Children's & YA
August 2018
MARIE CURIE: A QUEST FOR LIGHT
An stunning-looking authorised biography, making Curie's fascinating story available to children and adults alike
by Frances Andreasen Østerfelt, Anja C. Andersen and Anna Blaszczyk
Marie Curie's life and research changed the world and paved the way for new opportunities for all women. Her unique drive - against all odds - to understand nature and its laws lead to ground-breaking research, which changed the science of medicine - both in terms of diagnoses and treatment. She was the first female recipient of a Nobel Prize and the first - and to date the only - person to receive a Nobel Prize in two categories, first physics and later in chemistry. A personal note from the author, Frances Andreasen Østerfelt: "On a personal note, Marie Curie has been in my life always. As I wrote in the book, she and Pierre never took a patent on radium. By 1920, the price of one gram (!) of radium was US$ 100,000, a price she could not afford. A female American journalist (Missey Maloney) learned of this and started a fundraising in the US to buy the gram for Marie’s laboratory at the Radium Institute in Paris. As receipt of this gift, Marie agreed to travel to the US – a back-breaking tour. Everyone wanted to see her. In 1929, Marie’s sister Bronya, a Polish physician, wanted to create a similar Radium Institute in Warsaw. Bronya sold bricks to raise money for construction. But again the problem of money arose to buy radium. So there was a new fundraising in America. This time Marie set limits to the extent of her travels. One of the few places she visited was Henry Ford’s celebration for the 50th anniversary of his friend, Thomas Edison’s, electric light bulb in Dearborn, Michigan. Marie was a superstar, especially for the Polish communities in America. My mother, daughter of Polish immigrants in Detroit, Michigan, then a 9-year-old schoolgirl, was a witness to Marie’s visit. Three weeks after leaving the US and returning to Paris, the New York Stock Exchange crashed. This started the Great Depression. Marie became a symbol of hope and optimism despite all odds. My mother talked about Madame Curie throughout my childhood."
