Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. Recommended for all libraries.-Hilary Burton, formerly with Lawrence Livermore National Lab, CA (c) Copyright 2010. She also provides an excellent portrait of the age in which Marie Curie was to do so much for the world.

Unlike Susan Quinn's detailed Marie Curie, which concentrates on Curie's scientific life, Goldsmith focuses on the social and economic hurdles that Curie had to overcome to manage the roles of scientist, wife, mother, and staunch French wartime ally. The hypocrisy of the times, particularly regarding Marie's affair with Paul Langevin (her late husband's student), is so striking that one wonders why Curie retained her incredible loyalty to France. But she has interwoven with Curie's scientific progress the emotional and personal costs involved, from Curie's early years as a governess to the ongoing battles for sexual equality in the scientific academies of Europe. Happy at Last) has produced a finely detailed and well-researched biography. However, it is not clear from Goldsmith’s account whether Curie acknowledged that any of those incidents were rooted in sexism.Library Journal Review Marie Curie's ability to focus her intelligence on what she wanted to accomplish is legendary, and in this exploration of Curie's 'obsessive genius' Goldsmith (Little Gloria. Many other equally egregious incidents are described in the text. The associated monetary prize, normally 70 000 gold francs for each awardee, was given in full to Becquerel while the Curies had to split 70 000 francs.

Once the injustice was corrected, the prize was awarded to Henri Becquerel, Marie Curie, and her husband Pierre. But a member of the Nobel Prize committee objected to the omission and informed Pierre, who refused to accept the prize without the inclusion of Marie. For example, the official nominating letter for the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics cited the work of Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel while completely ignoring Marie’s contributions. Goldsmith has written several other books that examine women’s lives in the context of history, and her biography of Curie, set at the beginning of the 20th century, naturally includes many incidents of gender bias.

Barbara goldsmith marie curie