Marie Curie's work on radiology has been one of the greatest glories of modern science, Let's read an excerpt from her biography, written by her daughter, Eve Curie.

In the autumn of 1891, a young Polish emigre named Marie Sklodovska excitedly registered for the science course at the Saobonne in Paris. Too shy to make friends, she lived a life of monastic simplicity, devoted to study alone. From her small income, she had to pay for her room, means, clothes and expenses at the university. When she wanted a feast, she bought two eggs, or a piece of chocolate with some fruit.

Marie met Pierre Curie in 1894. A French scientist of genius, Pierre, like her, was devoting body and soul to scientific research. Immediate sympathy brought them together and in a few months Pierre asked Marie to be his wife. But to marry a Frenchman meant she had to leave her beloved, oppressed Poland and so ten months passed before Marie finally accepted.

Their life together in a little flat was singularly lacking in comfort. They refused the furniture offered to them by Pierre's father. The bare quarters were furnished only with books, two chairs and a white wooden table. On the table were treatises on physics, a lamp, a bunch of flowers: and that was all.

Little by little Marie improved her housekeeping wisdom. She invented dishes which needed little preparation or could be left to cook themselves. Before going out, Marie would regulate the flame with a physicist's precision. Then in a quarter of an hour, bent over other containers, she would regulate the flame on a laboratory burner with the same careful gesture.

When her daughter Irene (a future Nobel Prize-winner) was born, the idea of choosing between family and the scientific career did not even cross Marie's mind. With Pierre's support, she kept house, washed her baby daughter, but she also kept on working in a laboratory-working towards the most important discovery of modern science.

Pierre Currie, who had followed the rapid progress of his wife's experiments with passionate interest, now abandoned his own research in order to aid with hers. Two brains, four hands now sought the unknown element in the damp little storeroom that served as their laboratory. By July 1898, they were able to announce the discovery of a new element. Marie named it polonium after her beloved Poland. In December of the same year, the Curies announced the existence of a second new chemical element which they called radium-an element whose radioactivity they believed to be enormous.

Dressed in her old dust covered and acid stained smock, her hair blown by the wind, surrounded by bitter smoke from her experiments, which stung her eyes and throat, Marie was a virtual factory all by herself. These were some of the happiest years of her life.

Money for research was not easy to come by and the Curies continued to teach to supplement their income. Torn between their own work and their jobs, they often forgot to eat and sleep. Thus radioactivity grew and developed, meanwhile exhausting, little by little, the pair of physicists who had given it life.

Finally they achieved the miraculous outcome of their effort of purifying radium-radium could become the ally of human beings in the war against cancer. Radium was useful-magnificently useful. A radium industry was about to be born.

Pierre explained these  things to his wife one Sunday morning. 'We have two choices,' Pierre told her. 'We can describe the results of our research without reserve, including the process of purification or else we can consider ourselves to be the proprietors, the "inventors" of radium, patent the technique and manufacture radium throughout the world.'

Marie reflected for a few seconds. Then she said, 'It is impossible. It would be contrary to scientific spirit.'

Pierre's serious face lightened.

Eve Curie (1904-2007) was the youngest child of the Noble prize winning scientists Pierre and Marie. She gained fame as a concert pianist, writer and biographer. This account, condensed from Eve's famous biography from her mother, Madame Curie, appeared in the Readers Digest in 1959. 

emigre : a person who has left her/his own country, usually for political reasons

monastic : (here) simple and quiet, and possibly a celibate way of life

oppressed : subject to harsh treatment 

treatises : a serious written work dealing systematically with a subject

cross somebody's mind : idiomatic; (of thoughts, etc.) to come into your mind

smock : a loose comfortable piece of clothing like a long shirt, worn especially by women

supplement : to add something in order to improve it or make it more complete

miraculous : remarkable

patent : an official right to be the only person to make, use, or sell a product or an invention

reflected : (here) thought carefully and deeply about something