The Elements of Marie Curie by Dava Sobel review – the great scientist who created her own school

A fresh and feminist study of the pioneering Nobel laureate reveals her impact on the women she mentored and set on the path to prominence

Marie Curie carried out some of her most pathbreaking work under an actual glass ceiling and the toxic particles that swirled beneath it eventually killed her. What Dava Sobel wants to convey to us in this unabashedly feminist account of the great woman’s life is that the metaphorical glass ceiling was just as toxic to the society over which it was clamped.

Each occasion the two-time Nobel laureate had a new advance to announce to the world, she had to beg a male colleague to present it to France’s scientific academy, which barred women from its ranks. This iron-clad rule outlived Curie, hobbling her daughter Irène – another Nobel laureate – in her turn, and by the time a woman was finally granted full membership, in 1979, not only were both Marie and Irène more famous than most of the men who had blocked them, but that first female member gave her affiliation as the “Pierre and Marie Curie University”, Paris.

The Elements of Marie Curie by Dava Sobel review – the great scientist who created her own school

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