Indecent Exposure (to radioactive elements she’d discovered)
We are talking about a review of a biography on Marie Curie…
“She strove throughout, and especially at the end, to keep a firm distinction between her personal and scientific life. But in this she failed, and a woman of greater understanding of the world would have realized that she was bound to fail. She was awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry at the height of the open scandal over her affair with Langevin. A member of the Swedish Academy wrote to her indicating that she would not be welcome in Sweden and should refuse the prize until she had cleared her name. But, she replied, the prize was given for her discovery of polonium and radium, and nothing else. Was she right to insist – is any scientist right to insist – that there is “no connection between scientific work and private life”? Given the facts, and that she had written an incredibly indiscreet letter to her lover, with detailed recommendations as to how he could withhold sexual favors from his wife and thus make a break inevitable, there was probably no way that Marie Curie could be treated fairly by contemporary French society. ….
The episode affected her profoundly, of course, both personally and scientifically. It ruined her chances both of becoming a member of the French Academy of Sciences and of starting a new life with her lover. He was reconciled with his wife and took another mistress (an anonymous secretary) while Marie Curie was left to go on alone. “
Read the whole review. pdf.