Marie Curie by Kathleen Krull Page B

but he’d fallen out of the mainstream, refusing to recognize the existence of radioactivity or the electron or other new discoveries.
    Marie was impressed with the young Albert Einstein and wrote him a letter of recommendation for a position at the University of Zurich. He in turn admired her “sparkling intelligence,” though once complained in private that she was “cold as a herring.”
    In 1911, Rutherford made another breakthrough, building upon J. J. Thomson’s earlier theory about the structure of the atom. In an experiment, a sheet of thin gold foil was bombarded with high-velocity alpha-ray particles. As expected, most passed through and came out the other side. But some bounced back. When Rutherford learned of this, he rightly leaped to the notion that there was a dense core at the center of the gold atoms that had deflected the rays. He labeled this dense core the “nucleus.” He outlined a new model for the atom: mostly empty space, with a hard nucleus inside.
    Marie paid close attention. After all, it was her isolation of radium that provided the key to the new field of radioactivity. She had created what she later called “a chemistry of the invisible.” It was now the age of nuclear physics, concerned with the nucleus of the atom, or subatomic particles.
    At the same time Marie was keeping au courant in atomic physics, she had two young girls to raise. Because of her disdain for French schools, she threw her energy into organizing an experimental school for ten children—Irène as well as the children of Sorbonne professors who agreed to teach there. The experimental school lasted for two years, a chance for lucky children to learn from top-notch scholars. She herself taught physics and the first course ever on radioactivity. Like her father, Marie believed that science should be taught early but not too rigidly, with lots of hands-on experiments as well as time for games and physical activities. Her students, for example, proved that heavier bodies fall at the same rate as lighter ones by dipping bicycle ball bearings in ink and then watching the ink trails left as the ball bearings fell down slanted surfaces.
    Sadly she admitted, “I want to bring up my children as well as possible, but even they cannot awaken life in me.” Her emotions frozen, she was more dutiful than loving. It was most crucial to her that the girls become “invulnerable.” At home she made sure her daughters exercised every day, installing a trapeze and other gym equipment in the backyard, making time for bike trips, swimming lessons, tennis games, horseback riding. Pierre’s father, still the perfect babysitter, kept the household running, with help from maids and occasionally cooks.
    As the only one qualified to take Pierre’s place, Marie also became the first woman lecturer at the Sorbonne. She was appointed to take over his classes, but not—horrors—to receive a full professorship with all its benefits. (That didn’t come until two years later.) On the day of her first lecture, hundreds came, including Irène, photographers, socialites in enormous hats, gawkers perhaps expecting an emotional outburst.
    Instead, tense and pale, she started out: “When we examine our recent progress in the domain of physics, a period of time that comprises only a dozen years, we are certainly struck by an evolution that has nourished fundamental notions regarding the nature of electricity and of matter.”
    Not many of the casual spectators realized it, but those had been the exact final words of Pierre’s last lecture, and she went on from there, seamlessly integrating her words with his.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    Embarrassment—on a National Scale
    O NE NIGHT IN 1910, Marie arrived at a dinner wearing a white dress with a pink rose pinned to it, instead of her plain black mourning attire. What sort of announcement was she making? Whom was she hoping to impress?
    As solitary as she sometimes seemed, she did have a small circle of loyal