Pierre and Marie Curie – A Love Story

Nothing tugs at the heartstrings like a good love story (and when we say good, we usually mean tragic…). While literature is littered with fictional plots, equally dramatic love stories can be found between the pages of History.

Many romantic myths have been woven around the lives of Pierre and Marie Curie. Feature films and semi-documentaries have also contributed to the legend of the Curies. Behind the Curies lies a moving love story.

April 20, 1995, Paris

A white carpet is spread out on the street in front of the Pantheon. On the carpet, to the sound of the Marseillaise, members of the Republican Guard, the teaching staff of the Curie Institute, and high school students follow them. Thousands of spectators who have gathered along the streets throw flowers at the procession as it passes them.

On a stage in front of the Pantheon sit high-ranking figures, led by President Mitterrand, who decided in a dramatic gesture to transfer the bones of Marie and Pierre Curie to the National Pantheon.

As the speeches end, the streets echo with deafening applause…people worship the Curies.

And now from the end of the story to its beginning…

Marie arrives in Paris

At the age of 24, Marie Skłodowska moved from Warsaw to Paris and began studying chemistry and physics at the Sorbonne. In Poland at that time, during the Russian rule, women were forbidden from attending university. She studied during the day and worked at night to make ends meet and barely had money for a loaf of bread. After two years, she completed a degree in physics and immediately went on to study for a master's degree.

the meeting

Marie was desperately looking for a laboratory where she could set up her research instruments into the magnetic properties of metals. A close friend suggested that she meet with a physicist who, although relatively unknown, was the foremost expert in France on the laws of magnetism and had invented a number of sophisticated instruments for the purpose.

Marie accepted the offer and met with Pierre Curie.

“As soon as I entered the room, I saw a man with a serious and gentle expression on his face. His behavior indicated a dreamy person who tended to be lost in thought.”

Pierre did not feel comfortable in the company of women and shared the common opinion that they distracted a man from his important work and caused him to deviate from his lofty ideals.

The evening Pierre met Marie for the first time, he was surprised to realize how much they had in common. He met a “genius” woman who understood “his nature and his soul.” He was soon far removed from the thoughts he had had about women in his youth.

Both Marie and Pierre did not adhere to the conventions of their time: she saw no harm in giving him her address and meeting him alone in her sparsely furnished room. When he arrived, she offered him a suitcase instead of a chair, and so the two sat and discussed scientific topics and drank tea.

Pierre Curie later wrote that he was a great sceptic in everything he did in his life, except for his relationship with Marie. He was determined to marry her and make her his research partner. Marie, on the other hand, was determined to return to Warsaw. She told herself that Pierre and she would always remain good friends, but she would not let him distract her from her goal.

marriage

Marie went to Warsaw and Pierre suffered terribly from the fear that she would never return to Paris. He continued to woo her in letters: “It would be wonderful if we could… spend our lives near each other, mesmerized by our dreams.” It was clear to Marie that Pierre felt that his life was not life without her. In the end, she yielded to his entreaties.

They were married in a modest ceremony on July 26, 1895. The reception was held in the garden of Pierre's parents' house, after which the young couple went for a ride on bicycles they had bought themselves as a wedding present. As part of the wedding trip, which lasted all summer, the two wandered along the coast of Brittany and skied on the slopes of the Auvergne mountains. By the time they returned to Paris, the two were already one body, head over heels in love.

Pierre taught at the School of Physics and Industrial Chemistry. He arranged for Marie to work in a small space in the same building, provided her with delicate measuring instruments, and shared his knowledge with her. The couple collaborated in a way that foreshadowed the future. Pierre wrote: “We dreamed of living in a world that would be cut off from the rest of humanity,” and this statement certainly reflects the personalities of both of them.

As long as our partners lived, my love
He will leave you alone. From day to day.
I will pour out what remains pure.
Into basins and pitchers. I watched you.
Leaning on your shoulder like a jeweler,
Fixes things that are impossible to see. Joy
Concentration, the basics
To whom love is poured.

Pierre and Marie continued their work. Pierre was so absorbed in his work that sometimes he did not remember to eat. As was the custom in those days, the entire burden of the house fell on Marie's shoulders. Marie entered her marriage with the same enthusiasm with which she had entered the world of science. The student who could not make soup studied housework as if it were a science project.

She managed to juggle housework, her research paper, a teaching certificate course to get a teaching position, and an evening course to better understand her husband's work.

She managed to juggle all of this until she became pregnant. She was then thirty, an age considered high for a first birth these days.

On November 12, 1897, Dr. Eugène Curie (Pierre's father) gave birth to a baby girl named Irene. Marie found herself dealing with a heavy workload on top of caring for her child. She was exhausted and depressed. She was so disoriented and deranged that the doctors suggested sending her to a sanatorium, but she was unwilling to quit her job.

But luck favored the young couple. Pierre's father, who had become a widower, came to live with them and took care of the baby and the household. From then on, things began to run more smoothly.

Living and working together

Marie began her doctoral thesis on high-energy radiation emitted by uranium and other minerals. Research at the time was mainly on X-rays. Marie chose to focus on the radiation discovered by researcher Henri Becquerel, uranium rays.

Pierre worked to get her a place to work, but all he could get was a small room nearby. Without Pierre's equipment, which was the most advanced of its time, and without his guidance, Marie would never have been able to do the work, a fact that is often overlooked.

Day after day, diligently and with extraordinary ability, Marie sat in front of her devices, doing tedious work that required manual dexterity and infinite patience.

In March 1898, Marie proposed a completely new method for discovering chemical elements by measuring their radiation: radioactivity.

Either way, her discoveries were received with great indifference. Because who was she really?! A marginal scientist, a Polish immigrant and, above all, a woman…

Pierre abandoned his work and joined Marie. The Curies' work progressed rapidly. They were able to discover two new radioactive elements, which they named: polonium (after Marie's birthplace, Poland) and radium (a name derived from the Latin word radius, meaning "ray").

After the discovery of the new elements through their unique radiation, it was necessary to isolate them.

Marie and Pierre were equally involved in a journey of discovery, as in everything else in their life together.

To isolate the radium, they needed very large quantities of ore called Atran shale, which came from a mine located on the border of Germany and the Czech Republic.

The Curies were given an abandoned wooden hut that stood on the edge of a large yard in front of their laboratory. The wooden hut had previously been used by students to dissect cadavers. “It looked like a stable or a potato cellar.”

Pierre approached Baron Rothschild and asked him for a donation to cover the costs of transporting the lead. Over the next four years, Baron Rothschild anonymously donated large sums of money to this cause.

The processing of the lead from which radium was produced required great physical strength, more suited to an industrial worker than to the frail Marie. Pierre became concerned about Marie's deteriorating physical condition. Over time, it became increasingly clear to Pierre that his wife had taken on an impossible task. Not many people know that it was Pierre who turned the impossible task into a possible one, albeit a terribly difficult one. Although they were still short of money, he hired a full-time assistant. He managed to convince the owners of a company French Chemical products to pay the salaries of the workers that Marie had to employ.

Despite the exhausting and monotonous work, Marie felt that this “heroic period” of their research was particularly exciting.

We were happy…our days passed in our miserable, dilapidated hut…our minds were so completely absorbed in our work that we were as if in a dream.

Pierre and Marie often walked to their laboratory at night, holding hands, drawn by magic to that mysterious element, radium, with its powerful radioactive radiation. Although they were scientists, their outlook was not devoid of romance.

The affair with radium strengthened their mutual bond. “The working days turned into months and years, but their spirits did not fail…United in their feelings, united in their intellectual aspirations, they both led, in their wooden hut…the way of life…that suited them like a glove”

Their marriage developed into a passionate love. Pierre never passed by her without stroking her hair. At night they slept in each other's arms. Pierre always kept his favorite picture of Marie in his coat pocket.

The search for pure radium was now in its third year. Eight tons of ore had already been treated with 400 tons of washing water and thousands of distillation operations…the materials produced by the lead refinery “glowed with a faint light (as a result of the radioactive radiation) like the gentle light of her mouth.” The Curies did not know that exposure to these materials was endangering their health. Even a hundred years later, their personal belongings were still contaminated with radioactivity. Pierre now suffered from joint pain, which he attributed to the dampness in the leaking building. Marie lost weight rapidly.

In June 1903, Marie defended her doctoral thesis before the Scientific Council, the first woman in France to reach this level.

In November 1903, the Curies were officially notified of their Nobel Prize win, along with an invitation to come to Sweden for the award ceremony, which would be held in the presence of King Oscar II. To the surprise of the entire community, the couple agreed to accept the prize but declined the invitation to travel to Sweden, the first prize recipients to do so. The reason for this, which was kept secret from the public at the time, was Marie's mental state. She was physically exhausted and grieving the death of her father in Poland and the miscarriage she had suffered.

The price of fame “the disaster of our lives.”

Marie and Pierre Curie began to pay a high price for their success. Until now they had had to fight prejudice, neglect, and disdain. Now they began to lose the things that had been most important to them in their old lives. The press laid siege to the couple who had once dreamed of “living in a world cut off from all human contact,” and they were unprepared for the crazy developments that followed their success.

The press covered Marie's life story. She was described as a beautiful, penniless immigrant, a kind of Cinderella living in the attic, who one day meets the knight of her dreams in the form of Pierre Curie. And in the end, she discovers a luminous, magical substance.

Marie, who had been brought up to be self-disciplined and suppress her emotions, accepted the fame with equanimity. Pierre, the man who hid behind the tools, called the widespread publicity “the disaster of our lives.”

“We were happy”

Their health continued to deteriorate due to their exposure to the radioactive material. Pierre suffered from severe leg pain and his balance was unstable. Marie had difficulty sleeping due to back pain that worsened day by day, accompanied by bouts of weakness.

With fame and adoration starting to spiral out of proportion, Marie felt the need to bring her family together. Now that money was no longer an issue, she enjoyed spending time with her family.

On December 6, 1905, her second daughter, Yves Denise, was born.

Despite Pierre's poor health, Marie thought she had everything a woman could wish for and that "nothing would trouble us in the future...we would be happy."

April 18 1906

Pierre took his umbrella and stepped out into the tiresome Parisian rain. The traffic at the rain-soaked corner where the Place Neuf merges with the Rue Dauphin was jammed with a great din of carts, carriages, taxis, pedestrians – all squeezed together. The accident happened in the blink of an eye…Pierre slipped and fell and a carriage ran over him.

Pierre is dead. Dead. Dead and gone?

Years later, Yves Curie wrote: “A cloak of loneliness and detachment fell upon her shoulders, enveloping her forever. Until the end of her days, not a single spark of joy flared up in her again.”

On May 11, 1906, less than a month after Pierre's death, Marie was offered Pierre's position at the Sorbonne. It took the Sorbonne another two years to recognize her status. By then, Marie was so famous that it was inevitable that she would be given a professorship. In her diary, she wrote:

I feel very strongly that all desire to live has died within me, and I have nothing left but the duty to raise my daughters and the desire to continue the job I agreed to accept in order to prove to the entire world that this thing you loved has real value.

And finally…

I will conclude with a quote from President Mitterrand's speech at the transfer of the Curie couple's remains to the Pantheon:

France Declaring her belief in science and research, she declares her admiration for the great men of the nation who lie in this place, for their work and their lives. This is a symbolic side intended to draw our nation's attention to the struggle of a woman who decided to impose her talents on a society in which talents, intellectual explorations, and public responsibility were the preserve of men alone.