The Elements of Marie Curie with Dava Sobel

0:00So Chuck, I love having guests come back. Why? Is it so rare? No, no. It so rarely happens. They run away and never return? No, no, no. It's Dava Sobel. Yeah. It is a fixture on the landscape of science writing and has gone places that others haven't or haven't even thought to go. Well, she took us there. So it was just tremendous. Just tremendous. Especially since she was our first ever guest. Wow. Season one, episode one of StarTalk, a bajillion years ago. Coming up, Dava Sobel. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk.

0:49Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. Got Chuck Nice with me, Chuck and Baby. Hey, Neil. Yeah. Good to be here. Guess who we have as a guest today? A very special guest? Let me tell you how special. Beyond special. Beyond special. Okay. Let me tell you how beyond special this person is right here. See her right here? Can we see all the cameras? Okay. There we go. David, welcome back to StarTalk. This person, sitting to my left, our record show, was our very first guest. Season one, episode one of StarTalk. Wow. Whoa. Dava Soba, we're unworthy. We're not worthy. You were there at the beginning.

1:32Oh, my gosh. We call that telescopes that rocked our world. Nice. Yeah. And back then, it was only audio. So that's all we had. Okay. Well, here we are. That's like prehistory. So you're a science writer, but you cut your teeth as a journalist for, was it Gannett Papers in Long Island? What was it? Oh, it was in upstate New York when I worked for them. and them as Gannon and Gannon is everywhere was right it was the Binghamton evening and Sunday press Binghamton oh wow Binghamton town in New York New York and there was IBM there I was briefly very briefly a technical writer for IBM okay so you had some science chops early yeah okay I went to your high school too graduate of the Bronx High School of Science whoa uh oh that serious bona fides as they say Okay, so you already had a science baptism becoming a journalist.

2:32Yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah, and I didn't even know it was called science writing. And I wish somebody had told me about it sooner because it would have made my journey a lot more direct. I was just a lost soul for a long time. Oh. But I'm happy now. You've been found. Saved by science. Saved by science. Yes. I think most people came to know you through your, I don't know if it was your first book, but the first book that did really, really well, of course, and that was the chronometer story. Longitude. Longitude, yes. The story, the subtitle. If you read the title and the subtitle of this book, you'd say, I ain't buying that.

3:14Who's going to be careful? Exactly. I didn't think anybody would buy it. Buy me the subtitle. What was it? The true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time. Oh, no, I'm buying that book. Wait, wait, wait. Are you kidding me? That's like a scientific telenovela. Well, I know, but it's titled Longitude. Longitude. That's what I'm saying. You might have lost me there. That's what I'm saying. And people still ask me, what's it about, really? That's hilarious. And you wouldn't utter the man's name because no one heard of him, but Harrison? John Harrison. John Harrison, who invented the first Seaworthy chronometer, which is a runaway mega bestseller, okay?

3:53Right. And another one, Galileo's daughter, yes, whose name was? Well, she was Virginia, but then she became Sor Maria Celeste. Celeste. When she, Celeste. Celeste, yeah, that's the sky right there. Okay, okay. And then there was the glass ceiling. Actually, it was called the glass universe. Oh, the glass universe. But, you know, even my editor called it the glass ceiling all the time. Yeah, so that one was a good one. Let me just declare that my people are pretty well informed about that part of our own history in astronomy. There's a whole community of women at the Harvard College Observatory.

4:37But we knew that this story was not told beyond our own retelling among ourselves. And this was an important exposition of the role that women played in early science and particularly early astronomy. Yeah. The Glass Universe. And what was the subtitle on that one? How the Laters of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars. Ooh, nice. Wow. You make great titles. Thank you. Thank you. So, we've got you here and now, because you have yet another book. Yep. Just setting the record straight. Okay. Just let's do it. Marie Curie. Ooh, okay. Everyone don't... Wait, wait, wait. Okay, I'm not going to read the subtitle because I want you to compliment her on yet another subtitle.

5:24Okay, go ahead. Give it to us. Marie Curie. How the glow of radium lit a path for women in science. Oh, so you're just showing off now. You're just showing off. The glow of radium. The glow of radium. That's pretty wild, yeah. And I see what she did there, too, because she, didn't she discover radium? She did. Right? Yeah. She discovered radium and was it polonium? Well, we'll get the whole thing. Oh, I'm sorry. We'll get the whole thing. I'm just trying to remember my - Oh, you remember polonium? Oh, my God. Thoughts about polonium. That was another one. Yeah, yeah. That was actually the first one.

5:58Yeah, and so we can't name them all, you know, curium. She didn't name any of them curium. That came later. Yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. Yeah, and the first radioactive element was radium. Well, uranium was the first one. Oh, sure, sure. But what she worked with - But what she discovered, the first one was polonium. Polonium. So how many elements did she discover? Two. Polonium and radium. Okay. All right. And later on, we would name an element in her honor, curium. Curium. Gotcha. So how did Marie Curie land in your lap? I had almost a religious experience in the course of writing The Glass Universe because the story was all about women.

6:43and over and over I kept finding myself surprised by what they had done. And I finally had to admit that I had embarrassingly low expectations of them. And even though I'm a woman, my mother was a scientist, I had all these reasons. True. I had all of these reasons to be more respectful I had just picked up the negative attitudes about women that were in the air. You had a man bias. I definitely did. And so it stunned me. And then I had several astronomers fact check that book. And one of them was Alyssa Goodman at Harvard. And she apologized right away. She said, I'm not really focusing on your descriptions of astrophysics because I'm so gobsmacked by these women.

7:47Here I am at Harvard. I know all their names, but I always thought it was something cute or quaint. I never realized they were doing science. So this kind of misogyny, these low opinions of women in science are very widespread, very insidious. And that made me want to tell more stories about women in science. So my editor immediately suggested Marie Curie. And I said no, because everybody knows about her, and I don't have anything new to say about her. So I wouldn't want to just regurgitate facts. But then I was asked to review a book called Women and Their Element, and it was all about women chemists, more than 30 of them.

8:43And in reading the profiles of these women, six or seven of them had a direct connection to Marie Curie and that was interesting. It was like a little network. So I got in touch with the Curie Museum in Paris and they had records. There were about 45 women who worked for her. Wow. So this was something I knew that nobody knew about Madame Curie. She was like the Harpo Studios of science before Oprah. So they gave you access to these records? Not just then. They actually had a book published, little sketches of the women in alphabetical order with some biographical details and references to the papers they had written.

9:38This is the stable of other women working in Marie Curie's laboratory. Right. 45 women. 45. Man. That's phenomenal. How does it even get to that number? Because of the position she was in. So she and her husband shared a Nobel Prize in 1903, and then he was killed in an accident, And she took over the laboratory and his teaching position. By the way, his name is Curie. Yes. Her name was Sklodowska. Sklodowska. So she's Polish. Though we think of her as... Think of her as French. As French, right. Because of Madame Curie. Of course. She had to go to Paris to go to university. Why? Because in Warsaw, where she was born, women were not allowed to attend university.

10:29Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And we're not talking about the 1600s here. No, no. We're talking about the late 1800s. Yeah. Yeah. First woman ever to teach at the University of Paris. Wow. So now she is really a phenomenon and a magnet for women scientists. Oh, of course. Oh, cool, yeah. All the other women in Poland who weren't allowed to go to school. Some of those. They were like, we're headed to Paris to study under Marie. Norway. I didn't want to undervalue the value of her visibility. Yes. In the ambitions of others. Oh, my gosh. Whereas I think women have always been interested in science, found ways to participate in science.

11:17She was the first one who really was in charge of a laboratory and a professorship.

11:37I'm Kais from Bangladesh, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

11:55Okay, so today, most people, when asked, name a famous female scientist, the only scientist they can name is Marie Curie. That is the sad truth, yes. Okay, so you're not helping that matter because you just published a book on Marie Curie. Guilty as charged. Guilty as charged. So maybe the rest of these women, are there stories that can be highlighted among them? Yes. Oh, well. Yes. And is that also part of the book? That is what the book is about. Oh. It's about all these other women. It's about the legacy. Yeah. And it was during her lifetime. They came because of her, and then she collaborated with them, published with them.

12:35She taught a course, so she was inspiring students in that class. Even before she taught at the university, she had taught at a teacher training school for women. And she taught physics. Wow. That was her field. So she shared the Nobel Prize in physics with Pierre. 1903. In 1903. But then in 1911, the Nobel Committee awarded her the Nobel Prize in chemistry. Wow. And she alone. So she didn't share it with anyone. Yeah, most Nobel Prizes are shared. Thank goodness that she did that. Because, I mean, I hate to be cynical, but if you share a Nobel Prize with a husband, you also share his name. And you have his name.

13:31And people are going to automatically fall into the bias of, well, clearly she was his assistant. He did the work. That happened. That did happen. Even though she won a second Nobel Prize. Even though she won. It's really rough for women, let me tell you. Man, that's tough. That's why I was glad she won a second one to erase any stigma that might have been attached. Second one outright. Yes, this is all her. No, it still got said that she was just his assistant. Oh, man. And the reason they took on that work, it was her dissertation project. When it got really interesting, Pierre quit what he was doing to work with her.

14:17Just like a man, okay? I didn't say that. No, I'm saying it. But she had a good friend, a British physicist, Hertha Ayrton, who was also married to a physicist. And they intentionally worked on different things just so that no one could say that Hertha was her husband's assistant. The assistant. So highlight some of the science that came out of her lab and her brilliance. Well, radioactivity, which was her word, was a new phenomenon. And that's why she got interested in it. So x-rays were discovered in 1895, and that was a huge interest. A thousand papers on x-rays got published. That got the first Nobel Prize in Physics.

15:09Yes. Wilhelm Brunchen in 1900. Okay. The discovery of x-rays. What an unfortunate name, but... What, Wilhelm? Wilhelm Brunchen. Brunchen. In fact, we're the only ones who call them x-rays. Everybody else calls them Brunchen rays. Brunchen rays, right? What? You didn't know that? No, I did not. I'm sorry. We got your Rankins back. And it appears that your wrist is fractured. Yeah, that's not, that doesn't work for me, you know? We got your x-rays. I don't know. It just sounds great. What did Wilhelm call them? He called them x-rays. Well, they never were good here. Yeah, you're correct. So the very next year, Becquerel in France.

15:45Henri Becquerel. Henri Becquerel. You know, that's a good name. Multicultural we are. Yeah, that's a good one. So he was curious about x-rays and wanted to see if maybe it was an effect of fluorescence or phosphorescence. But he noticed, and he was experimenting with a uranium crystal, and something else was coming out of the uranium that was not x-rays. and he got very interested in that. He called them uranic rays. And everybody else was so interested in x-rays that nobody picked up on the uranic rays. So Madam Curie, now looking for a thesis topic, thought, that'll be good for me because it's interesting.

16:42and her husband was an inventor of instruments. Scientific instruments. Scientific instruments. And there was a way to measure the strength of these uranic rays that some of his instruments could pick up. So it just seemed to be perfect for her. and soon she so she started testing all the elements to see if anything else emitted these uranic rays and she found out that thorium also did named for you know the god of the bifrost Thor Thor yeah that was a huge fun history of culture mythology and people embedded in the periodic table so thorium And then she was testing some uranium ore and got a reading that was far higher than either uranium or thorium.

17:44And so she concluded that there was an unknown element, and as yet undiscovered element, that she could discover on the basis of its radioactivity. That was her word. Did you say that earlier, that this other ingredient is found with uranium? With uranium. Yeah. So that's pretty wild. She inferred its existence. Right. Exactly. Because pure uranium wouldn't do that. She'd already tested that. She knew what its strength was. And this was much, much higher. So first she retested everything, make sure she didn't make a mistake. And then she said, there has to be a new element. Wow. And this is part of the excitement of this period, that the periodic table was a work in progress.

18:30It still is, but there are no gaps, is the point. We're still increasing at the high end, making bigger, fatter elements. And there's a hypothesized place, because all these elements are highly unstable, but there's an hypothesized place based on equations of atomic nuclei and their stability. We think there's an island of stability, just a few more elements down. If you make those elements, then they're permanent, and they won't decay, like all these other elements do. And so there's a hunt now for the island of stability. Yeah, so we're still working the table, but everything, you're talking about filling in gaps.

19:11Filling in the gaps. That were there. Oh, yeah. Right, there were a lot of gaps. And in the course of breaking down this ore to isolate the new element, she realized there were two different ones. And the first one they identified was polonium, which they named for Poland. And then... Because of her. Because of her. Yes. Because she was very fiercely Polish. Yeah. Yeah. And had originally intended to get educated in Paris and then go back to Poland and teach and uplift her country people. Right. But she fell in love. A colleague of hers thought that he might be helpful to her in her work. and they fell in love.

20:04Neither of them expected that, but they did. And what was her line? She wrote to one of her family members that it's a grief to me. It's a grief to me. To remain forever. To remain forever in Paris. But I am deeply in love. Wow. Today, there would just be an emoji. We've lost all ability to communicate. I want to say she could really write. her scientific papers are so clear they are a marvel of clarity by the way my wife would leave me for plane tickets to Paris right

20:47much less a secret lover no I'm sorry just the plane tickets she's like listen man I'm sorry this didn't work out it was good up till now so I'm delighted we take so much for granted in modern times that the chart of boxes in the front of your chemistry class was complete. Yeah, just been there forever. Like it's just there, endowed by the universe. But no, there's some hard work to make this happen. So tell me, no one understands at the time that radioactivity will harm healthy tissue. So give me some backstory on that. Well, you'd think they would have figured it out right away because they had burns on their hands.

21:31And if they carried a vial of the stuff in a pocket, they got a burn on their body. So this immediately drew the attention of medical doctors who saw this material as a treatment for cancer. And for several decades, radium was the cure for cancer. For tumors, you would attack the cells of a tumor. Exactly. And it would destroy... And irradiate the cells of the tumor. Exactly. Wow. How would they do? Would they drop radium into the tumor itself, or what would they do? It changed over time. So the first two patients, two women with breast cancer, were actually brought into the Curie's laboratory.

22:11Wow. And had their... So somebody had to have that thought to even consider this. Right. There was harm associated with it, obviously, but it was doing so much good, and it was so interesting. When did they find out that radioactivity also causes cancer? Well, I think the real big moment was in the 1920s with the dial painters. So these were young women painting the numbers on glow-in-the-dark watches and instruments using paint that actually contained radium. Right. And they were told to put the paintbrush between their lips to get a nice point. Nice tip, yes. And it destroyed their jaws, and they died.

22:58Oh, my goodness. Yes. Their teeth fell out. Yeah, it was horrible. That's terrible. And, of course, Madame Curie never advocated paint full of radium. That was not what she was. Yeah, but think about it. Think of how amazing it is that there's something that's glowing all by itself. Yeah. That must have been just stupefying. Yeah, and that appealed to Marie and Pierre from the beginning, that as they would try to break down this ore and they'd have different dishes of this or that, they didn't know what it was at first. And at night, there would be a glow. But it isn't really the radium, right?

23:39Even in the paint, the radium shoots out an alpha particle that excites the other ingredients in the paint. And that's what's glowing. That's what renders it visible. Yeah. This is a pivotal moment in the history of science. Absolutely. In physics and chemistry. Yeah. Absolutely. Because it's not just... And it's a moment when physics and chemistry really meet. Meet, and they meet society in a fundamental way. Would you say that the concept of radioactivity and its value to dating things for their age all began with Marie Curie? Is that a fair credit to give? Yes. She wasn't doing that work, but other people in her lab were, including some of the women.

24:27Okay. Because if something is radioactive, you have a certain amount of that substance in your sample. If it's radioactive, it's changing identity. It's becoming another element. It's very alchemical, isn't it? Ah, look at that. Look at that. Which was a big problem at first. Changing one element into another. Is that even possible? Right. Because we'd already given up on alchemy. Exactly. Right? If you know the rate at which it's changing, and you know how much you started with, you'll know how old the sample is. Right. Because how long it's been there. Yeah. And oh my gosh, how useful that is, especially to geologists.

25:01Yeah. Yes, the age of the earth was determined in the wake of these discoveries. Cool. And it was much older than anybody had thought. Older than 6 ,000. 6 ,000 years. You think? That's so funny. Yeah. Tell me about her second Nobel Prize. What was she cited for in that? The one in chemistry. Specifically for the discoveries of the new elements and her isolation of radium, which she had only recently managed to do. So these elements existed in such tiny quantities. From a ton of ore, she would get a fraction of a gram. You know how much a gram weighs? How big is the cracker? No, I don't know. How much is a gram?

25:50It's hardly anything. It's one-thirtieth of one ounce. One-thirtieth of an ounce. Yes. See, that is information as a proud American I will never need.

26:25Tell me about her daughter. Oh. What's up with dad? So she had two daughters, and the older girl was very much like her father. And Marie always dreamed that she would become a scientist, which she did. And she also won a Nobel Prize in chemistry. Wow. Talk about a bloodline right there. So when was the daughter's Nobel Prize? 1935. And what did she do it for? She and her husband found a way to create. Uh-oh, the husband is in there. There's another husband. She repeated the story. married the lab partner, worked together, and made these tremendous discoveries and shared the Nobel Prize with him.

27:06Look at that. You have become your mother. So what did she discover? They discovered a way to make artificial radio elements, which had a big advantage over natural radioactive elements because they would decay to something non-radioactive immediately. so they could make safer tracers. Wow. Very important in medicine. In medicine, exactly. So you don't really want to be using radium to treat your cancer. That's fascinating. Yeah, because not all elements are created equal. Some decay faster than others. Right. Yeah, so that their lethality or their harm factor drops exponentially from when you needed it at its peak.

27:54Right. And so, yeah. In fact, depending on how long you need the treatment, they just pull one off the shelf that has the right radioactive profile. Absolutely. Right, right. So she's creating the ideas and the foundations for whatever medical instruments would later be built. Wow. In the service of human health. So the people who got the Nobel Prize for those discoveries, basically she would call them and go, you're welcome. That's how science builds on itself. Yes, yes. Did you want to talk about the love affair? So by the time of her second Nobel Prize, her husband's gone. He's deceased. He was, yes, five years.

28:38Gone. And from what I understand, there was some highly written about in the media affair between her and a married man. Do I remember this correctly? Yes. Okay. And today, I don't know how important that would be to anybody. So in the late aughts, okay, early 1910s, that information is received differently. Now, she's a celebrity, so everyone is going to care about her sex life, okay, because that's what we do. That's how that goes. So did this matter to the Nobel Committee? Were they? It mattered to everyone. She was vilified. She was called a homewrecker and a foreigner because he was a married man with children.

29:25So word of this got out. And it got out in the wake of a highly important physics meeting where only the top physicists in the world were invited to attend. She was there. She was the only woman in the room. And they come out. Albert Einstein was there. Ernest Rutherford, a few people you've heard of. Rutherford discovered the nucleus of the atom. Wow. These are some heavy hitters. Big time. So she's vilified, and the cheating husband is not vilified. Right. Right. He's a victim. Oh, he's a victim. Oh. It's the harlot scientist. Of course. No, she's a foreigner. And she had recently tried to gain election to the Academy of Sciences.