Obsessive Genius

Title: Obsessive Genius - The Inner World of Marie Curie

Author: Barbara Goldsmith

Pages: 257

Genre: Biography

Grade: B+

Synopsis: This book is a biography of the famous scientist/physicist Marie Sklowdski Curie. Against all odds the poor Polish girl, Marie, finds a way to gain an education under Russian suppression of the Polish and women. Eventually she moves to Paris to study physics at the Sorbonne Institute. She becomes on of the very first women to obtain a degree from the institute. While in Paris, Marie meets Pierre and together they embark upon their obsessive research. Marie discovers radioactivity and uses it to discover the new elements of plutonium and radium. The Curies and Henri Becquerel share one of the first Nobel Prizes and later in life Marie becomes the first woman to win one outright.

My Review: This was a fantastic biography that was very easy to read and enjoy. The difficulties that Marie Curie faced as a woman in science are incredible. Nobody took her serious and very few people even believed that she made her own discoveries due to the fact that she was a woman. I enjoy books like this that bring famous historical figures to life that I studied in school (I took two Nuclear Engineering courses that were greatly shaped by the discoveries of Marie Curie). The number of famous physicists in Europe in the early 20th century is incredible - the Curies, Henri Becquerel, Albert Einstein, Neils Bohr, Ernest Rutherford, Max Planck, H. A. Lorentz and Henri Poincare among others. Also amazing is how long Marie Curie was able to live and work, working as closely as she was with highly radioactive substances without any protection. In many ways, her and her husband literally sacrificed themselves for knowledge that greatly benefitted all future generations.