Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout in Science and Inquiry

Jun 26, 2017 Mark rated it it was amazing

Shelves: chemistry, physics, non-fiction-science, biography

Wow. Just Wow. This book is like none that I have read. It is hard to describe because it is many things, but not exactly like any particular type of book. It resembles a graphic novel. It resembles an art book. It resembles a biography. It resembles a history of radioactivity.

The story is framed by a biography of Marie Curie, the narrative includes her love story with her husband husband Pierre and the lover she took as a widow, Paul Langevin. It also describes her scientific partnership with Wow. Just Wow. This book is like none that I have read. It is hard to describe because it is many things, but not exactly like any particular type of book. It resembles a graphic novel. It resembles an art book. It resembles a biography. It resembles a history of radioactivity.

The story is framed by a biography of Marie Curie, the narrative includes her love story with her husband husband Pierre and the lover she took as a widow, Paul Langevin. It also describes her scientific partnership with both men which led to Madam Curie winning two Nobel Prizes in Physics (The discovery of radioactivity) and Chemistry (The discovery of the elements Polonium and Radium). The discovery of radium is one of the most tenacious and persistent stories in science. Marie and Pierre took 5 tons of pitchblende ore and separated a few specs of radium chloride over a four year process of back breaking chemical separation and purification. The final steps required were primarily through multiple recrystallizations with each step slowly producing a slightly more pure product. All of these was done in an inadequate abandoned shed formally used for human dissection in the med school, using crude tools like iron kettles and heavy rods to stir the mixtures.

The continuation of the scientific work ws carried out by the Curie's daughter and son and law, Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie. This second generation's scientific work led to another Nobel Prize in Chemistry (Discovery of synthetic radioactive elements). Like Nobel's invention of dynamite before him Frédéric Joliot-Curie wished his work to be carried only for the good of man, but his work provided the key step that lead to the creation of nuclear weapons

Interspersed in the main story are historical accounts on radioactivity such as the Hiroshima bombing, the sad fate of women who painted luminous watch dials with radium paint, atomic bomb testing, development of nuclear power, radioactivity in medicine, Three Mile Island, and the Chernobyl disaster.

Every page that is not a photographer is a work of art created by the author inspired by the words on the page. She used a technique called cyanotype printing whereby she applied a solution to paper and masked it with the negative of her desired drawing. Exposure to sunlight creates the pigment Prussian Blue. A water rinse removes the solution from the masked areas. She indicates this process is relative because the final result is similar to the glowing described by Marie Curie of radium, it involves photography which was key in the discovery of X-rays and radioactivity, and Prussian Blue itself is used to treat radioactive poisoning.

It is a short read, but a deep work of both art and literature. ...more

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Apr 01, 2012 Buffra rated it it was amazing

This book is lovely. Illustrated and colorful, almost a graphic novel sensibility. The pages are richly colored and there are line drawings to illustrate. There are also pages that show things like a pencil rubbing of the Curie's headstone, a reprint of the very first x-ray, and a copy of an FBI file on someone who tried to convince FDR to begin the US's own atomic bomb project.

It has an interesting narrative structure -- almost more website jumps from link to link than straightforward biograph ...more

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