Marie Curie and Paul Langevin: Secret Forbidden Love

In the spring of 1910, Marie Curie began a secret and forbidden affair with the physicist Paul Langevin, a student and friend of her late husband Pierre. Who understood her pain over her husband's death if not Paul? This was Marie's way of continuing her love and admiration for Pierre. In Paul, Marie found the image of Pierre. In Marie, Paul found the image of Pierre. Marie and Paul were faithful to Pierre's memory and continued his work together.

Marie was a widow, meaning single. Paul was married with four children, unhappy in his relationship, a battered man. Adultery in those days was a criminal offense. Jeanne, Paul's wife, filed a lawsuit in court against her unfaithful husband and his lover. Not before she physically attacked Marie, threatened to kill her, and incited the neighbors to stone the villa where she lived.

Public opinion was divided into two: support for Marie Curie on the one hand, slander on the other. The enlightened camp, the one that had defended Alfred Dreyfus twenty years earlier, versus the extreme right-wing camp, those who did not agree with the clearing of the captain's name, the xenophobes, the misogynists, who revolted against "the traitor who, by witchcraft, robbed a decent French mother of her husband, the father of her children."

On December 8, 1911, two days before Marie Curie was to receive her second Nobel Prize, she had to appear in court for a hearing. The brilliant scientist was under heavy pressure to dissuade her from coming to Stockholm to receive the prize. She was strongly advised by her superiors that it would be better if she left the borders of France and continue her research in her native Poland. Marie persevered, supported by a group of close friends, most of whom were future Nobel laureates. After about a week, the scandal died down.

The French writer Irene Perrin conducted comprehensive, serious, detailed and meticulous historical research on the affair, studied Marie Curie's letters and diaries, peeled off her expense ledgers, analyzed photos, spent time in archives and libraries, brought facts, drew conclusions, calculated, deciphered, like a skilled detective. "A literary reconstruction," as she put it, which was published in a thick 350-page book, under the title "Marie Curie takes a lover” (As of today, not translated into Hebrew). Book cover:

Irène Frain, Marie Curie prend un amant, Seuil, 2015

This article was inspired by Irene Fran's book and will follow the developments in the Curie-Langevin affair that shook France and Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century and even resonated in the United States. The year 1911 was one of the worst in Marie Curie's life, but she also emerged victorious from it.

Irene Peran presents her book:

Boulevard Kellermann 108, Paris

The villa and garden of Pierre and Marie Curie in the 13th arrondissement, on Boulevard Kellerman, which is part of the “little belt” surrounding the city, served as an active meeting place for a group of scientists who came to talk and debate, about science, of course, but also about social justice, pedagogy and philosophy. The house and garden no longer exist, a building takes their place, but its spirit and meetings can be recreated.

A simple lawn with trees, bushes and flowers, a modestly furnished house, this was Pierre and Marie Curie's little paradise. Pierre's father, a retired doctor, modest and pleasant as he was, would trim the branches and mow the lawn. Little Irene, Marie and Pierre's eldest daughter, the second not yet born, would run and play with Didi the cat. Paul would come twice a week in the evening and participate in discussions about the couple's research, going up to their study. Paul was Pierre's favorite ally and later won his wife's trust and friendship.

On Sunday afternoons, the others would come, five, six, eight at most, the best scientists, physicists, mathematicians, chemists. Those were the good years between 1902 and 1904. In fine weather, they would sit on the iron chairs in the garden and talk about everything, art, channeling with spirits, the school curriculum, the senior officials of the Academy of Sciences who were hindering progress, and of course, radioactive materials. How nice to break the loneliness of research, enjoy a fraternal Sabbath together and share in the experiments!

A close-knit group that would support Marie after her husband's death (1906) as well as in the difficult hours when the "Curie-Langevin Affair" would break out (1911). All of them had socialist views, education for all, equal opportunities, the advancement of the younger generation based on personal value and not on lineage. All of them were on the side of the camp of Dreyfus' staunch supporters, on the side of the League for the Rights of Man.

Two particularly prominent couples in the group of knights were: Jean Perrin, physicist and chemist, teacher, Nobel Prize in Physics 1926, and his wife Henriette. Émile Borel, an important mathematician and statesman, and his wife Marguerite, a writer, very famous in her time, who wrote about forty books under the pen name Camille Marbo.

Paul was closest to Pierre. With him, Pierre would go on walks in the forest when he felt like smelling the rotting earth by the babbling brooks and running through the untamed countryside. Paul saw himself in Pierre. When he would go up to their study with Pierre and Marie, he would relive the nights when he had worked hard on his studies, while his mother knitted or sewed in his room, even if it was until two in the morning, until he had finished his lessons. When Pierre and Marie, with youthful enthusiasm, showed him the bluish light shining in the test tube, a magical ray in the darkness of the night, he felt with them as if he were in a fairy tale. The dilapidated laboratory hut with the leaky roof had become a palace.

6 rue Jean Mascré, Sceaux

Six months had passed since the bitter and hasty day when Pierre's body was brought to the villa on Boulevard Clermont. In the ambulance where she lay on a stretcher, lifeless, bleeding, with a shattered skull, she was accompanied by Paul, Marie's faithful friend, and André, Marie's scientific assistant. After the disaster, Marie left the villa on Boulevard Clermont to live in Sousse, a city south of Paris.

In Bessault, Pierre grew up with his two brothers and his parents. Bessault married Marie, in the cemetery of the Sau Hautman. And there Marie rented a house with a garden after she was widowed. Pierre's father, who had lost his wife, had previously lived with his son and daughter-in-law on Boulevard Clermont, and now moved with Marie and the two daughters to the Bessault house.

The villa still exists. On a small marble square, attached to a pillar in front of the wall surrounding it, on the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of radium, it is written: “Marie Curie lived in this house from 1907 to 1912. In 1910, her father-in-law, Eugène Curie, died there.” The pear tree in the garden behind the house saw Marie Curie!

The villa was purchased in 1980 by a couple, a doctor and a nurse, Jean and Jeanine Segal. Jeanine Segal, who passed away this year (June 6.6.2024, 93) at the age of 2007, said that she and her husband, Dr. Jean Segal (died in XNUMX), from a Jewish family from Poland, moved into the house without any knowledge of their famous predecessors. Ivy covered its walls and hid the small marble slab until Jeanine's husband, six months after the purchase, began work on widening the entrance gate and removing the leaf screen.

A cry of surprise! And also rage. The history of the house was forgotten! The new owner of the villa, Dr. Jean Segal, an oncologist at the Gustave Roussy Institute in Villejuif, who received patients once a week in the ward named after Frédréric Joliot, husband of Irene Curie, at the Orsay Hospital, was not informed! (It should be noted that today this hospital, which was renovated and expanded, is called the “North-Essonne Medical Center” (Le Groupe Hospitalier Nord-Essonne).

The Geiger counter detected alpha and gamma radiation in Marie’s supposed study – “the radium poem”. Marie was not yet aware of the danger. Jean and Jeanine Segal did not panic. On the contrary. A sign was humorously posted above the window frame of the room saying “No entry except for authorized persons”. The couple’s children avoided entering the danger zone and thus the affair ended. The engineer and his family who currently live in the house are not bothered in the least. None of the tenants, many years ago, were harmed.

The coincidence continues to surprise, said Jeanine Segal: The family of her husband, Dr. Jean Segal, on her father's side, knew Marie's family from Poland, and his aunts even helped her eldest sister, Bronya, when she came to study medicine in Paris with the goal of becoming a gynecologist.

Marie Curie, “the famous widow,” as she was called in the media (or “the Sicilian widow,” according to her concerned associates who advised her to rebuild her life), “the princess of science,” “the queen of radium,” continued her life with gritted teeth. Marie Curie immersed herself in her scientific work, becoming one with the subject of her research, escaping the boundaries of time, space, body, and reality. Until…

When, in fact, did the affair with Paul Langevin begin? In the spring of 1910 or earlier? Irène Fran, who studied Marie's expenses recorded in her bankbook, including a careful analysis of the handwriting, the size of the letters, highlighting, erasures, scratching, and deviations from the norm, concluded that Marie and Paul had already slipped from friendship to love in 1908.

The affair lasted two and a half, maybe three years. Marie, who was very frugal, buying few clothes and wearing them until they wore out, suddenly began to spend large sums on clothing items. Instead of simple and cheap cotton fabrics, she purchased silk, satin, muslin and lace. The well-groomed and erect Paul, bayonet mustache, fancy suits, decorated with lavalier ties, would be proud of her! More than half of her salary as a professor at the Sorbonne she spent on a fashionable fur coat with a matching hat.

The lady in black began to dress in light clothes, suddenly appearing in a white dress, a rose tucked into her belt, for the monthly dinner at Jean Van Enright Perrin's house, on Boulevard Clermont. The event took place at Passover 1910, Jean Van Enright's garden was in full bloom, Marie came back to life. Paul could not believe his eyes. Marie, radiant and blooming like a girl on her engagement day, in this for the rules of caution. Two weeks had passed since they had begun meeting in the hideout on Rue de Bankier...

Cover of Irene Fran's book, published by Kis (2016)

5 rue du Banquier, Paris

On July 15, 1910, Paul secretly signed a lease for a meager two-room apartment in the 13th arrondissement, at 5 Rue de Bankie. At number 10 was the Delaware automobile and truck factory (Delahaye), the noise and commotion did not cease day or night. The feet of decent society did not set foot in the neglected no-man's land, where hard-working workers and their families lived in sooty, collapsing buildings. Paul installed a toilet in the kitchen, but there was no running water, and the couple had to carry tubs and jugs from the fountain in the yard to the apartment on the fourth floor.

The summer was hot. Each of them, who had arrived first at the apartment, pricked up his ears and listened to the footsteps coming up the stairs, with eager anticipation. Marie urged Paul to get a divorce, Paul delayed, became angry, but their quarrels not only did not separate them but even increased their passion.

Marie was 43, Paul 37. Marie, abruptly cut off by Pierre, felt ready to rebuild her life with Paul. And he, whose marriage to Jean had been a failure full of quarrels, was thinking of divorcing and formalizing his relationship with Marie, within the framework of an extended family that would unite their children. “My marriage was a trap,” Paul would explain to his friends when the adultery scandal broke, “I was young and inexperienced.” Paul was only 26 when he married Jeanne, blinded by passion, blinded by love.

Jeanne was as violent as her mother. No one saw the scar on Paul's scalp that hid his luxuriant hair. Jeanne, her sister, and her mother threw an iron chair at him during an argument, hitting him in the head. Later, when Jeanne discovered his affair with Marie, she would hit him in the head again, this time with a glass bottle. Even so, Paul found it difficult to say goodbye. Every time Jeanne left the house, he would beg her to come back.

Did Jeanne, despite everything, exert an unfailing attraction on him? Did Paul fear the storm of Marie's romantic Slavic passion and prefer the comfort and routine that Jeanne, the mother of his four children, to whom he was attached with every fiber of his being, provided him? Was the figure of Pierre, who always stood between him and Marie, connecting them but also separating them, ultimately a disaster? Paul reminded Marie of Pierre, physically and mentally, but he was not Pierre. Pierre could not be resurrected to reconstruct the past.

In 1902, Paul's beloved mother died of cancer. Thanks to her, Paul became a physicist. Paul owed his life's success as a scientist to her. His father demanded that he leave school, but his mother encouraged him to study secretly at night and saved penny by penny to pave the way for his future. Paul found in Marie, five years older than him, a maternal figure, a kind of replacement and compensation for the loss of his mother.

In addition, Paul and Marie were united in their grief over Pierre's death. Both had lost a loved one: Marie looked to Paul for the love of her life, Paul looked to Marie for his teacher and revered friend. The bond was also based, of course, on their passion for science and a similar outlook on life, which both Paul and Marie shared with Pierre: science for its own sake, in the service of humanity and not for personal gain or benefit.

Paul and Marie used to return home at midnight and leave for work in the morning, on the same train, the Sau line. Paul lived in Fontenay-aux-Roses, Marie in Sau, nearby towns. Jeanne began to suspect. The strings were pulled by her brother-in-law, her sister's husband, Henri Bourgeois, a criminal reporter, scheming, deceitful, ambitious and greedy.

Bourgeois and his wife Efrazi lived three hundred meters from Marie's train station, five hundred meters from her villa, and two kilometers from Paul and Jeanne's home. Bourgeois, whose views were opposed to Paul's, was jealous of his successful brother-in-law and took advantage of the geographical proximity to spy on Paul and Marie in order to organize a local conspiracy before creating a national and global media scandal.

Jeanne smashed a glass bottle on Paul's skull, adding scar to scar. Paul, a perpetual victim of his wife's rages, disappeared from the worried Marie's field of vision. Her anxiety reached its peak when she was physically attacked by Jeanne and her sister Efrazi, who had ambushed her near her home.

The assault was accompanied by a threat to her life: “You have eight days to leave France. If you don’t…”. Marie, trembling with fear, found refuge in the house of her loyal friend, Henriette Perrin, Jean’s wife, on Boulevard Clermont. And then, in a hotel near the summer house that Jean and Henriette Arcouest rented in Brittany. To relax, to rest. Arcouest would return frequently and in 1914 she would build a house there, on top of a cliff, the plan of which she had drawn up herself.

“Sorbonne-Plage” is the name of the village where there are about thirty summer homes of families of scientists from the close-knit group, Langevin, Perrin, Borel and others. Marie Curie’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren continue to preserve the tradition and occupy the house, where the grandmother’s spirit still lingers, especially in her small room from which the magnificent sea view can be seen. Only the fireplace disappeared after Marie, feeling the cold, lit a fierce fire that caused the sawdust between the floor and the ceiling to ignite.

Arcuest

All the while, Paul and Marie exchanged letters, which were intercepted by Jean. Paul felt guilty for bringing upon Marie yet another suffering, his wife's wrath, a reflection of the burden that had weighed on him for so many years. Marie regretted that she could not bring flowers to their apartment on Rue de Bankier, as she usually did. The carpets of purple heather blossoms in Brittany increased her longing for the meeting apartment that had become their common home, hers and Paul's.

In early October, Paul and Marie resumed their meetings, as much as possible, in the fourth-floor apartment. The letters they exchanged would henceforth be placed in a letterbox, securely locked with a key hidden in a secret place. In a poignant letter, which she sent to Paul through Enright, Marie wrote explicitly that he must leave the toxic Jean, who was taking full advantage of him and sabotaging his career as a scientist and intellectual. She, Marie, was willing to put her life and position in danger for him, but she would not tolerate another pregnancy by Jean. Paul planned to divorce and start a new chapter with Marie.

Marie's private life was joined by a public affair. Marie decided to run for a seat in the French Academy of Sciences, but her candidacy was rejected in favor of another candidate, not of her caliber, because of misogyny and xenophobia. A campaign of slander and slander poisoned the life of the great woman. "It's not enough to have so many women writers and artists, we now have women scientists! A woman's role is to give birth to children and her place is at home." Sensational articles in the nationalist-conservative press presented Madame Curie as a wanted criminal, a profile portrait, a portrait of her face. "The foreigner who came to poison the country with her test tubes must be expelled, and to top it all off, she is a converted Jew."

To the misogyny and xenophobia was added, indeed, anti-Semitism. Marie was born Catholic and never converted. Two days before the election, a rumor was spread, based on Marie’s middle name, Salome, that “Madame Curie is Jewish.” Marie was forced to issue an official statement on the morning of the election denying the allegations.

But the scandal caused by the Academy election competition subsided, and in April (1911) the apartment on Rue de Bankie was broken into and the contents of the desk were stolen. Moreover, the improvised commando brought Henri Bourgeois, the criminal reporter and Paul's brother-in-law, all the information necessary to prove the forbidden affair between Marie and his brother-in-law, all the details of the apartment's rental, its furniture and belongings, together with the testimonies of the neighbors who, of course, easily identified the celebrity, the accomplice in the crime.

The Paul-Marie scandal erupts and flares up

To relax, to rest. Emile Borel was invited to a congress of mathematicians in Genoa and Marie joined, leaning on the pair of loyal friends. “We must save Paul from Jeanne’s clutches,” Marie repeated to Marguerite Borel.

The summer was particularly hot. Marie and her daughters spent a holiday in the Carpathian Mountains in Poland. Paul left the house in Fontenay-au-Rose, this time determined to divorce Jean. The lease on the apartment on Rue de Bankier was not renewed, of course, after the break-in. Paul rented a small apartment near the Boulevard de l'Hôpital to live there with his father and sons.

In the meantime, he put the father up in her and went on vacation with the boys in England. Henri Bourgeois extorted money from Paul for “Jean’s finances.” He pocketed a large portion of the sums. Paul didn’t earn much, Marie helped. She withdrew 5000 francs from her savings account (Paul would repay her all the loans down to the last penny (and he did the same for money she lent him years after their affair ended). Soon, Marie would win the Nobel Prize, she would be rich and immune, nothing would harm her anymore. What was important in the meantime was to prevent Bourgeois from publishing in the press the incriminating letters that were stolen on his initiative from the desk on Rue de Banquier.

At the beginning of October, Marie rented a small apartment on rue Blainville, in the 5th arrondissement, near her laboratory and the physics school where Paul taught. In her expense book, she noted the purchase of expensive upholstery fabrics for armchairs in an antique pink shade as well as muslin and tulle fabrics embroidered with gold threads. She had never been more interested in decorating her living spaces than this time! And also a complete and elegant outfit for the conference in Brussels where she would have to appear at her best.

Marie and Paul were invited to the first Solvay conference held at the luxurious Hotel Metropole in Brussels, from October 30 to November 5, with the participation of 24 of the world's best scientists, including Jean Perrin, Max Planck, and Albert Einstein, still unknown, a close friend of Paul.

Exciting, fascinating, turbulent days, in which national identities were forgotten in favor of the progress of science, but in the midst of the experience, Marie received news of an article in the conservative daily newspaper “Le Journal” entitled: “A Love Story: Madame Curie and Professor Langevin”. Marie kidnapped Paul and they both disappeared, their traces were unknown, it was explained below. Marie and Paul denied everything and everything: “We were both at the Solvay conference at the “Metropole” hotel in Brussels, as your eyes see, the things are known”.

Henri Bourgeois did not say the last word and hurried to publish, in his newspaper this time and anonymously, an interview with the weeping Jeanne, with her two-year-old daughter on her knees. Madame Curie robbed her of her husband and the father of her children. “Father will return,” the little one reassures her helpless mother. The staged interview is accompanied by an article in which all the facts are distorted to describe an unscrupulous and corrupt couple who will soon be punished.

Jean filed a lawsuit for adultery. An investigation was opened. Marie received the happy news of winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, but Paul and she were summoned to court on December 8, two days before the ceremony. All the details of their story, including their correspondence, were in the file. Marie faced the risk of a heavy fine and even imprisonment, in addition to the public scandal that would tarnish her name. In vain. Marie was single, a widow, and Paul was a battered husband who was about to divorce. Marie fainted, her friends feared for her life.

Most of the editors of the important newspapers complied with the request of Marie's well-wishers not to write about the affair or to publish the contents of the stolen letters. There was no point in contacting Léon Daudet, son of Alphonse Daudet, editor of the extreme right-wing newspaper L'Action française. He naturally took the opportunity to loudly declare that in the courtroom showdown on December 8, morality would be pitted against science.

On the one hand, morality, order, and family, headed by Jeanne, the embodiment of the French mother, and on the other, her pursuers, the scientists from the Sorbonne's den of hacks, backed by the Foreign Party, the Protestants, the Jews, the Freemasons, and the corrupt government. Marie's name is not mentioned, but throughout the article she is mentioned by two nicknames: "the foreigner" and "the persecutor."

The scandal reaches its peak, a media lynching

On November 23, 1911, Gustave Téry, ​​a nationalist and anti-Semite, published an article full of vulgar insults in the extreme right-wing newspaper he founded, L'Œuvre, along with Marie-Al-Paul's private letters, under the title "The Truth About the Langevin-Curie Scandal, for the Mother of the Boys." In the hateful and furious article, Gustave Téry explicitly mentioned Marie Curie's name:

The stranger who came from Poland to witness the discovery of radium, a corrupt thief, an ardent follower of Nietzsche and Ibsen, a breaker of all burdens, a deliverer of passions. And didn't she oppress and rob Pierre Curie?

Here Gustave Terry addressed Marie directly:

You won't be able to cover Paul Langevin with your skirt, although he is a professor at the Collège de France but is rude and heartless.

Paul Langebaan was described as a gigolo while Marie Curie was described as a cougar…

Copies of the magazine, with its red-orange cover, no less blatant than the hate it contained, sold like hotcakes and increased the anger and hatred towards Marie. The morning it was put on sale at the kiosks, rioters stoned her house in So, broke locks and entered the garden and the ground floor, smashed windows and furniture. Marie was in danger.

Emile Borel was then vice-principal of the prestigious and famous higher education school, l'École normale supérieure at 45 rue d'Ulm in the Latin Quarter, close to the Sorbonne and the Pantheon. The loyal friend gave her refuge in his apartment there. Borel was summoned to the office of the Minister of Education, who threatened him with dismissal if he did not expel Marie from his office apartment at the school. Borel did not give in.

Marie, pale as chalk but strong, discovered that her rented apartment on the Rue Blancville had also been broken into by rioters who had defaced the walls and broken furniture. Marguerite Borel supported Marie and organized her defense. Everyone was assigned a role in the influence group for Marie. The entire network of contacts of the group was used for this purpose in ten hectic and productive days.

Letters of support from Louis Fuller and Albert Einstein

Marie received enthusiastic letters of support that helped her through the ordeal. “I love you,” wrote Loïe Fuller, the groundbreaking American dancer, pioneer of modern dance, who lived for many years in Paris and was deeply involved in its cultural life. “I take your hands in mine and I love you. Don’t pay attention to the lies, that’s life.”

The scientist and dancer's courageous friendship began when Louis Fuller approached Pierre and Marie Curie after they jointly won the Nobel Prize in 1903. Louis Fuller, who kept abreast of all the innovations and inventions, wrote them a letter asking if they could dye the wings of her dress with the luminous colors of radium. Marie Curie replied with a long and detailed answer. Louis Fuller was so moved by Marie's explanations that she came to meet the couple and performed her original light dances, just for them!

In her book, “My life and dance", Louis Fuller tells of her meeting with Pierre and Marie Curie and their strong influence on her. Pierre showed her the importance of ultraviolet light with a glass of water that he placed in the path of the beam. The water and the glass took on a dark blue color. The powder grains he scattered in the glass were not colored by any color and remained as they were, independent and unaffected. There are materials that change and there are materials that are resistant, food for thought! How can I express the idea of ​​resistance in my art, Louis Fuller asked herself, and Pierre agreed to give her, at her request, some of the powder grains.

Despite the technical impossibility of installing the glowing butterfly wings, Louis Fuller, inspired by Pierre and Marie, created the “Ultraviolet Dance” and the “Radium Dance.” Like Marie Curie, the “radium sorceress,” who believed with Pierre in dreams, in science serving humanity, in humanistic ideals, and in poetry, Louis Fuller, the “muse of Art Nouveau and symbolism,” combined technology with art, using it to bring her viewers closer to nature, legends, myths, and symbols.

Albert Einstein met Marie Curie at the Solvay conference and she left him with a strong impression of a lively and enthusiastic woman.

I must tell you how much I have learned to admire your spirit, your energy, your integrity, how happy I am to have had the privilege of meeting you in person in Brussels,

Albert Einstein wrote to Marie Curie, on the eve of the publication of Gustave Terry's slanderous article. He went on to write:

Those who are strangers to the world of snakes, as of yesterday and as of today, will appreciate the closeness of real, authentic people, like you, like Langebaan. The moments in your company are special and unique. If the mob continues to produce its wretched pages, leave them to the snakes.

Five-set duel

The journalists on Marie's side, led by the editor of the then-successful magazine Gil Blas, were quick to respond and fought back with heated defensive articles. Léon Doude challenged the editor, Henri Chervet, to a duel, while Gustave Terry challenged another journalist from the same magazine, Pierre Mortier.

And that was not the end of the matter. Four clashes, at the Winter Velodrome (Le Vélodrome d'Hiver), in the 15th arrondissement, with sharp swords, in which a little blood was shed, were fought between Marie Curie's enemies and her defenders, with the Gaumont news service filming the events. Here are the videos documenting the first duel between Léon Doude and Henri Cherve and the second duel between Gustave Terry and Pierre Mortier:

The fifth act was different. Paul Langevin, who Gustave Terry had called a “coward,” challenged him to a duel, this time with pistols. The confrontation took place at the Parc des Princes stadium in the 16th arrondissement, without cameras. The decision was apparently made in the high windows not to publicize the affair. Terry shot at the floor and Paul did the same. Paul had no choice but to give up custody of their children to Jeanne so that she would drop the lawsuit.

Behind the scenes of the second Nobel Prize

A week after the riots at the Villa Besseau, Marie returned to teaching at the Sorbonne. Threats from the Nationalists from the Lexicon Française, who called for an invasion of the lecture hall, failed. Six weeks later, Marie, who had come to despise the Villa Besseau, rented an apartment on the island of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. לAnd, at the address: 36 De Batin Quay (Quai de Bethune).

Determined to continue to control her destiny, she did not give in to the heavy pressure that was put on her not to go to accept the Nobel and leave France. With great courage, she fulfilled the obligations of the royal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10 of that cruel year. Nineteen days after her return, she collapsed. Infection, kidney and uterus surgery, depression, a desire to die.

If she can't find Pierre in the person of Paul, what's the point? Marie Curie was touched by madness, as she later admitted. The year 1911 was unbearable, but in 1912 she got back on her feet and continued her glorious activity for the benefit of France and all of humanity until the day she died, in 1934, at the age of 66.

Marie Curie had to deal with vicious falsehoods, physical violence, and psychological abuse, but she refused to be a shunned victim and gained worldwide fame. “Few have contributed more to the welfare of humanity and the advancement of science than the modest and humble woman whom the world knew as Madame Curie,” wrote the New York Times upon her death.

Paul and Marie become friends again.

A love story that should have remained private was exposed and became a political scandal. This caused the breakup of the romance between Marie and Paul. The 15-year friendship that turned into love turned into friendship again, until the day Marie died.

After two years, Paul returned to his wife and children. Years later, around 1926, Paul began a parallel relationship to his marriage with his student Éliane Montel, twenty-two years his junior. Jeanne did not create a scandal this time.

In 1933, Paul Langevin and Alain Montel had a son, the fifth child of Paul, who was then 61 years old, and Alain's first and only child. She, who became an important physicist in her own right, accompanied Paul until his last moments and honored his memory in writings and at commemorative events. Their son, Paul-Gilbert Langevin, who died at the age of 52, studied physics and taught at the Sorbonne, but his passion was music. From a physics lecturer, he became a musicologist. His son Paul-Eric is a mathematician, linguist, and painter. His daughter Isabelle is a painter.

After Paul's death in 1946, Jeanne played her role as the widow of the physicist, philosopher, human rights activist and educator, at all official ceremonies in his honor. At his funeral, she appeared holding the arm of the then French President, Vincent Auriol. Jeanne died in 1970, at the age of 96, and was eulogized in the media as "the gentle, cheerful, charming and worthy wife of Paul Langevin"...

Epilogue

The love story of Pierre and Marie was interrupted by an accident. The love story of Paul and Marie, which was destined to continue, was interrupted by the persecution of conservative society. Pierre, Marie and Paul are now all three resting in the Pantheon. Moreover, life also took care to bring the lovers together in its own special way, to continue their story. In 1948, the marriage of Paul Langevin's grandson and Marie Curie's granddaughter took place!

An event that happened was this: Michel Langevin, (1926-1985) son of André Langevin and grandson of Paul Langevin (and his wife Jeanne), married his classmate from the High School of Physics and Chemistry, Hélène Joliot-Curie, granddaughter of Pierre and Marie Curie and daughter of Irène Curie and Frédéric Joliot, born in 1927, who would live a long life. The grandson of Paul Langevin and the granddaughter of Marie Curie thus fulfilled the story of the interrupted love of their grandfather and grandmother. They would certainly have given their blessing to the couple's marriage. The great-grandchildren continue the path, with all the descendants being scientists, researchers and artists.

Summary of Marie Curie's life path by residence

1891 Marie arrives in Paris and stays in the apartment of her sister Bronia and her husband at 92 Avenue Jean Jaurès. 

(Avenue Jean Jaures), in the 19th arrondissement. 

1892 Marie rents a furnished room on Platres Street (rue Flatters), in the 5th arrondissement.

1896 After Pierre and Marie's marriage, the couple settles not far from Marie's former room, at 24 rue de la Galcière, in the 13th arrondissement.

1902 Pierre and Marie move to a house with a garden, at 108 Boulevard Kellermann, in the 13th arrondissement.

1906 After Pierre's death, Marie rents a house in Sceaux, at 6 rue Jean Mascré.

1910 Paul Langevin rents a secret apartment at 5 rue du Banquier, in the 13th arrondissement, where he will secretly meet with Marie.

1911 After the break-in at the apartment on Rue de Bankier, Marie rents a small apartment, a transit apartment, on Rue Blainville (rue Blainville), in the 5th arrondissement.

1912-1934 After the riots at Villa Basso, Marie decides to leave the place and rents a Hôtel Particular on the Île Saint-Louis, at 36 Quai de Béthune, in the 4th arrondissement. She will live in this house until her death in 1934.

Comments

-Another, shorter article of mine, on the study of Irene Fran from a literary perspective. To read it, type:

Orna Lieberman, Marie Curie Takes a Lover / Irene Fran, on Merav Golan's HiTbrebot blog.

-Large print version of the book for people with visual impairments (editions de La Loupe, 2016) features on its cover the actress Marie-Christine Barrault who played the role of Marie Curie in a television movie (1991) in three episodes:

-For my part French, link toA fascinating lecture by Irene Fern about the behind-the-scenes of her bookIf the hyperlink is not active, copy and paste the following link: 

https://www.chartes.psl.eu/gazette-chartiste/agenda/le-romanesque-des-archives

-Link to a lecture by Helene Langevin-Juliot (granddaughter of Marie and Pierre, daughter of Irene and Frederic Jouliot) on Arcuest:

-Those in Paris can visit the Curie Museum and its garden, and everyone else can enjoyVirtual visit at him.