable tradition.
0:17.2	That's what kept her out.
0:18.4	And it was an embarrassment.
0:19.9	Deva, thank you so much for finally we got together after years and years of trying to organize it.
0:24.6	Yes, we did it. And I'm happy to be with you. Talk about the time in 1911 when a crowd gathered outside her door shouting, foreign woman and husband stealer.
0:42.4	And perhaps, Deva, if you could explain, the connection between that and the rehabilitation of her image thanks to x-ray machines.
0:46.2	By 1911, she was five years a widow.
0:51.0	And a close friend of hers and her husbands, another physicist named Paul Langevin, had been confiding in her
1:01.7	about his unhappy marriage. And their conversations turned into a love affair. It seems she really thought that he would leave his wife,
1:14.0	a mistake that many women have made in history,
1:18.1	but he did not leave his wife.
1:20.4	And letters between them got into the hands of his wife's family
1:27.1	and then were leaked to a newspaper and published
1:32.0	with scandalous headlines, a romance in the laboratory. And because she was a foreigner,
1:41.4	she was Polish, married to a Frenchman and doing her revolutionary work in France.
1:48.9	So a mob actually formed outside her house. And she was rescued by a close colleague of hers,
	...

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