Hello friends, welcome, so delighted to have you with me today for the fourth episode

in our documentary series, How Women One World War Two.

While it was the United States that ultimately produced and detonated the first atomic bomb,

the technology came from various players and programs across Europe.

France, Austria, Germany, Norway, and Great Britain all had scientists and governments

who played a role in the success of the Manhattan Project.

That success happened through a combination of seemingly random events and intricately

planned schemes that fed into the speeding train that was atomic technology.

The US pops up along those tracks but the spark that would lead to the bomb began across

the Atlantic.

And in a way, there were women at the heart of it all.

I'm Sharon McMahon and here's where it gets interesting.

Let's begin with the name that you likely know from your earliest years in school.

At the dawn of the 20th century, Marie Curie and her husband Pierre discovered and isolated

the chemical element of radium.

Their lab in France.

Their work opened up a whole new world of scientific possibilities.

Marie became the first woman to win Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry and by the time

the roaring 20s danced in on jazz music, the Polish-born Marie who had once been shunned

in France for being a foreigner was immensely popular with the public.

Radium with its radioactive green glow was all the rage and it was used in a number of

everyday products like tonics for your health, toothpaste, a white and your teeth and it

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