Marie Maloney was nervous. It was a feeling she wasn't used to.

She'd started reporting for the Washington Post at age 17, and she was the first woman

to win a seat in the U.S. Senate press gallery.

By May 1920, she was editing a popular American magazine, The Delineator. And on a press tour

of Europe that year, she'd already interviewed War the World's author H. G. Wells, Peter Pan

author J. M. Barry, and philosopher Bertrand Russell. She was a seasoned reporter and knew

her stuff. Still, when Maloney ascended the steps of the laboratory that day in Paris,

she was nervous to meet Marie Curie.

Curie was not only an icon of modern science, the first person ever to win two Nobel prizes.

She was also a prickly personality and had a combative relationship with the media.

In 1910, after Curie tried to win a seat in the French Academy of Sciences, some right-wing

newspapers had started attacking her.

Curie had been born in pulp, and according to the Jingoistic Press, a foreigner like her

was unworthy of a seat in that august body.

Then, in 1911, reporters in Paris had exposed the widowed Curie's love affair with the married

physicist Paul Longvaine. Curie's husband Pierre had died a few years earlier in a carriage

axis, leaving Marie alone. Longvaine was unhappy with his marriage, so the two scientists

poured their passions into each other.

Unfortunately, Longvaine's wife opened their private love letters and sent them to a

news paper which published excerpts of them.

One letter from Marie read,

When I know that you are with your wife, my nights are atrocious, I can't sleep.

...