In many ways, Marie Curie represents modern science. Her considerable
lifetime achievements--the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize, the
only woman to be awarded the Prize in two fields, and the only person to
be awarded Nobel Prizes in multiple sciences--are studied by
schoolchildren across the world. When, in 2009, the New Scientist
carried out a poll for the "Most Inspirational Female Scientist of All
Time," the result was a foregone conclusion: Marie Curie trounced her
closest runner-up, Rosalind Franklin, winning double the number of
Franklin's votes. She is a role model to women embarking on a career in
science, the pride of two nations--Poland and France--and, not least of
all, a European Union brand for excellence in science.
Making Marie Curie explores what went into the creation of this icon
of science. It is not a traditional biography, or one that attempts to
uncover the "real" Marie Curie. Rather, Eva Hemmungs Wirtén, by tracing
a career that spans two centuries and a world war, provides an
innovative and historically grounded account of how modern science
emerges in tandem with celebrity culture under the influence of
intellectual property in a dawning age of information. She explores the
emergence of the Curie persona, the information culture of the period
that shaped its development, and the strategies Curie used to manage and
exploit her intellectual property. How did one create and maintain for
oneself the persona of scientist at the beginning of the twentieth
century? What special conditions bore upon scientific women, and on
married women in particular? How was French identity claimed,
established, and subverted? How, and with what consequences, was a
scientific reputation secured?
In its exploration of these questions and many more, Making Marie
Curie provides a composite picture not only of the making of Marie
Curie, but the making of modern science itself.
