Marie Curie - Kathleen Krull [9]
“Women of genius are rare,” he stated. That was before he met Marie.
“We began a conversation,” she wrote later, “which soon became friendly.” Friendly talk about science. Pierre was completing his doctorate on the effect of heat on magnetic properties. He was one of the country’s experts on the laws of magnetism, and—what a coincidence—that happened to be Marie’s area of research as well. Perhaps they spoke about the problem he was currently working on—that at a certain temperature, a substance such as iron or nickel will lose its magnetism. This temperature point is still known as the Curie point in his honor.
His first gift to her was not chocolate or flowers. It was an autographed copy of his latest article, “On Symmetry in Physical Phenomena: Symmetry of an Electric Field and of a Magnetic Field.” She was smitten.
He, in turn, was impressed with her independence and her intelligence—she was even better at math than he was. She asked him to her attic room with no chaperone present, a shocking invitation. As there was no furniture, she simply pulled out a trunk for him to sit on, and he was charmed.
Idealists both, they wanted to devote their lives to science, though Marie still intended to return to Poland to serve her country. Each so independent, it took some dancing around and negotiating and a few misunderstandings before they realized that what drew them to each other was as important as their commitment to science. In one letter, he wrote that it would be “a fine thing” if they were together, “hypnotized by our dreams: your patriotic dream, our humanitarian dream, and our scientific dream.”
How could she resist?
They married in July 1895, in a civil ceremony, with a reception in the garden of his parents’ home in the suburb of Sceaux. For wedding presents, they gave each other new modern bicycles, and their honeymoon was spent biking through scenic parts of France.
To begin married life, they settled into a small apartment on the Left Bank, filled with light and overlooking a garden. Their secondhand furniture included a dining-room table that doubled as a desk. Pierre supported them while Marie studied for her teaching certificate, took more physics classes, and did research on magnetism. He had zero problem with her continuing education—they were each other’s biggest cheerleaders. He always kept his favorite photo of her, labeled “the good little student,” in his vest pocket.
“We dreamed of living in the world quite removed from human beings,” he wrote. They spent their evenings reading scientific journals and discussing the articles. He didn’t pay attention to what he ate and often couldn’t remember whether he had eaten. Once in a while they went to the theater or to a brand-new sensation, the movies (pioneered by Frenchmen Auguste and Louis Lumière in 1896). They had little sense of fashion—he wore threadbare jackets and failed to keep his beard and mustache trimmed, while she wore cheap dresses in black or navy blue so as not to show stains from the lab. Their one luxury was fresh flowers in every room.
Four months into their marriage came a remarkable scientific discovery. Not, however, made by either Curie, but by a reclusive German physicist named Wilhelm Röntgen. In November 1895, he accidentally discovered a new kind of ray. These rays had the ability to travel through opaque material that was impenetrable to ordinary light—they could travel through wood, even flesh. The rays were invisible but revealed themselves on a special phosphorescent screen that was standing nearby. very mysterious. He labeled them X-rays, “X” as in the math term used when a quantity is unknown.
He wrote to a friend that initially he told no