tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/marie-curie-32867/articles
Marie Curie – The Conversation
2023-10-02T19:11:50Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/208859
2023-10-02T19:11:50Z
2023-10-02T19:11:50Z
What has the Nobel Prize in Physics ever done for me?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551265/original/file-20230930-15-nkkytb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=53%2C0%2C6000%2C3997&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/luminous-white-led-bulb-on-wooden-2096282497">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Each October, physics is in the news with the awarding of the Nobel Prize. The work acknowledged through this most prestigious award often seems far removed from our everyday lives, with prizes given for things like “<a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1966/">optical methods for studying Hertzian resonances in atoms</a>” and “<a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1999/">elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions</a>”.</p>
<p>However, these lauded advances in our basic understanding of the world often have very real, practical consequences for society.</p>
<p>To take just a few examples, Nobel-winning physics has given us portable computers, efficient LED lighting, climate modelling and radiation treatment of cancer. </p>
<h2>Thin magnets and portable computers</h2>
<p>In 2007, the physics Nobel was awarded jointly to Peter Grünberg and Albert Fert for the discovery of “<a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2007/press-release/">giant magnetoresistance</a>”. </p>
<p>In the late 1980s, Grünberg and Fert (and their research groups) were independently studying very thin layers of magnets. They both noticed that electricity flowed through the layers differently depending on the direction of the magnetic fields.</p>
<p>These teams were looking to understand fundamental properties of very thin magnets. However, their findings led to something we now take for granted: portable computers. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A photo of an opened hard drive on a yellow background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551266/original/file-20230930-27-sxcuty.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551266/original/file-20230930-27-sxcuty.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551266/original/file-20230930-27-sxcuty.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551266/original/file-20230930-27-sxcuty.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551266/original/file-20230930-27-sxcuty.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551266/original/file-20230930-27-sxcuty.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551266/original/file-20230930-27-sxcuty.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The ‘giant magnetoresistance’ effect won its discoverers the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics – and made portable hard drives possible.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/hard-disk-drive-open-cover-computer-2115380288">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>At the time, most computers stored information on a hard disk drive made of a magnetic material. To read the information from the drive, a very small and very accurate magnetic field sensor is needed. </p>
<p>The discovery of giant magnetoresistance allowed for the development of far more sensitive sensors, which in turn made hard disk drives and computers smaller. (Today, magnetic hard disk drives are being overtaken by even smaller <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive">solid state drives</a>.)</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-store-data-on-magnets-the-size-of-a-single-atom-82601">How to store data on magnets the size of a single atom</a>
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</em>
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<p>In short, we would not have laptops without the discovery that won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics. </p>
<p>The effect of this research – like that of so much fundamental research – was completely unanticipated.</p>
<h2>A light bulb moment</h2>
<p>Sometimes, however, physics research does have a practical goal all along. One such example is the quest for energy-efficient lighting.</p>
<p>Old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs are highly inefficient. Because they work by heating a wire until it glows, they waste a lot of energy as heat. In fact, less than 10% of the energy they consume goes to producing light. </p>
<p>In the 1980s, scientists realised light emitting diodes, or LEDs – small electronic components that emit light of a specific colour – would make more efficient light sources. But there was a problem. Although red and green LEDs had been developed in the middle of the twentieth century, nobody knew how to make a blue LED.</p>
<p>LEDs are thin sandwiches of materials that respond to electricity in a very particular way. When an electron moves from one energy level to another inside the material, it emits light of a specific colour. </p>
<p>All three colours of light (red, green and blue) would be needed to produce the kind of white light people want in their homes and workplaces. </p>
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<img alt="A photo of a strip of blue LED lights against a dark background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551274/original/file-20231001-19-qlom3i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551274/original/file-20231001-19-qlom3i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551274/original/file-20231001-19-qlom3i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551274/original/file-20231001-19-qlom3i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551274/original/file-20231001-19-qlom3i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551274/original/file-20231001-19-qlom3i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551274/original/file-20231001-19-qlom3i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The invention of blue LEDs made it possible to create white light far more efficiently than with incandescent bulbs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/vertical-shot-blue-led-tape-glowing-2101501642">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>In the early 1990s, in the culmination of almost 30 years of work by many groups, the missing blue LEDs were found. In 2014, Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2014/press-release/">received the physics Nobel</a> for the discovery. </p>
<p>The layers of material chosen to make up the sandwich, plus the quality of each layer, had to be refined in order to make the first blue LED. Since the initial discovery, materials scientists have continued to improve the design and manufacture to make blue LEDs more efficient.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/your-phone-screen-just-won-the-nobel-prize-in-physics-32456">Your phone screen just won the Nobel Prize in physics</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>Lighting accounts for up to 20% of total electricity consumption. LEDs use roughly <a href="https://www.sustainability.vic.gov.au/energy-efficiency-and-reducing-emissions/save-energy-in-the-home/lighting/choose-the-right-led-lighting">one sixth as much energy</a> as incandescent light bulbs. They also last much longer, with a lifetime of around 25,000 hours. </p>
<h2>Climate models, radiation and beyond</h2>
<p>Environmental endeavours are probably not what springs to mind when you think of the Nobel Prize in Physics. Yet another example also comes to mind, the study of a chaotic and complex system with great importance to us all: Earth’s climate.</p>
<p>Half of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics was given to Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann, scientists who developed <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2021/summary/">early models for Earth’s weather and climate</a>. Their work also linked global warming to human activity.</p>
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<img alt="A black and white photograph portrait of a woman." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551275/original/file-20231001-17-ef6emp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551275/original/file-20231001-17-ef6emp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=815&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551275/original/file-20231001-17-ef6emp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=815&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551275/original/file-20231001-17-ef6emp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=815&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551275/original/file-20231001-17-ef6emp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1025&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551275/original/file-20231001-17-ef6emp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1025&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551275/original/file-20231001-17-ef6emp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1025&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Marie Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 for her work on radioactivity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie#/media/File:Marie_Curie_c._1920s.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>Of the 222 people awarded the physics Nobel since 1901, <a href="https://theconversation.com/and-then-there-were-three-finally-another-woman-awarded-a-nobel-prize-in-physics-104323">only three have been women</a>. The most famous of those three is perhaps Marie Curie, who took home one quarter of the prize in 1903. </p>
<p>Curie’s work on understanding how atoms can decay into other kinds of atoms, producing nuclear radiation, profoundly changed life in the twentieth century.</p>
<p>The study of nuclear radiation led to the development of nuclear weapons, but also to radiation treatment for cancer. And further, it has led to carbon dating to determine the age of artefacts, allowing us to better understand <a href="https://www.ansto.gov.au/news/radiocarbon-dating-supports-aboriginal-occupation-of-south-australia-for-29000-years">ancient civilisations</a>. </p>
<p>So when we find out who is awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics, no matter what it’s for – and prospects include research on quantum computing, “slow light” and “self-assembling matter” – we can be sure of one thing. The awarded research will likely end up affecting our lives in extraordinary ways that may not at first be apparent.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208859/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karen Livesey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The science that wins the Nobel Prize in Physics each year can be hard to get your head around – but it often has real everyday implications.
Karen Livesey, Senior Lecturer of Physics, University of Newcastle
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/182675
2022-07-26T20:04:32Z
2022-07-26T20:04:32Z
A new book about 12 experiments that changed the world sidelines the role of beautiful theory in physics
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475022/original/file-20220720-14-qoiduh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C1467%2C930&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Simulation of lead ion collisions within the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider -- one of eight detector experiments.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">CERN</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59999316-the-matter-of-everything">The Matter of Everything</a> tells the history of physics through experiments. Any book about the history of science for a general audience will, of necessity, be something of a distortion. The question is whether the distortion is useful: does it offer a new perspective on the history of physics? While there is much to like about the book, I found it to be largely polemic and unhelpful.</p>
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<p><em>Review: The Matter of Everything: 12 experiments that changed the world – Suzie Sheehy (Bloomsbury)</em></p>
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<p>Here’s what I liked about the book: it is extremely detailed. It takes us through 12 important experiments within physics from roughly the last century and a half. </p>
<p>The experiments range from the study of X-rays and the nature of light in the early 20th century, to the early development of particle accelerators to detect and study subatomic particles throughout the 20th century, culminating in the modern era of Big Science and the use of the Large Hadron Collider to find the <a href="https://home.cern/science/physics/higgs-boson">Higgs boson</a>. They are described in a manner that is rigorous and accessible. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475012/original/file-20220720-20-qoiduh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475012/original/file-20220720-20-qoiduh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475012/original/file-20220720-20-qoiduh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475012/original/file-20220720-20-qoiduh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475012/original/file-20220720-20-qoiduh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475012/original/file-20220720-20-qoiduh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475012/original/file-20220720-20-qoiduh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475012/original/file-20220720-20-qoiduh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A technician works in the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) tunnel of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN, in 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Laurent Gillieron/AP</span></span>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/higgs-boson-ten-years-after-its-discovery-why-this-particle-could-unlock-new-physics-beyond-the-standard-model-186076">Higgs boson: ten years after its discovery, why this particle could unlock new physics beyond the standard model</a>
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<p>Rigour and accessibility clearly trade off, at least for a non-technical audience.
The book manages this trade off beautifully. Complex experiments are described in a manner that is easily understood.</p>
<p>The role that those experiments play in pushing forward the frontiers of particle physics – the study of an increasingly large array of very small pieces of reality, including those that constitute matter such as electrons, along with the forces that bind them – is also explained well. </p>
<p>It is done so without needing to take the reader through the details of some imposing theories, most notably: the various quantum field theories within the standard model of particle physics. </p>
<p>Author Suzie Sheehy, an Australian physicist with academic roles at Oxford and Melbourne universities, also does an incredible job of explaining the wider implications of the experiments considered. Sheehy is an expert in accelerator physics: the design and implementation of particle accelerators to conduct experiments.</p>
<p>Careful attention is paid to spin-off technologies developed in the course of building particle accelerators, including the development of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRIs) as well as the production of radio isotopes for use in medical imaging more generally. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475020/original/file-20220720-25-zobmk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475020/original/file-20220720-25-zobmk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475020/original/file-20220720-25-zobmk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475020/original/file-20220720-25-zobmk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475020/original/file-20220720-25-zobmk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475020/original/file-20220720-25-zobmk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475020/original/file-20220720-25-zobmk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475020/original/file-20220720-25-zobmk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>The point is well-made that developing these technologies was not an aim of scientific investigation but an unpredictable by-product. A word of caution underlies much of the discussion of these technologies: industry should be in the service of science, and not the other way around. </p>
<p>I also loved the book’s relish for the ingenuity of the inventor. For each of the 12 experiments described a common story unfolds: there is something we want to test but we just don’t know how to do it.</p>
<p>Scientists must invent new ways of managing electricity, magnetism, and more just so they can carry out their experiments. The world of experimental particle physics feels suddenly familiar: scientists are tinkerers, hammering out new pieces of equipment in much the same way one might invent a new kitchen utensil on the fly with some duct tape and a healthy dose of optimism.</p>
<h2>A distorted history</h2>
<p>As noted, The Matter of Everything is an inevitable distortion of the history of physics. One of the main distortions lies with the central premise of the book. The 12 experiments chosen are from the realm of particle physics. Whether by design or by accident, the history of 20th century physics is recast as the history of particle physics. </p>
<p>To say that this leaves a lot out, is an understatement. The standard model of particle physics is rivalled, in rigour and experimental confirmation, only by the general theory of relativity. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-einsteins-theory-of-general-relativity-3481">Explainer: Einstein's Theory of General Relativity</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>Whereas the standard model describes the world of particles and particle interactions, general relativity describes the large-scale structure of the universe and gravity.</p>
<p>In the 20th century, general relativity was both motivated and ultimately confirmed by a fascinating array of experiments, starting from the ingenious <a href="https://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/Michelson-MorleyExperiment.html">interferometer experiments</a> in the early 20th century to the detection of gravity waves in 2015. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/gravitational-waves-discovered-scientists-explain-why-it-is-such-a-big-deal-54521">Gravitational waves discovered: scientists explain why it is such a big deal</a>
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</em>
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<p>The focus on experiments relating to particle physics not only paints a strange picture of 20th century physics, but it also tends to cast the standard model in a rosy light. For we now know that the standard model is, in some sense, incomplete. The standard model “conflicts” with general relativity. The two theories are in need of replacement.</p>
<p>A more balanced telling of the history of 20th century physics might have included a wider array of experiments. Of course, a single book cannot cover everything. But some remarks on what is being left out should be offered. Otherwise, an idiosyncratic take on the history of 20th century physics quickly turns into a polemic retelling of where the “real” physics lies.</p>
<h2>Experiment and theory</h2>
<p>Why experiments? This is a question I kept asking myself throughout the book. Ultimately, the answer appears to be a political one. The book works hard to impress upon the reader the importance of experimental physics. Experiments are where the action is in science. Progress can only be made through gathering empirical data.</p>
<p>This focus on the experimenter as the pioneer, forging a path into new scientific terrain, is at best, a half truth. Companion to the experimenter is the theoretician. Theoretical work and experimental work generally go hand-in-hand. Theoretical physics, however, seems to be downplayed throughout the book.
This is perplexing, given that theories are essential to experimental work twice-over. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474483/original/file-20220718-4540-tlj9xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474483/original/file-20220718-4540-tlj9xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474483/original/file-20220718-4540-tlj9xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474483/original/file-20220718-4540-tlj9xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474483/original/file-20220718-4540-tlj9xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474483/original/file-20220718-4540-tlj9xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474483/original/file-20220718-4540-tlj9xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474483/original/file-20220718-4540-tlj9xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trajectories in a Cloud Chamber.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/28742">Image from Gordon Fraser/CERN, http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/28742)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>First, theories are typically needed to generate hypotheses for experimental testing. Much experimental work tests the predictions of known theories in order to confirm them. There are, of course, cases in which an experiment is conducted and produces results that challenge all known theories. But even then, it is the interplay between theory and experiment that drives science forward. </p>
<p>Second, theories are needed to make sense of empirical data. A theory of some kind is typically needed to understand how a given experiment works. </p>
<p>The Large Hadron Collider – a massive ring of electromagnets used to accelerate particles to high velocities before smashing them together, to see what they’re made of – is a case in point. The experiment is so complex that understanding it requires grasping an array of theories from different areas of science. Experimental data in a vacuum is virtually meaningless. Theories provide context for experimental data.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-physics-at-the-large-hadron-collider-scientists-are-excited-but-its-too-soon-to-be-sure-157871">New physics at the Large Hadron Collider? Scientists are excited, but it's too soon to be sure</a>
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<p>The suppression of theoretical work in physics is part of the book’s gimmick. But, again, the picture this conveys of 20th century physics is unrealistic. The story of 20th century physics is as much one of beautiful theory, as it is of ingenious experiment. Again, it is hard not to see the focus on experiment as something of a normative statement on how science ought to be done.</p>
<h2>Lost voices</h2>
<p>People play a large role in the Matter of Everything. Glorious experimental machinery is set against the backdrop of scientist-inventors who tinker and toil. This focus on people is welcome. It helps to humanise the story of 20th century physics, and give the reader a sense that they too could contribute to science, if only they mucked around in the shed long enough. </p>
<p>That being said, the book might have said more about scientists who are widely acknowledged to have been unjustly neglected in the history of their field. As the book itself acknowledges, there is, for example, a need to tell the story of women scientists.</p>
<p>Given this, I found the omission of Marie Curie, and her daughter Irene, striking. Marie and Irene pass in and out of the book at various places, but their story is never properly told. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475019/original/file-20220720-12-t9q7r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475019/original/file-20220720-12-t9q7r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475019/original/file-20220720-12-t9q7r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=646&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475019/original/file-20220720-12-t9q7r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=646&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475019/original/file-20220720-12-t9q7r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=646&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475019/original/file-20220720-12-t9q7r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475019/original/file-20220720-12-t9q7r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475019/original/file-20220720-12-t9q7r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Marie and Irene Curie.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/radioactive-new-marie-curie-biopic-inspires-but-resonates-uneasily-for-women-in-science-148986">Radioactive: new Marie Curie biopic inspires, but resonates uneasily for women in science</a>
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<p>This is particularly odd given that both were involved in experimental work in particle physics, and one was a Nobel laureate. Ultimately, the book doesn’t fully heed its own warning, and what we are left with is a history of physics with notable gaps. This is a shame, since it was an opportunity to set the record straight.</p>
<h2>Limitations</h2>
<p>Overall, The Matter of Everything suffers from some serious limitations. It claims to be a history of 20th century physics but, at best, tells the story of experimental particle physics. </p>
<p>Theoretical work is missing, as are some of the experiments that relate to gravitational work in physics. The book also has significant gaps when it comes to the scientists themselves. </p>
<p>I thus don’t recommend the book as a complete history of 20th century physics. But read it if you’re interested in particle accelerators, and if you’re keen to know why they matter so much to everyday life, and not just big science.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182675/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Baron receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>
The Matter of Everything is a partial account of the history of physics, which leaves out a lot, including the story of some key women scientists.
Sam Baron, Associate professor, Australian Catholic University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/148986
2020-11-09T23:06:17Z
2020-11-09T23:06:17Z
Radioactive: new Marie Curie biopic inspires, but resonates uneasily for women in science
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368220/original/file-20201109-15-1jvqby4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C30%2C6709%2C4436&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Studiocanal</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Marie Curie is one of the most recognised scientists of the last 200 years. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize – let alone two – and <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/facts/nobel-prize-facts/#multiple">the first to win in two different fields</a> (physics in 1903, and chemistry in 1911). </p>
<p>Curie changed the prevailing understanding of the world and the practice of medicine along the way. She won acceptance and acclaim from the same colleagues who once thought she had no place in science. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368426/original/file-20201109-18-sbz8ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368426/original/file-20201109-18-sbz8ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368426/original/file-20201109-18-sbz8ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368426/original/file-20201109-18-sbz8ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368426/original/file-20201109-18-sbz8ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368426/original/file-20201109-18-sbz8ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368426/original/file-20201109-18-sbz8ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368426/original/file-20201109-18-sbz8ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marie Curie’s 1903 Nobel Prize portrait.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6017756/">Radioactive</a>, Jack Thorne’s screenplay adaptation of Lauren Redniss’ <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8968323-radioactive">graphic novel</a>, is directed by Marjane Satrapi (most famous for her own graphic novel, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9516.Persepolis">Persepolis</a>). Purportedly biographical, it attempts to portray the drive and dedication Curie must have possessed to achieve her career success. </p>
<p>Curie’s story is incredible, without any need for dramatic emphasis or artistic licence. Radioactive, which employs both, does manage to convey her brilliance. It also highlights and reinforces issues affecting women – and other marginalised groups — in science, then and now. </p>
<h2>Paris, 1894</h2>
<p>The story begins with Maria Sklodowska (Rosamund Pike) literally bumping into her future collaborator and husband, Pierre Curie (Sam Riley), on the streets of Paris. Pierre is quickly established as a similarly poorly respected scientist. He and Marie share a respect for each other’s work. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YT5g0U2WvQ0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>The film focuses on the Curies’ discoveries – in particular the theorising of radioactivity and the discovery of polonium and radium. </p>
<p>The dichotomy between the initial use of the Curies’ findings of radium in <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/authorkatemoore/the-light-that-does-not-lie">makeup, matches and toothpaste</a> is in stark contrast to the scenes showing some of the key applications of their work after their death. </p>
<p>The elements they discovered enabled radiotherapy <a href="https://mariecurielegacy.org/the-basics-of-radiotherapy/radiotherapy/">medical treatments</a>, but were also a key component of the nuclear <a href="https://medium.com/@Higgsino/why-can-you-live-in-hiroshima-but-not-chernobyl-ab7dac7a34d3">devastation</a> in Hiroshima and Chernobyl. </p>
<p>Advances in knowledge come with the potential for both harm and good, a theme reiterated throughout Radioactive. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/radium-revealed-120-years-since-curies-found-the-most-radioactive-substance-on-the-planet-108945">Radium revealed: 120 years since Curies found the most radioactive substance on the planet</a>
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<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368427/original/file-20201109-14-32jmct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368427/original/file-20201109-14-32jmct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368427/original/file-20201109-14-32jmct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368427/original/file-20201109-14-32jmct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368427/original/file-20201109-14-32jmct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368427/original/file-20201109-14-32jmct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368427/original/file-20201109-14-32jmct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368427/original/file-20201109-14-32jmct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pierre and Marie Curie in 1903.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Smithsonian Institution @ Flickr Commons</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>We are shown the realities of being a female scientist in that time. Curie’s isolation is palpable. She is frequently the only woman in a professional context, and further ostracised because of her immigrant status. This isolation of science professionals because of their gender, culture and/or socioeconomic status <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/tea.21593">can still happen today</a>.</p>
<p>Working in the physics laboratory of Professor <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Lippmann">Gabriel Lippmann</a> (Simon Russell Beale), Curie expresses her frustration at the repeated movement of her equipment in the shared laboratory space. Lippmann revokes her access to the laboratory, citing her “constant demands”. </p>
<p>All Curie wants is the same courtesy and respect shown to the men who work in the laboratory, but she is portrayed as “difficult”. </p>
<p>Curie is presented as prickly, arrogant and often emotionally distant to both her colleagues and family. </p>
<p>Satrapi says she liked the flawed nature of Curie that emerged in the screenplay, her diaries and from discussions with Curie’s granddaughter. <a href="https://wwd.com/eye/people/radioactive-director-marjane-satrapi-marie-curie-film-1203659278/">She has said</a> it made Curie “a human being, she’s not perfect and she doesn’t do everything right.” </p>
<p>But in the process, Radioactive reinforces what some women in male dominated STEM fields might still encounter today: women can be perceived as <a href="https://www.nature.com/scitable/forums/women-in-science/the-double-bind-24306427/">competent or likeable</a>, but not both. </p>
<h2>Role model or cautionary tale?</h2>
<p>Satrapi and Pike have spoken of how they want the scientist and the science in Radioactive <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2020-07-30/radioactive-amazon-science-marie-curie">to be an inspiration</a> – especially to young girls. The film is certainly a tale about the value of intelligence and the importance of tenacity and perseverance. </p>
<p>It shows the human side of Curie, especially through her familial relationships. Pierre and Marie’s partnership – both scientific and romantic – is given the hallmarks of an epic love story. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368225/original/file-20201109-15-1wk0qnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Pierre and Marie look at a glowing vial." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368225/original/file-20201109-15-1wk0qnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368225/original/file-20201109-15-1wk0qnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368225/original/file-20201109-15-1wk0qnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368225/original/file-20201109-15-1wk0qnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368225/original/file-20201109-15-1wk0qnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368225/original/file-20201109-15-1wk0qnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368225/original/file-20201109-15-1wk0qnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Radioactive, Pierre and Marie are shown as partners in life, and in science.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Studiocanal</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Pierre is a staunch ally and advocate, ensuring Marie is recognised for the quality of her work and thinking. The original nomination for the Nobel Prize made by the French Academy of Sciences excluded Marie – she was <a href="https://history.aip.org/exhibits/curie/recdis2.htm">only added at Pierre’s insistence</a>. </p>
<p>Still, Radioactive takes some liberties in the retelling of Marie’s life. It shows Pierre attending the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm alone to accept the Curies’ award, ostensibly because Marie had just given birth. </p>
<p>This reinforces the idea that motherhood creates <a href="https://medium.com/@kjmorenz/is-it-really-just-sexism-an-alternative-argument-for-why-women-leave-stem-cccdf066d8b1">impediments to career progression</a>. In reality, Marie and Pierre attended the ceremony together in 1905.</p>
<p>Marie is portrayed as a sometimes distant mother to her two daughters. In a scene with her now adult eldest daughter, Irene (Anya Taylor-Joy), driving an ambulance on a World War I battlefield, Marie turns to her daughter and says: “I wasn’t a very good mother was I?” </p>
<p>Irene responds she is proud of her mother, but the not so subtle subtext is you can’t be a world-leading scientist and a good parent at the same time. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368226/original/file-20201109-17-o5rvsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Marie and her daughter drive a WWI ambulance." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368226/original/file-20201109-17-o5rvsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368226/original/file-20201109-17-o5rvsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368226/original/file-20201109-17-o5rvsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368226/original/file-20201109-17-o5rvsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368226/original/file-20201109-17-o5rvsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368226/original/file-20201109-17-o5rvsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368226/original/file-20201109-17-o5rvsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Radioactive promotes the idea women cannot be both great mothers and great scientists.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Studiocanal</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Certainly a recent study shows increasing difficulty for parents to <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/116/10/4182">reconcile caregiving with STEM careers</a>, with nearly half of new mothers and a quarter of new fathers leaving full-time employment in STEM.</p>
<h2>Some things haven’t changed</h2>
<p>Radioactive shows how the media fed voraciously upon Marie’s scandalous affair with a married man in the years after Pierre’s sudden death in 1906. </p>
<p>The media, she tells her sister, are “merely having a hard time separating my scientific life from my personal life”. This is still seen in media coverage of women scientists today: their <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/media-portrayals-of-of-female-scientists-often-shallow-superficial/">physical appearance is commonly mentioned</a> in stories about their professional accomplishments.</p>
<p>Still, in Radioactive, it isn’t her gender that Curie identifies as the greatest impediment in her career. “I have suffered much more from a lack of resources and funds,” she says, “than I ever did from being a woman.” </p>
<p><em>Radioactive is in cinemas now.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/gender-diversity-in-science-media-still-has-a-long-way-to-go-heres-a-5-step-plan-to-move-it-along-132174">Gender diversity in science media still has a long way to go. Here's a 5-step plan to move it along</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148986/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Merryn McKinnon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Marie Curie overcame innumerable obstacles, and in the process has become a role model. But does the latest film version of her life do her story justice?
Merryn McKinnon, Senior lecturer, Australian National University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/108945
2018-12-19T10:00:21Z
2018-12-19T10:00:21Z
Radium revealed: 120 years since Curies found the most radioactive substance on the planet
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251278/original/file-20181218-27752-1h19iwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Curies and curiouser. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pierre_and_Marie_Curie.jpg#/media/File:Pierre_and_Marie_Curie.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Scientific discovery can be achingly slow, but it was moving swiftly in the 1890s. X-rays <a href="https://www.nde-ed.org/EducationResources/CommunityCollege/Radiography/Introduction/history.htm">had been</a> discovered in Germany just a few days before Christmas in 1895. Several months later, while researching these new X-rays, the French physicist Henri Becquerel accidentally discovered another new mysterious type of ray when he <a href="https://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/chapters/03/4.html">detected</a> radiation emitting from uranium. </p>
<p>Many scientists, doctors and inventors – including Thomas Edison – were fascinated by X-rays and their ability to make the invisible observable. But Marie Curie, a young Polish-born doctoral student at the University of Paris, suspected there was much more to be discovered from Becquerel’s “uranic rays”. </p>
<p>She reached this conclusion on the back of a curious observation. In testing countless rocks and minerals for radiation emissions, using measuring equipment invented by her husband Pierre and his brother Jacques, she noticed that uranium ores gave off greater emissions than pure samples of uranium. Soon Pierre, a professor of physics at the university, set aside his own research to help her explain why. </p>
<p>In July of 1898, they <a href="https://www.iupac.org/publications/ci/2011/3301/5_adloff.html">showed that</a> the ore contained a new element that was giving off similar radiation. They named it <a href="https://www.livescience.com/39452-polonium.html">polonium</a> after Marie’s home country, coining the term “radioactivity” in the process. Yet it became apparent to the Curies that there was another substance in the ores that was considerably more radioactive than either uranium or polonium. The challenge now was to find out what. </p>
<h2>Enter radium</h2>
<p>The discovery of radium was hard work. Corrosive acids, strong alkalis and hard labour were required as the Curies performed many separations to tease away the tiny quantities of radium from the 30 or so other elements present. They were working with an ore called pitchblende which they had sourced from a mine in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Ore-Mountains">Ore Mountains</a> that separate Germany from the Czech Republic, in what was still part of the Austrian empire. </p>
<p>The university had only given them a shed next to the departments of chemistry and physics for their work. This was the cold and damp environment in which they had to grind, crush, dissolve, precipitate, filter, wash and painstakingly measure what they found. By December 21 of that year, they had made the discovery. On Boxing Day, it was published in a paper read to the French Academy of Sciences: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The new radioactive substance certainly includes a very large portion of barium; in spite of that, the radioactivity is considerable. The radioactivity of radium then must be enormous. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251281/original/file-20181218-27770-1rd5g2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251281/original/file-20181218-27770-1rd5g2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251281/original/file-20181218-27770-1rd5g2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251281/original/file-20181218-27770-1rd5g2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251281/original/file-20181218-27770-1rd5g2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251281/original/file-20181218-27770-1rd5g2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251281/original/file-20181218-27770-1rd5g2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251281/original/file-20181218-27770-1rd5g2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What it looks like.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium#/media/File:Radium226.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This substance is the most radioactive natural element, a million times <a href="http://www.radioactivity.eu.com/site/pages/Radium.htm">more so</a> than uranium. It is so radioactive that it gives off a pale blue glow. Yet it would still take the Curies another three years to produce a pure radium salt. Having originally worked with 100g of the ore, equivalent to a tenth of a bag of sugar, they would need a tonne of ore to isolate just a tenth of a gram of radium dichloride. They <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1903/summary/">received</a> the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 for this work, sharing it with Becquerel. </p>
<p>Pierre was tragically killed in a coach accident in 1906 (he was also deeply unwell from the effects of his work with radiation). Marie Curie took his professorship and continued with their research, later isolating pure radium metal and <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1911/summary/">receiving</a> the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911.</p>
<h2>Radium with everything</h2>
<p>The boom and bust of radium over the first three decades of the 20th century remains one of the great cautionary tales of our times. Among a slew of papers that the Curies published in the years after its discovery, one <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3093546/">showed that</a> radium could treat cancer by killing cancer cells more quickly than healthy cells. It became used as one of the first radiation treatments for cancer and other skin diseases. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251280/original/file-20181218-27752-1q4m8q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251280/original/file-20181218-27752-1q4m8q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251280/original/file-20181218-27752-1q4m8q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251280/original/file-20181218-27752-1q4m8q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251280/original/file-20181218-27752-1q4m8q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251280/original/file-20181218-27752-1q4m8q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251280/original/file-20181218-27752-1q4m8q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251280/original/file-20181218-27752-1q4m8q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Radium-infused soap.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet the metal’s strange blue glow <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-radium-decontamination/frances-20th-century-radium-craze-still-haunts-paris-idUSBRE86I0AH20120719">convinced some</a> that it had other benefits. It became widely used in quack treatments and elixirs, from therapeutic waters to soap to chocolate bars, where the buyer was only safe if the mixtures contained no radium at all. </p>
<p>Among other uses, entrepreneurs used radium to create “glow-in-the-dark” paint. This led to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/06/the-radium-girls-still-glowing-in-their-coffins/">the tragedy</a> of the radium dial painters in New Jersey – an all too familiar story of the promise of profit over safety, and denial of the facts. Factory workers, mostly young girls seeking an independent income, ingested the metal while applying the paint to watch faces. The radium bound to their bones like its chemical cousin, calcium, injuring, disfiguring and killing many of the two thousand workers estimated to have been employed at peak. </p>
<p>The radium industry dramatically declined after health concerns began <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/03/how-we-realized-putting-radium-in-everything-was-not-the-answer/273780/">emerging</a> in the mid-1920s. It still has a lingering presence in the contaminated soils and land around the old extraction and industry buildings in Denver, Pittsburgh and New Jersey. The UK is still dealing with the legacy of radium-painted dials used in World War II, with Dalgety Bay in Fife just one area affected by radium displaced from old waste dumps. When once the challenge was to extract this buried treasure, now the focus is on safely treating it as buried waste.</p>
<p>Marie Curie made it her lifelong goal to work out what radioactivity was, what produced it and what it could mean for the nature of matter. This almost certainly contributed to <a href="https://cosmosmagazine.com/physics/this-week-in-science-history-marie-curie-dies">her death</a> from leukaemia at the age of 66, though she
remains the only scientist to have received Nobel Prizes in both physics and chemistry. She became a landmark figure for women in science, and the element curium was later named in her honour. </p>
<p>Today radium is barely used in medicine, apart from treating some specific bone cancers. It was too expensive and rare to be a widespread feedstock for radiation therapy, and was replaced by alternatives like radon gas and later an isotope of cobalt. Yet radiation therapy and the knowledge about radioactivity that came with discovering radium remain hugely important. The story of radium mirrors that of radiation itself – a double-edged sword, with great benefits that always need to be balanced against the potential for massive harm.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108945/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Mansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
With its strange bluish glow and cancer-killing qualities, meet the wundermetal that became one of the great cautionary tales of modern times.
Stephen Mansell, Assistant Professor, Chemistry, Heriot-Watt University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/107752
2018-12-03T14:05:45Z
2018-12-03T14:05:45Z
Women have been written out of science history – time to put them back
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248142/original/file-20181130-194956-1y9lgft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=161%2C902%2C2025%2C1467&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Astronomer Caroline Herschel portrayed assisting her more famous brother, William.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/hs76suwh?query=V0002731&page=1">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Can you name a female scientist from history? Chances are you are shouting out Marie Curie. The twice Nobel Prize-winning Curie and mathematician Ada Lovelace are two of the few women within Western science to receive lasting popular recognition. </p>
<p>One reason women tend to be absent from narratives of science is because it’s not as easy to find female scientists on the public record. Even today, the numbers of women entering science remain below those of men, especially in certain disciplines. <a href="https://www.jcq.org.uk/examination-results/a-levels/2018/main-results-tables">A-level figures</a> show only 12% of candidates in computing and 22% in physics in 2018 were girls.</p>
<p>Another reason is that women do not fit the common image of a scientist. The idea of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/myth-of-the-genius-solitary-scientist-is-dangerous-87835">lone male genius</a> researcher is remarkably persistent. But looking to history can both challenge this portrayal and offer some explanation as to why science still has such a masculine bias.</p>
<p>For a start, the traditional view of science as a body of knowledge <a href="https://www.nap.edu/read/11625/chapter/8">rather than an activity</a> ignores women’s contributions as collaborators, focusing instead on the facts produced by big discoveries (and the men who made them famous).</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248144/original/file-20181130-194944-19r1xbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248144/original/file-20181130-194944-19r1xbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248144/original/file-20181130-194944-19r1xbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248144/original/file-20181130-194944-19r1xbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248144/original/file-20181130-194944-19r1xbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=987&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248144/original/file-20181130-194944-19r1xbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=987&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248144/original/file-20181130-194944-19r1xbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=987&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lise Meitner with Otto Hahn.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The 19th-century astronomer, <a href="http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/373/2039/20140210">Caroline Herschel</a>, languishes in the shadow of her brother William. Physicist <a href="https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/lise-meitner-the-nuclear-pioneer-who-escaped-the-nazis/">Lise Meitner</a> missed out on the 1944 Nobel Prize for the discovery of nuclear fission, which went to her junior collaborator, Otto Hahn, instead. <a href="https://www.mariecurie.org.uk/who/our-history/marie-curie-the-scientist">Even Curie was attacked in the press</a> for supposedly taking credit for her husband’s Pierre work.</p>
<p>The historian Margaret Rossiter has dubbed this systematic bias against women the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/030631293023002004">“Matthew Matilda Effect”</a>. Before the 20th century, women’s social position meant the only way they could typically negotiate access to science was <a href="https://ehne.fr/en/article/gender-and-europe/educating-europeans/women-science">to collaborate</a> with male family members or friends and then mostly only if they were rich. This left them prey to the traditional hierarchical assumption of woman as supporter and helper to man.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248146/original/file-20181130-194950-usna0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248146/original/file-20181130-194950-usna0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248146/original/file-20181130-194950-usna0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248146/original/file-20181130-194950-usna0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248146/original/file-20181130-194950-usna0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248146/original/file-20181130-194950-usna0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248146/original/file-20181130-194950-usna0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248146/original/file-20181130-194950-usna0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hertha Ayrton.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Helena_Ars%C3%A8ne_Darmesteter_-_Portrait_of_Hertha_Ayrton.jpg">Helena Arsène Darmesteter/Girton College, University of Cambridge</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An obituary in Nature in December 1923 of the physicist and electrical engineer Hertha Ayrton, who won the Royal Society’s Hughes Medal for original research in 1906, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/112800a0">illustrates this</a>. The obituary criticised Ayrton for neglecting her husband, stating that instead of concentrating on her science she should have “put him into carpet slippers” and “fed him well” so he could do better science. The tone of this obituary set the stage for her legacy to be forgotten. </p>
<p>These lasting attitudes about a woman’s “proper” role works to obscure scientific contribution. They also lead us to ignore women working as collaborators in areas <a href="https://natureecoevocommunity.nature.com/users/18000-luiseach-nic-eoin/posts/21040-women-and-the-art-of-doing-science">historically more welcoming</a>, such as science writing, translation and illustration.</p>
<p>As well as forgetting female scientists, we forget too that science has only been a profession since the late 19th century. Then it moved to new institutional settings, leaving women behind in the home where their science became invisible to history. For example, few remember pioneers such as <a href="https://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-henderina-victoria-scott/">Henderina Scott</a>, who in 1903 was one of the first to use time-lapse photography to record the movement of plants.</p>
<p>Women’s exclusion from professional spaces at this time is one reason why women became more active in scientific disciplines that still relied heavily on fieldwork, <a href="https://www.astrosociety.org/education/astronomy-resource-guides/women-in-astronomy-an-introductory-resource-guide">such as astronomy</a> and botany. This is where science began splitting into a hierarchy of male-dominated “hard” sciences, such as physics, and “soft” sciences, such as botany and biological science, that were seen as more acceptable for women. </p>
<h2>Shut out</h2>
<p>Women were typically refused admission to elite scientific institutions, so we do not find their names on fellowship lists. The first women were elected as fellows of the Royal Society <a href="http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/46/2/279">in 1945</a>, and the French Academy of Science didn’t admit its first female fellow <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/30053914?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">until 1979</a>. When the Royal Geographical Society debated the possibility of female fellows in 1892 and 1893, an angry dispute between council members was conducted via the letters page of The Times and it only finally admitted women <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271690393_The_Admission_of_Women_Fellows_to_the_Royal_Geographical_Society_1892-1914_the_Controversy_and_the_Outcome">in 1913</a>.</p>
<p>Yet, scientific women worked though the cracks. Between 1880 and 1914, <a href="https://royalsociety.org/science-events-and-lectures/2015/03/women-writing-science/">some 60 women</a> contributed papers to Royal Society publications. And some women continued to work as scientists without pay or titles. <a href="http://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/dorothea-bate-natural-history-museum-pioneer.html">Dorothea Bate</a> was a distinguished palaeontologist who was associated with the Natural History Museum from 1898 yet wasn’t paid or made a member of staff until 1948 when she was in her late sixties.</p>
<p>Why this pervasive ambivalence to female scientists? In the late 19th century, science taught that there were <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12680306">innate intellectual differences</a> between the sexes which limited women’s suitability for science. (Another reason why scientific societies did not want their prestige tarnished by female fellows.) <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25058416?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Charles Darwin argued</a> that evolutionary competition led to the higher development of male brains.</p>
<p>Scholars such as <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0921810698112005">Carolyn Merchant</a> and <a href="https://history.stanford.edu/people/londa-schiebinger">Londa Schiebinger</a> have demonstrated that the birth of modern science in the late 17th century embodied a masculine ethos hostile to women’s participation. Femininity became associated with the passive object of scientific investigation, in direct opposition to the active male investigator.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248141/original/file-20181130-194922-1egdv6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248141/original/file-20181130-194922-1egdv6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248141/original/file-20181130-194922-1egdv6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248141/original/file-20181130-194922-1egdv6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248141/original/file-20181130-194922-1egdv6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248141/original/file-20181130-194922-1egdv6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248141/original/file-20181130-194922-1egdv6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nature Unveiling Herself Before Science (Musée d'Orsay).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/40978177@N00/3112373178">emilee radeer/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Science and nature <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1343667?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">were regularly personified</a> as women up until the early 20th century, with the male researcher characterised as penetrating their secrets. This cultural understanding of science – which has nothing to do with the numbers of each sex practising – presented a challenge to women that’s still recognisable today.</p>
<p>Although we must be careful not to overestimate how women were historically active in science, it is important to remember those women scientists who did contribute and the barriers they overcame to participate. This is one strand in tackling the continuing tension between femininity and science, providing female role models, and increasing women’s participation across all scientific disciplines.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107752/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claire Jones receives funding from AHRC (2013-14 networking grant for Women in Science Research Network). </span></em></p>
Uncovering forgotten history can help explain why science still has a masculine bias today.
Claire Jones, Senior Lecturer in History of Science, University of Liverpool
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/103590
2018-10-14T12:14:22Z
2018-10-14T12:14:22Z
True ‘innovation’ generates ideas, not wealth
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240147/original/file-20181010-72110-c88sjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A street art mural representing the innovative scientist Marie Curie, by French graffiti mural artist C215 (Christian Guemy) in Vitry-sur-Seine, France, on 24 Dec 2015. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ancient innovators were poets, thinkers, artisans and scientists, not business owners. The classical Greek philosopher Socrates did not become famous for the massive dividends that he provided to his <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/wild_things/2014/08/21/poisonous_plants_socrates_drank_hemlock_tea_as_his_preferred_mode_of_execution.html">shareholders in the hemlock industry</a>.</p>
<p>We remember innovators for their ideas, not their wealth. Why then has innovation <a href="https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/handle/1974/24063">been co-opted largely by business interests</a>? </p>
<p>When most people think of innovation, they tend to think of <a href="https://www.ideatovalue.com/inno/nickskillicorn/2016/03/innovation-15-experts-share-innovation-definition/?15?experts?share?innovation?definition">people making money</a> from executing novel ideas. They think of today’s successful capitalists like Elon Musk, Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.</p>
<p>Business folk don’t exactly rush to correct them and I don’t blame them. That said, there is a danger to letting any one group completely dictate the societal narrative of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.04.073">what is “innovation” and who is “innovative</a>.”</p>
<h2>Money is not a requirement</h2>
<p>For my doctoral dissertation, I interviewed 30 Canadian innovators in a variety of settings about what motivates them to be innovative. I asked them, among other things, if an idea can be innovative even if it has zero potential to make back its investment. </p>
<p>Six of them were from business settings, 24 were not; all 30 of them said that making money was not a requirement for an idea to be innovative and that most great ideas are interdisciplinary. </p>
<p>When I did my survey of 500 Canadian innovators outside of business, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328203318_Title_The_price_of_admission_Examining_how_expectancies_and_values_can_overcome_innovation's_costs">none of them considered rewards like money to be strong positive motivators</a>. That’s the sound of money letting everyone down.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"971417698528907264"}"></div></p>
<p>The fact is that <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/innovation-the-history-of-a-buzzword/277067/">innovation has only recently become about money and it has usually been interdisciplinary</a>. </p>
<p>That’s why we recognize the name of <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1903/marie-curie/biographical">Marie Curie</a>, who combined chemistry and physics in what would grow and develop into the new field of radiology and radiation medicine. We remember <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sunzi">Sun Tzu</a>, for he was among the first to blur the line between strategy, history, philosophy and military tactics. We know <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Michael-Faraday">Michael Faraday</a>, who would discover benzene and popularize the study of electricity — combining disparate ideas from math, physics, education and nature. </p>
<p>These innovators were all known for one field but drew inspiration from other fields, and didn’t strike it rich. </p>
<h2>Minority successes</h2>
<p>We’ve forgotten about the arts. Who were the great thinkers in the Renaissance? They were poets, painters, composers, philosophers and playwrights. They were engineers, authors, teachers and leaders. </p>
<p>We privilege innovators who made money. If we define innovation in this way, famous innovators tend to be white, male and mostly business-oriented. </p>
<p>That shouldn’t be the case. We didn’t start immortalizing capitalists until later. They definitely deserved it, but where did the other folks go? Consider instead the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.04.073">range of innovations that are social in nature</a>. Business is a valuable potential contributor to the creativity of humanity, but so are lots of other disciplines. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240149/original/file-20181010-72127-18h656z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240149/original/file-20181010-72127-18h656z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240149/original/file-20181010-72127-18h656z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240149/original/file-20181010-72127-18h656z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240149/original/file-20181010-72127-18h656z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240149/original/file-20181010-72127-18h656z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240149/original/file-20181010-72127-18h656z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Mahatma Gandhi is featured on an Indian 500 rupee banknote. Gandhi’s nonviolent philosophy was not only instrumental in freeing India from British rule but it continues to influence international resistance movements to this day.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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<p>If we define innovation as <em>the novel execution of ideas that create value</em>, then logically the highest potential and least tapped resource is to apply knowledge and skills across disciplines so that you can creatively approach existing challenges.</p>
<p>Why then do we link innovation with monetary success? Short answer: business endeavours tend to get more exposure and can afford to buy more exposure through marketing. How much more exposure? My best guess, using webscraping software, is just over 21 times more economic exposure (255,648,990 visits) than social definition exposure (11,867,330 visits). </p>
<p>Despite the clear over-representation of business in innovation literature, media and therefore societal thought, <a href="http://www.oecd.org/canada/41558999.pdf">commissioned reports in Canada</a> and <a href="http://www2.itif.org/2016-demographics-of-innovation.pdf">the United States</a> show that an overwhelming majority of innovators come from outside of business and that cultural and ethnic minorities host the largest reservoir of novel ideas. </p>
<p>Consider the work of <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2006/yunus/biographical/">Muhammad Yunus</a>, who popularized micro-credit to support aspiring innovators in developing countries. Closer to home, Catherine Hernandez has <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/books/how-catherine-hernandez-opens-her-heart-to-find-the-stories-she-should-tell-1.4480705">brought brilliant voice to the diverse communities of Canada in her book “Scarborough” that tangibly brings diversity to life</a>. </p>
<p>Continuing with the trend of innovators doing social good, Afzal Habib has taken the savvy of business management to the not-for-profit sector with his <a href="https://www.kidogo.co/team/afzal-habib">Kidogo program</a> — which builds capacity abroad for affordable, high-quality educational day care in developing countries.</p>
<h2>We tamed fire to stay alive</h2>
<p>Lots of people exhibit innovative behaviour — they don’t all become famous. Every innovative thought, however, has the potential to contribute to humanity regardless of how little potential it has to generate money. </p>
<p>We’ve let capitalism have a stranglehold on defining innovation. It’s no wonder it’s linked to money. Innovation is common outside business if you look for it. I’m pretty sure we didn’t tame fire to get loaded and buy yachts. </p>
<p>We tamed fire to not freeze to death most of the time. Innovation occurs across areas of human endeavour where we confront challenges, not just where we get paid.</p>
<p>People confront challenges and make leaps in and between innumerable fields and it is about time we started loudly and proudly treating innovation as interdisciplinary and of value if it improves humanity without making a cent.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103590/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eleftherios Soleas receives scholarship funding from Queen's University and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p>
To become a successful innovator, follow Marie Curie, Mahatma Gandhi and today’s female social entrepreneurs – focus on ideas and social value, not money.
Eleftherios Soleas, PhD Candidate in Education, Queen's University, Ontario
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/102988
2018-09-13T20:32:40Z
2018-09-13T20:32:40Z
Year 11 and 12 students in NSW will no longer learn about women’s contributions to physics
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236148/original/file-20180913-133895-baz8wb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We need female role models in the NSW physics syllabus to normalise women in physics and encourage their engagement and further study.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The new Higher School Certificate (HSC) physics syllabus for NSW will contain no mention of the contributions of female physicists to the field. Not teaching students about their contributions to the field denies young women role models, and denies all students important knowledge about physics. </p>
<p>An education system which simultaneously claims to <a href="https://education.nsw.gov.au/news/secretary-update/international-womens-day2">praise women in STEM</a>, yet erases them from a physics syllabus cannot be seen as thorough. This needs to be fixed before long lasting damage is done to Australia’s next generation of scientists. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-study-says-the-gender-gap-in-science-could-take-generations-to-fix-95150">New study says the gender gap in science could take generations to fix</a>
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<p>Physics has a multitude of female physicists to celebrate. These outstanding women could inspire passion in young female students, while providing all students with a broader perspective of the universe we all call home. </p>
<h2>Complete deletion, really?</h2>
<p>In 2018, NSW introduced a new <a href="https://search.informit.com.au/fullText;dn=499263222898931;res=IELHSS">HSC physics syllabus</a>, which focuses on complex topics such as thermodynamics and quantum physics, and requires a more technical understanding of physics concepts. It focuses on the physics itself and its modern usage, rather than how we discovered and developed physics in the first place. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/11-12/stage-6-learning-areas/stage-6-science/physics">outgoing syllabus</a> includes more background and the history of the development of physics. The discoveries women have contributed to the field are taught in this syllabus, but it fails to identify a single woman by name in the 47 scientists mentioned 93 times.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1037266449872564225"}"></div></p>
<p>The <a href="http://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/11-12/stage-6-learning-areas/stage-6-science/physics-2017">new syllabus</a> has 25 scientists mentioned 56 times. But no women are referred to by name, nor are any contributions women have made to physics included.</p>
<p>This new syllabus focuses completely on male physicists and their work. Women have been and continue to be told physics is primarily a male endeavour. </p>
<h2>You can’t be what you can’t see</h2>
<p>Science is filled with interesting characters, insights and discoveries. Teaching about a scientist or their work celebrates their contributions, highlights their efforts and recognises how they influenced and developed knowledge.</p>
<p>The new syllabus fails to provide female role models. Role models <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0361684313482109">are important</a> because they foster pro-science aspirations and attitudes. This is true for both women <em>and</em> men, but young girls miss out if we only provide students with male role models. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-hunt-for-the-superstars-of-stem-to-engage-more-women-in-science-76854">The hunt for the Superstars of STEM to engage more women in science</a>
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<p>This syllabus conveys the message that female physicists aren’t significant enough to mention. This is not only incorrect, but discouraging to female students. When we focus entirely on male scientists, we devalue women and their work in this field.</p>
<h2>Remarkable female scientists</h2>
<p>There are many examples of outstanding women that could have been included in the syllabus. Each have made major contributions to their field. Students would benefit greatly from learning about these women (plus many others) and their work in physics lessons. Here are four examples of bad-arse female physicists:</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236120/original/file-20180913-133889-rrrjo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236120/original/file-20180913-133889-rrrjo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236120/original/file-20180913-133889-rrrjo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236120/original/file-20180913-133889-rrrjo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236120/original/file-20180913-133889-rrrjo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236120/original/file-20180913-133889-rrrjo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236120/original/file-20180913-133889-rrrjo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236120/original/file-20180913-133889-rrrjo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Ruby Payne-Scott was an Australian radio astronomer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peter Hall/</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p><strong>Ruby Payne-Scott</strong> </p>
<p>Australia’s own Ruby Payne-Scott was one of the first radio astronomers in the world. Payne-Scott was at the forefront of radio astronomy in the 1940s. She developed techniques that have defined the field and her work made Australia the global leader it is today. Payne-Scott even discovered <a href="http://www.publish.csiro.au/CH/CH9490214">three types of radiation bursts</a> coming from the sun. </p>
<p><strong>Professor Marie Curie</strong></p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236122/original/file-20180913-133904-9agq2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236122/original/file-20180913-133904-9agq2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236122/original/file-20180913-133904-9agq2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=692&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236122/original/file-20180913-133904-9agq2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=692&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236122/original/file-20180913-133904-9agq2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=692&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236122/original/file-20180913-133904-9agq2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236122/original/file-20180913-133904-9agq2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236122/original/file-20180913-133904-9agq2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Marie Curie is one of the most well-known female physicists.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
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<p>Dual Nobel laureate, Professor Marie Curie started the field of radioactivity. Her work included the discovery of two new radioactive elements, which was only possible because of her impeccable experimental skills. Her research of radioactivity is still influencing physics. Her notebooks are still radioactive and will likely be for the next 1,500 years.</p>
<p><strong>Dr Rosalind Franklin</strong></p>
<p>Dr Rosalind Franklin’s unique approach to X-Ray crystallography was the first successful research delving into the structure of our cells. This helped us understand the double helix structure of DNA. Her work was revolutionary but <a href="https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1570771">has been attributed to Watson and Crick</a>, who won the Nobel Prize for the discovery. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236121/original/file-20180913-133874-ilhwgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236121/original/file-20180913-133874-ilhwgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236121/original/file-20180913-133874-ilhwgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236121/original/file-20180913-133874-ilhwgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236121/original/file-20180913-133874-ilhwgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236121/original/file-20180913-133874-ilhwgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236121/original/file-20180913-133874-ilhwgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236121/original/file-20180913-133874-ilhwgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Dame Professor Jocelyn Bell-Burnell is an astrophysicist who discovered a new type of star.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William Murphy/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p><strong>Dame Professor Jocelyn Bell-Burnell</strong></p>
<p>Dame <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06210-w">Professor Jocelyn Bell-Burnell</a> discovered an entirely new type of star called pulsars on a radio telescope she essentially made herself while she was a PhD student. These rapidly rotating neutron stars changed what astronomers thought possible and is still an active area of research. Bell-Burnell originally called them LGM for <a href="http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2006/07/jocelyn-bell-burnell-reflects-discovery-pulsars">Little Green Men</a> as she did not want to rule out the fact the source could have come from alien life forms.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/gender-inequalities-in-science-wont-self-correct-its-time-for-action-99452">Gender inequalities in science won't self-correct: it's time for action</a>
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<p>Teaching our students women have had and continue to have no role in physics is not only incorrect, it’s harmful. We need equal representation to normalise women in physics and encourage their engagement and further study. A syllabus that correctly represents people in the field of physics can help <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5008876/">reduce unconscious bias</a> and demonstrate to young women there’s a place for them in this field.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102988/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The new physics syllabus for year 11 and 12 students in NSW contains no mention of specific women who have contributed to the field, nor their work.
Kathryn Ross, Researcher at Sydney University Physics Education Research Group, University of Sydney
Tom Gordon, Senior Science Communicator, PhD candidate Sydney University Physics Education Research (SUPER) group, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/87025
2017-11-07T14:27:34Z
2017-11-07T14:27:34Z
Is Marie Skłodowska Curie still a good role model for female scientists at 150?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193552/original/file-20171107-1011-1wvpoyx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Marie Curie in her laboratory.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">wikipedia.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sometimes I’m glad I’m old(ish) and have made it up the career ladder. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a young woman trying to become established today. Not only are they likely to be saddled with a large debt from university tuition, they must also contend with discrimination and harassment, no matter what field they wish to enter. Academia, unfortunately, is no exception.</p>
<p>It is salutary to look back at the hurdles the most famous female scientist had to overcome on her journey to two Nobel prizes in separate disciplines – physics and chemistry – one of only four individuals to be honoured in this way. <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1911/marie-curie-bio.html">Marie Skłodowska Curie</a> (November 7, 1867 – July 4, 1934) is a role model like no other – and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-41861232">practically the only female scientist</a> that many people can name. She is particularly known for her groundbreaking work on radioactivity.</p>
<p>I reread <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00B25CJRY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">Skłodowska Curie’s biography</a> recently, and she certainly deserves her place of honour in any list of leading scientists. Her work impacts my own field of space sciences on a daily basis – not least as we use radioactive decay as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_rocket">power source</a> for the spacecraft that help us shed light on our solar system.</p>
<p>Skłodowska Curie’s life story seems more compelling than ever. She faced the problems that scientists experience today: shortage of funding, inadequate laboratory facilities and having to manage a teaching load with research time. Add to that two daughters, and the issue of juggling childcare and career adds a familiar refrain. </p>
<p>But she was also an immigrant. In her native country of Poland, women could not go to university, so she went to France for her higher education. She could not go until she had raised sufficient money to pay her tuition fees, so she worked as a governess for two years, finally leaving for France in 1891. </p>
<p>Fast forward a few years, and Maria Skłodowska, now Marie Skłodowska Curie, had overcome the difficulties of her background, and in 1903, became the joint recipient, with her husband Pierre Curie, of the Nobel Prize in physics. Surely a life of success beckoned? No such luck. Widowed less than two years later, Skłodowska Curie continued to struggle, mainly with <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/06/science/a-glow-in-the-dark-and-a-lesson-in-scientific-peril.html">health issues</a> related to her research on radioactivity.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193566/original/file-20171107-1041-nocaiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193566/original/file-20171107-1041-nocaiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193566/original/file-20171107-1041-nocaiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193566/original/file-20171107-1041-nocaiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193566/original/file-20171107-1041-nocaiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193566/original/file-20171107-1041-nocaiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193566/original/file-20171107-1041-nocaiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marie and Pierre Curie.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/55db4768bd86ef0e008b5691-840-700/e43a4b1eaf.jpg">wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She received further honours, becoming the first female professor at the Sorbonne. But as her fame grew, again, as happens so frequently, success led to vilification. Her daughter Eve <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00B25CJRY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">related</a> in the 2001 autobiographu: “Her origins were basely brought up against her: called in turn a Russian, a German, a Jewess and a Pole, she was ‘the foreign woman’ who had come to Paris like a usurper to conquer a high position improperly.”</p>
<p>Much of the vitriol came to the fore in 1910, when was nominated for membership of the <a href="http://www.academie-sciences.fr/en/">Académie des sciences</a> – an honour never previously awarded to a woman. She lost out by one vote, and the first female full member was not elected until 1979. </p>
<h2>Modern icons?</h2>
<p>Skłodowska Curie really is a splendid role model and a feminist icon – but you don’t have to go through all that grief, or even dissolve up several tonnes of uranium ore to serve as an example of what women can accomplish. </p>
<p>In my own field, there are many amazing women who have been the first in their sphere. Just think of the first women astronauts: the Russian cosmonaut <a href="https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/whos_who_level2/tereshkova.html">Valentina Tereshkova</a>, the British astronaut <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/18/blast-off-why-has-astronaut-helen-sharman-been-written-out-of-history">Helen Sharman</a> and the US space shuttle astronaut <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/nasa-knows/who-was-sally-ride-k4.html">Sally Ride</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193570/original/file-20171107-1011-11je0l0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193570/original/file-20171107-1011-11je0l0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193570/original/file-20171107-1011-11je0l0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193570/original/file-20171107-1011-11je0l0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193570/original/file-20171107-1011-11je0l0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193570/original/file-20171107-1011-11je0l0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193570/original/file-20171107-1011-11je0l0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Space shuttle astronaut, Sally Ride.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">wikipedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Vera Rubin, an astronomer who discovered powerful evidence of dark matter, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jan/01/vera-rubin-obituary">died recently</a> without winning the Nobel Prize that many people thought she deserved – having suffered from sex discrimination during her entire career. </p>
<p>A lot of successful women in science go completely unnoticed. The recent film, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4846340/">Hidden Figures</a>, highlighted the prejudices that three black women (Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson) working for NASA in the 1960s had to overcome. These women made some enormous achievements and their lack of recognition is appalling. </p>
<p>In the 1970s, another woman, <a href="https://www.mysteriesofcanada.com/ontario/charlotte-whitton/">Charlotte Whitton</a>, the first Canadian female mayor <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Whitton">summarised the situation</a> women faced: “Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.” This may be a little unfair, but it did reflect the frustration of the time. Things are getting better – there are more women in positions of seniority across all fields and disciplines, and it is becoming less of a talking point when a woman is successful. </p>
<p>But we are still failing to develop the talents of many young women. In a society that is woefully short of the scientists and engineers that it needs, we lose a lot of the potential workforce when we fail to excite young women to continue studying science subjects like physics <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationopinion/10637941/The-leaky-pipeline-of-women-in-science.html">beyond the age of 15 in schools</a>. And many women who do get into science fail to reach senior positions.</p>
<p>What role models are required to persuade girls that they can become scientists and engineers? What will persuade them that physics isn’t boring? How can we ensure that there are sufficient students in our universities to provide the specialists we will need to maintain the pace of discoveries that we have come to expect in our digital age? Is the life and example of Marie Skłodowska Curie still relevant, or do we need someone a little more contemporary? </p>
<p>Maybe a culture change is required – and that is more than any role model, no matter how charismatic, can enforce. As we have seen, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/mps-sex-scandal-sleaze-spreadsheet-timeline-what-happened-explained-westminster-a8032531.html">the past is coming back to haunt men</a> who have abused positions of privilege to harass women. Perhaps we are, at last, going to attain the equality of status that women have been fighting for for decades. Women should no longer feel under threat in the workplace. It should be a matter of no moment when a woman is appointed or promoted. The UK’s <a href="https://www.ecu.ac.uk/equality-charters/athena-swan/">Athena Swan charter</a> was established to advance gender equality in STEM subjects in universities, and has been successful. There is still a long way to go, though, and ensuring equality doesn’t engender excitement.</p>
<p>Skłodowska Curie and her husband are immortalised as the Curie (Ci), the unit of radioactivity, and as curium (Cm), the element in the periodic table with atomic number 96. <a href="https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=7000">7000 Curie</a> is an asteroid. But it just seems such a shame that 150 years after her birth, we still haven’t got the role of women in science and engineering at the level of attainment that means we can stop talking about it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87025/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Monica Grady is Professor of Planetary and Space Sciences at the Open University. She receives funding from the STFC, the UK Space Agency and the EU Horizon 2020 Program. She is a Fellow of the Natural History Museum, London and a Trustee of Lunar Mission One. </span></em></p>
Marie Skłodowska Curie was born 150 years ago and is still the only female scientist many people can name.
Monica Grady, Professor of Planetary and Space Sciences, The Open University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/83941
2017-10-11T00:37:18Z
2017-10-11T00:37:18Z
Marie Curie and her X-ray vehicles’ contribution to World War I battlefield medicine
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189262/original/file-20171006-25752-pat0e4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Marie Curie in one of her mobile X-ray units in October 1917.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marie_Curie_-_Mobile_X-Ray-Unit.jpg">Eve Curie</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ask people to name the most famous historical woman of science and their answer will likely be: Madame Marie Curie. Push further and ask what she did, and they might say it was something related to <a href="http://www.physics.org/article-questions.asp?id=71">radioactivity</a>. (She actually discovered the radioisotopes <a href="https://www.iupac.org/publications/ci/2011/3301/5_adloff.html">radium and polonium</a>.) Some might also know that she was the first woman to win a <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1911/marie-curie-facts.html">Nobel Prize</a>. (She actually won two.)</p>
<p>But few will know she was also a major hero of World War I. In fact, a visitor to her Paris laboratory 100 years ago would not have found either her or her radium on the premises. Her radium was in hiding and she was at war. </p>
<p>For Curie, the war started in early 1914, as German troops headed toward her hometown of Paris. She knew her scientific research needed to be put on hold. So she gathered her entire stock of radium, put it in a lead-lined container, transported it by train to Bordeaux – 375 miles away from Paris – and left it in a safety deposit box at a local bank. She then returned to Paris, confident that she would reclaim her radium after France had won the war.</p>
<p>With the subject of her life’s work hidden far away, she now needed something else to do. Rather than flee the turmoil, she decided to join in the fight. But just how could a middle-aged woman do that? She decided to redirect her scientific skills toward the war effort; not to make weapons, but to save lives.</p>
<h2>X-rays enlisted in the war effort</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189249/original/file-20171006-25752-16upvo5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189249/original/file-20171006-25752-16upvo5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189249/original/file-20171006-25752-16upvo5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=674&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189249/original/file-20171006-25752-16upvo5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=674&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189249/original/file-20171006-25752-16upvo5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=674&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189249/original/file-20171006-25752-16upvo5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189249/original/file-20171006-25752-16upvo5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189249/original/file-20171006-25752-16upvo5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">X-ray of a bullet in the heart.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bullet_in_heart.jpg">U.S. Army</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.livescience.com/32344-what-are-x-rays.html">X-rays</a>, a type of <a href="https://www.livescience.com/38169-electromagnetism.html">electromagnetic radiation</a>, had been discovered in 1895 by Curie’s fellow Nobel laureate, <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1901/rontgen-bio.html">Wilhelm Roentgen</a>. As I describe in my book <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10691.html">“Strange Glow: The Story of Radiation</a>,” almost immediately after their discovery, physicians began using X-rays to image patients’ bones and find foreign objects – like <a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/1/1950/1252">bullets</a>.</p>
<p>But at the start of the war, <a href="http://science.howstuffworks.com/x-ray2.htm">X-ray machines</a> were still found only in city hospitals, far from the battlefields where wounded troops were being treated. Curie’s solution was to invent the first “radiological car” – a vehicle containing an X-ray machine and photographic darkroom equipment – which could be driven right up to the battlefield where army surgeons could use X-rays to guide their surgeries.</p>
<p>One major obstacle was the need for electrical power to produce the X-rays. Curie solved that problem by incorporating a <a href="http://www.edisontechcenter.org/generators.html">dynamo</a> – a type of electrical generator – into the car’s design. The petroleum-powered car engine could thus provide the required electricity.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189295/original/file-20171008-25775-tb6ded.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189295/original/file-20171008-25775-tb6ded.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189295/original/file-20171008-25775-tb6ded.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189295/original/file-20171008-25775-tb6ded.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189295/original/file-20171008-25775-tb6ded.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189295/original/file-20171008-25775-tb6ded.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189295/original/file-20171008-25775-tb6ded.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189295/original/file-20171008-25775-tb6ded.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One of Curie’s mobile units used by the French Army.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb40504352c">Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Frustrated by delays in getting funding from the French military, Curie approached the Union of Women of France. This philanthropic organization gave her the money needed to produce the first car, which ended up playing an important role in treating the wounded at the <a href="http://www.history.com/news/the-first-battle-of-the-marne-100-years-ago">Battle of Marne</a> in 1914 – a major Allied victory that kept the Germans from entering Paris.</p>
<p>More radiological cars were needed. So Curie exploited her scientific clout to ask wealthy Parisian women to donate vehicles. Soon she had 20, which she outfitted with X-ray equipment. But the cars were useless without trained X-ray operators, so Curie started to train women volunteers. She recruited 20 women for the first training course, which she taught along with her daughter <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1935/joliot-curie-facts.html">Irene</a>, a future Nobel Prize winner herself.</p>
<p>The curriculum included theoretical instruction about the physics of electricity and X-rays as well as practical lessons in anatomy and photographic processing. When that group had finished its training, it left for the front, and Curie then trained more women. In the end, a total of 150 women received X-ray training from Curie.</p>
<p>Not content just to send out her trainees to the battlefront, Curie herself had her own <a href="http://sierrawyllie.weebly.com/little-curies.html">“little Curie”</a> – as the radiological cars were nicknamed – that she took to the front. This required her to learn to drive, change flat tires and even master some rudimentary auto mechanics, like cleaning carburetors. And she also had to deal with car accidents. When her driver careened into a ditch and overturned the vehicle, they righted the car, fixed the damaged equipment as best they could and got back to work.</p>
<p>In addition to the mobile little Curies that traveled around the battlefront, Curie also oversaw the construction of 200 radiological rooms at various fixed field hospitals behind the battle lines. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189259/original/file-20171006-25775-dltyvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189259/original/file-20171006-25775-dltyvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189259/original/file-20171006-25775-dltyvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189259/original/file-20171006-25775-dltyvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189259/original/file-20171006-25775-dltyvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189259/original/file-20171006-25775-dltyvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=680&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189259/original/file-20171006-25775-dltyvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=680&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189259/original/file-20171006-25775-dltyvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=680&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Medics at a French WWI field hospital locating a bullet with X-ray machine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/stereo.1s04120">Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>X-rays’ long shadow for Marie Curie</h2>
<p>Although few, if any, of the women X-ray workers were injured as a consequence of combat, they were not without their casualties. Many <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3520298/">suffered burns from overexposure to X-rays</a>. Curie knew that such high exposures posed future health risks, such as cancer in later life. But there had been no time to perfect X-ray safety practices for the field, so many X-ray workers were overexposed. She worried much about this, and later wrote a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Radiologie-Guerre-French-Marie-Curie-ebook/dp/B00WZVQBDM">book about X-ray safety</a> drawn from her war experiences. </p>
<p>Curie survived the war but was concerned that her intense X-ray work would ultimately cause her demise. Years later, she did contract <a href="http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/aplastic-anemia/symptoms-causes/dxc-20266535">aplastic anemia</a>, a blood disorder sometimes produced by high radiation exposure.</p>
<p>Many assumed that her illness was the result of her decades of radium work – it’s well-established that <a href="https://www.osti.gov/accomplishments/documents/fullText/ACC0029.pdf">internalized radium is lethal</a>. But Curie was dismissive of that idea. She had always protected herself from ingesting any radium. Rather, she attributed her illness to the high X-ray exposures she had received during the war. (We will likely never know whether the wartime X-rays contributed to her death in 1934, but a sampling of her remains in 1995 showed her <a href="https://search.proquest.com/docview/204463756?pq-origsite=gscholar">body was indeed free of radium</a>.)</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189253/original/file-20171006-25775-126uwsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189253/original/file-20171006-25775-126uwsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189253/original/file-20171006-25775-126uwsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189253/original/file-20171006-25775-126uwsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189253/original/file-20171006-25775-126uwsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189253/original/file-20171006-25775-126uwsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189253/original/file-20171006-25775-126uwsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189253/original/file-20171006-25775-126uwsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marie Curie and her daughter Irène in the laboratory after WWI.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1903/marie-curie-photo.html">© Association Curie Joliot-Curie</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As science’s first woman celebrity, Marie Curie can hardly be called an unsung hero. But the common depiction of her as a one-dimensional person, slaving away in her laboratory with the single-minded purpose of advancing science for science’s sake, is far from the truth.</p>
<p>Marie Curie was a multidimensional person, who worked doggedly as both a scientist and a humanitarian. She was a strong patriot of her adopted homeland, having immigrated to France from Poland. And she leveraged her scientific fame for the benefit of her country’s war effort – using the winnings from her second Nobel Prize to buy war bonds and even trying to melt down her Nobel medals to convert them to cash to buy more.</p>
<p>She didn’t allow her gender to hamper her in a male-dominated world. Instead, she mobilized a small army of women in an effort to reduce human suffering and win World War I. Through her efforts, it is estimated that the total number of wounded soldiers receiving X-ray exams during the war exceeded <a href="http://theinstitute.ieee.org/tech-history/technology-history/how-marie-curie-helped-save-a-million-soldiers-during-world-war-i">one million</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83941/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timothy J. Jorgensen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
During World War I, Marie Curie left her lab behind, inventing a mobile X-ray unit that could travel to the battlefront and training 150 women to operate these ‘Little Curies.’
Timothy J. Jorgensen, Director of the Health Physics and Radiation Protection Graduate Program and Associate Professor of Radiation Medicine, Georgetown University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/67976
2016-11-03T00:18:14Z
2016-11-03T00:18:14Z
When ‘energy’ drinks actually contained radioactive energy
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144280/original/image-20161102-27215-segti1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C7651%2C5602&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Refreshingly radioactive?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=225920680">Drink image via www.shutterstock.com.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Modern life have you feeling frazzled? Flagging a bit as you rush through your day? Maybe you’re one of the millions of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1541-4337.2010.00111.x">consumers who lean on energy drinks</a> to put a little extra pep in your step. </p>
<p>Though emblematic of our time, energy drinks aren’t an invention of the new millennium. People have relied on them to combat fatigue for at least a century. Today, their “energy” typically derives from some type of neurological stimulant that makes people feel more energetic, or sometimes just sugar.</p>
<p>But there was a time when energy drinks actually contained real energy. The active ingredient in these drinks was <a href="http://periodic.lanl.gov/88.shtml">radium</a>, a radioactive element that releases a packet of radiant energy with every <a href="https://www.nde-ed.org/EducationResources/HighSchool/Radiography/radioactivedecay.htm">atomic decay</a>. While the connection between consuming a radioactive element and reaping a perceived energy boost is tenuous at best, it didn’t stop people in the early 1900s from ignoring the known downsides of ingesting radioactivity and risking the long-term health consequences.</p>
<h2>Yum yum radium?</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144252/original/image-20161102-27237-jrcwgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144252/original/image-20161102-27237-jrcwgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144252/original/image-20161102-27237-jrcwgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144252/original/image-20161102-27237-jrcwgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144252/original/image-20161102-27237-jrcwgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144252/original/image-20161102-27237-jrcwgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144252/original/image-20161102-27237-jrcwgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144252/original/image-20161102-27237-jrcwgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">RadiThor claimed to be a panacea for a variety of health ailments.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/blueshift12/25799475341">Sam L.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>One of these energy-containing products was <a href="http://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1990.03450050077032">RadiThor</a>. This energy drink was simply radium dissolved in water. It was sold in the 1920s in one-ounce bottles costing about US$1 each ($15 in 2016 dollars). Its manufacturer claimed the drink not only provided energy but also cured a host of ailments, including impotence. Evidence for a sexual benefit to humans was lacking, but at least <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(00)52019-4">one scientific paper</a> claimed that radium water could increase “the sexual passion of water newts.” For many men, in this pre-Viagra era, the water newt evidence was enough. RadiThor was a big seller.</p>
<p>RadiThor’s most famous customer was Eben Byers, a Pittsburgh industrialist and <a href="https://westpenngolfhalloffame.org/2015/11/25/eben-byers/">amateur golfer of some repute</a>. Byers first became acquainted with RadiThor when he took it to help heal a broken arm. Although the product contained no narcotics at all, Byers became at least psychologically, if not physiologically, addicted to it. He continued to consume large amounts of RadiThor even after his arm had healed. He reportedly downed a bottle or two daily for over three years, and sang its praises to all his friends, some of whom also took up the RadiThor habit.</p>
<p>In the end, Byers’ RadiThor addiction killed him. Unfortunately, ingested radium gets <a href="http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/ToxProfiles/tp144.pdf">incorporated into bone</a> and all of its radiation energy is, therefore, deposited in bone tissue. Over time, the radium delivered a whopping radiation dose to Byers’ skeleton. He developed holes in his skull, lost most of his jaw and suffered a variety of other bone-related illnesses. Ultimately, he <a href="http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1932/04/01/page/1/article/radium-poison-in-tonic-kills-eben-m-byers">died a gruesome death</a> on March 31, 1932.</p>
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<span class="caption">Marie and Pierre Curie, the discoverers of radium, understood the dangers inherent in eating it, and never condoned its use in food or drinks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/DEU-WISSENSCHAFT-CURIE-GEBURTSTAG/59f322a0265f455cbc435ae72b813e15/1/0">AP file photo</a></span>
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<h2>Relearning radioactivity lesson</h2>
<p>The shame of this was that the dangers of ingested radium were already known, even before Byers started taking RadiThor. As I describe in my book, <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10691.html">“Strange Glow: The Story of Radiation</a>,” the medical community had been studying the health effects of radium since its discovery by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898. British scientist Walter Lazarus-Barlow had published as early as 1913 that ingested <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF03172071">radium goes into bone</a>. And in 1914, Ernst Zueblin, a medical professor at the University of Maryland, published a review of 700 medical reports, many of which showed that bone <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=GJFFAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA141&lpg=PA141&dq=Ernst+Zueblin+present+status+of+radioactive+therapy&source=bl&ots=ZXAmamhFeI&sig=qvX9wREcPF8KmgeBdZVLRbeo0og&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj3wvap8YfQAhXo5oMKHf-3AkgQ6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q&f=false">necrosis and ulcerations</a> were a frequent side effect from ingesting radium. Unfortunately, the early red flags went unnoticed, and RadiThor sales remained strong through the 1920s.</p>
<p>When Byers died, he was put to rest in a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=vzBLDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA113&lpg=PA113&dq=Eben+Byers+lead+allegheny+cemetery&source=bl&ots=745yvLTqJj&sig=DD47Rv1PW1F1-5DXEZ693VnSopA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjHnNDSrYrQAhWGC5AKHUhKBqMQ6AEIQTAF#v=onepage&q=Eben%20Byers%20lead%20allegheny%20cemetery&f=false">lead-lined coffin</a>, to block the radiation being released from the bones in his body. Thirty-three years later, in 1965, an MIT scientist, <a href="http://news.mit.edu/1996/evans">Robley Evans</a>, exhumed Byers’ skeleton to measure the amount of radium in his bones. Radium has a half-life of 1,600 years, so Byers’ bones would have had virtually the same amount of radium in them as they did on the day he died.</p>
<p>Evans was an expert at measuring and mathematically modeling the human body’s uptake and excretion of radioactivity. Based on Byers’ self-reported RadiThor consumption, Evans’ model had predicted that Byers’ body would contain about 100,000 becquerel of radioactivity. (“<a href="http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/becquerel">Becquerel</a>” is an international unit of radioactivity.) What he found was that Byers’ skeletal remains actually had a total of 225,000 becquerel, suggesting that either Evans’ model of radiation uptake was underestimating radium’s affinity for bone, or alternatively, that Byers had actually understated his personal RadiThor consumption by a factor of at least two. It was not possible to determine which alternative accounted for the discrepancy.</p>
<p>Once Evans had completed his radium measurements, he returned Byers’ bones to their lead coffin in Pittsburgh, where they remain to this very day, as radioactive as ever.</p>
<h2>A contained catastrophe</h2>
<p>Although Byers certainly suffered from the radium in RadiThor, consumption of these energy drinks <a href="http://www.uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=81">never developed into a major public health crisis</a>. This is primarily for two reasons. Firstly, unlike Radithor, most of the other “energy” drinks on the market were total frauds and had no radium (or any other type of radioactivity) in them at all. Secondly, RadiThor and other products that actually did contain radium were very expensive because radium was a relatively rare and precious element that was costly to mine and purify. So only the wealthy, like Byers, were able to drink it on a daily basis. Consequently, RadiThor ailments were confined largely to the few who could afford to pay for it.</p>
<p>Ultimately, in the interest of protecting public health, <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/reports_annual/.../ar1932_0.pdf">the federal government closed down the Bailey Radium Laboratories</a> – the company that made RadiThor – and radium-containing energy drinks disappeared from the consumer market by 1932.</p>
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<span class="caption">Radioactive drinks are no longer on the market.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=58342885">Drink image via www.shutterstock.com.</a></span>
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<p>Today, the energy drink market is occupied by drink formulations that <a href="http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/12/the-buzz-on-energy-drink-caffeine/index.htm">rely on the stimulant caffeine</a> to invigorate their customers and provide them with the enhanced “energy” that they seek. <a href="http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/ingredientmono-979-caffeine.aspx?activeingredientid=979">Caffeine</a> – the commonplace ingredient in coffee, tea, chocolate and cola – may not be as exotic as radium, but it actually is a stimulant, so customers do feel energized, and it <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0265203021000007840">isn’t very dangerous to health</a>.</p>
<p>Today’s customers seem content with these newer alternatives to radium-containing RadiThor. It’s not clear, however, whether the water newts are satisfied.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67976/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timothy J. Jorgensen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Back in the early 1900s, if you felt a bit sluggish you could reach for a beverage enhanced with radioactive elements to really add some pep to your step. It wouldn’t be a healthy choice, though.
Timothy J. Jorgensen, Director of the Health Physics and Radiation Protection Graduate Program and Associate Professor of Radiation Medicine, Georgetown University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.