The Elements of Marie Curie

At the end of May, noted history of science author Dava Sobel gave the lecture “At Mme. Curie’s Lab: Radioactivity and a Place for Women in Science ” at our Washington, DC office. Part of the AIP Lyne Starling Trimble Lecture series, the talk focused on the life of Marie Curie and the women who worked with her in her lab, which was the subject of her 2024 book The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science. A full recording of the lecture is available on the AIP History YouTube channel .

During the event, the AIP Niels Bohr Library & Archives (NBLA) displayed rare books by Marie Curie, as well as other materials related to the women who worked in her lab.

Works by Marie Curie

A selection of works by Marie Curie held by NBLA concerning her work with radioactivity.

Curie, Marie. Radio-active substances, 1904.

Second American Edition. WE-20180413. Catalog Link

On June 25, 1903, Marie Curie presented her doctoral thesis, Recherches sur les substances radioactives, to the Faculty of Sciences in Paris. It documented her discovery of the radioactive elements polonium and radium, for which she would earn the Nobel Prize in Physics later that year (“In recognition of the extraordinary services [Marie and Pierre Curie] have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel”).

On display at the Trimble lecture was this American second edition of the thesis, a popular reprint of the English translation originally published in Chemical News, No. 88 (1903), that was widely circulated among the general public. NBLA’s copy is still in its original paper wrappers, which include commercial advertisements for laboratory samples and equipment for studying radioactive substances, such as radium salts, vacuum tubes, and spinthariscopes. These ads show the impact Curie’s research and resulting Nobel had on the commercial laboratory industry – as well as the start of the radium craze that would grip the public in early 20th century.

NBLA also holds a copy of the original 1903 first edition of Marie Curie’s thesis in French, which has been digitized and is available online in our digital repository .

To get a close-up look at the advertisements, see this digitized version of the thesis from Harvard University’s Medical Library on the Internet Archive, which contains the same advertisements as the American second edition.

Curie, Marie. Traité de radioactivité, 1910.

2 volumes. WE-20182394, WE-20182395. Catalog Link

Traité de radioactivité was published seven years after Marie Curie became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, for their work in “radiation phenomena” and one year before receiving her second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry, for her discovery of the elements radium and polonium.

Drawing on Curie’s lectures at the Sorbonne, this two-volume work spans nearly 1,000 pages and surveys a decade of discovery, with Volume One devoted to measurement and laboratory practice and Volume Two to radioactive substances and the nature of radiation.

Curie, Marie. Radioactivité, 1935.

2 volumes. WE-20182391, WE-20182392. Catalog Link

Edited by her elder daughter and son-in-law, Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Radioactivité was published the year after Marie Curie died. 1935 was also the year that the Joliot-Curies won their joint Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery of artificially created radioactive atoms. Intended to be a retrospective of Marie Curie’s career and an updated account of her field from her 1910 Treatise (see above), this volume compiles her lectures at the Sorbonne, along with an account of the current thinking on natural and artificial radioactivity.

The Women in Curie’s Lab

Dava Sobel’s book The Elements of Marie Curie features chapters focused on some of the women scientists who worked in the Curie lab in Paris, as well as other women in her life. Below are some of the materials held at NBLA by or about these women.

Cotton, Eugénie. Cotton, 1967.

L8 COT COT. Catalog Link

Eugénie Cotton, née Feytis (1881-1967), was a French physicist and women’s suffragist, who studied under Marie Curie at the École normale supérieure de jeunes filles (ENSJF) in 1901. She earned her doctorate in the physical sciences in 1925 and later became a research fellow at the National Center for Scientific Research in France and headmistress of the ENSJF, where she worked to reform science education. NBLA has the biography she wrote of her husband, fellow physicist Aimé Cotton (1869-1951), to memorialize his work after his death a decade earlier. It includes photos of Eugénie and their family and discusses their collaborative marriage. Eugénie also wrote a book about her mentor Marie Curie, Les Curie et la radioactivité , in 1963.

Curie, Ève. Madame Curie: a biography, 1938.

L8 CUR CUR. Catalog Link

Written by Marie Curie’s younger daughter, Ève Curie, this is perhaps the most intimate biography of Madame Curie’s life, translated from the original French by Vincent Sheean. In addition to her own memories, Ève interviewed her family members and utilized archival materials from her mother’s life such as correspondence, personal papers, official documents, and narratives in spoken and written forms from friends and family, resulting in a detailed account of Madame Curie’s life as both a scientist and as a human being. Ève was a journalist, a pianist, and a human rights advocate, and traveled worldwide on behalf of NATO and the United Nations. This biography launched her writing career.

Strohmaier, Brigitte. Marietta Blau, stars of disintegration: biography of a pioneer of particle physics, 2006.

L8 BLA MAR. Catalog Link

This book examines the life and work of the Austrian physicist Marietta Blau (1894–1970), whose research at Vienna’s Radium Institute helped establish the photographic method for detecting nuclear particles. In 1938, while Blau was on a research trip in Norway, Germany annexed Austria; Blau was unable to return to Austria because she was Jewish. With help from Albert Einstein, she was able to immigrate to Mexico and later the U.S. Despite these obstacles, she was nominated for the Nobel Prize (in Physics and Chemistry) five times from 1950-1957. This book combines biographical essays, personal recollections, and discussions of her scientific work.In addition to this translated edition, NBLA also has the original 2003 German edition .

Women in their element: selected women’s contribution to the periodic system, edited by Annette Lykknes, Brigitte Van Tiggelen, 2019.

L2 LYK. Catalog Link

This book explores the contributions of women scientists to the periodic table of chemical elements – not only the discoveries of elements, but also the oft-overlooked work of increasing our understanding of the nature of the elements through experimentation, analytical methods, and education. Several women featured in Dava Sobel’s book The Elements of Marie Curie have chapters in this compendium: Marie Curie (Polonium and Radium), Harriet Brooks (Radon), Ellen Gleditsch (Radium, Chlorine and Potassium), May Sybil Leslie (Thorium), Elizabeth Róna (Polonium), and Irène Joliot-Curie (Artificial Radioactivity).

The Dava Sobel Collection at NBLA

In 2022, Dava Sobel donated over 30 books to NBLA. Her collection includes a variety of foreign language translations of her works and research materials related to her book Galileo’s Daughter, including a complete set of Galileo’s Opere. Check out her interview Translating Science History about the collection on our blog, Ex Libris Universum.

Works by Dava Sobel

• Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time (1995)
• Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love (2000)
• The Planets: A Discourse on the Discovery, Science, History and Mythology, of the Planets in Our Solar System, With One Chapter Devoted to Each of the Celestial Spheres (2005)
• Letters to Father: Sister Maria Celeste to Galileo, 1623-1633 (2005)
• A More Perfect Heaven : How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos (2011)
• The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars (2016)
• The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science (2024)