Lyne Starling Trimble Public Event Series
At Mme. Curie’s Lab: Radioactivity and a Place for Women in Science
Dava Sobel, author of Longitude, Galileo’s Daughter, and other widely read history of science titles
Wednesday, May 27, 2026
5:45pm, Reception
6:30pm, Lecture and Q&A
American Center for Physics
555 12th Street NW, Suite 250
Washington, DC 20004
Abstract
Dava Sobel
Credit: Glen Allsop for Hodinkee
Marie Skłodowska Curie’s career might have ended in 1906 with the sudden death of her husband, Pierre. But against all odds and traditions, the University of Paris invited her to take over the lab she had shared with him, and also to teach his physics course. As the only woman in the world who was both director of a research laboratory and professor at a major university, she became a beacon for others like her who sought careers in science. Among the more than forty aspiring female physicists and chemists she mentored, her own daughter Irène excelled to the point of becoming a Nobel laureate herself. Another Curie mentee gained distinction as the first woman admitted to the French Academy of Sciences—an honor that eluded both Marie and Irène Curie.
Speaker biography
Dava Sobel is the author of Longitude, Galileo’s Daughter, The Planets, A More Perfect Heaven, And the Sun Stood Still, and The Glass Universe. Galileo’s Daughter was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and is based on Galileo Galilei’s correspondence with his daughter, Suor Maria Celeste, a Catholic nun. Sobel also translated and annotated the complete correspondence, which she published in the book Letters to Father. She is moevero the co-author of six other books, including Is Anyone Out There? with astronomer Frank Drake. She has received the Individual Public Service Award from the National Science Board, the Bradford Washburn Award from the Boston Museum of Science, the Kumpke-Roberts Award from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the Cosmos Award for Outstanding Public Presentation of Science from the Planetary Society, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other honors. Before Sobel turned to writing books, she was a science reporter for the New York Times, and she is currently editor of the “Meter” poetry column in Scientific American.
Top image
Marie Curie with four students. Bain News Service, ca. 1910–1915, from Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. (See the original source)