The sociology is important, as long as one remembers the singularity. So Marie Curie’s singularity cannot but be enveloped in the sociology of science, which is to say these days, feminist politics. A president of Harvard can get it in the neck for suggesting that women don’t have the almost maniacal resolve it takes to become first-rate scientific researchers - that they are prone to distraction by such career-killers as motherhood. The interest naturally increases as women claim their place in that world with this interest comes anger, sometimes righteous, sometimes self-righteous, that difficulties should still stand in the way. Yet the fact remains: much of the interest in Madame Curie stems from her having been a woman in the man’s world of physics and chemistry. Genuine greatness deserves only the most gracious estate, not an academic ghetto, however fashionable and well-appointed. But such distinction better suits an Aphra Behn or Artemisia Gentileschi than it does a Jane Austen or Marie Curie. Chauvinist condescension of this order would seem to qualify Marie Curie as belle idéale of women’s studies, icon for the perennially aggrieved. Her husband, Pierre Curie, did the real work, they insisted, while she just went along for the wifely ride. Yet many male scientists of her day belittled her achievement, even denied her competence. When scoffers challenged these discoveries, she meticulously determined the atomic weight of the radioactive element she had revealed to the world, radium, and thereby placed her work beyond serious doubt. She took part in the discovery of radioactivity, a term she coined she identified it as an atomic property of certain elements. Einstein? In theoretical brilliance he outshone her - but her breakthroughs, by Einstein’s own account, made his possible. Marie Curie (1867–1934) is not only the most important woman scientist ever she is arguably the most important scientist all told since Darwin.
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