About this item
In 1891, 24-year-old Marie Sklodowska moved from Warsaw to Paris, where she found work in the laboratory of Pierre Curie, a scientist engaged in research on heat and magnetism. They fell in love. They took their honeymoon on bicycles. They expanded the periodic table, discovering two new elements with startling properties, radium and polonium. They recognized radioactivity as an atomic property, heralding the dawn of a new scientific era. They won the Nobel Prize. Newspapers mythologized the couple's romance, beginning articles on the Curies with "Once upon a time . . . " Then, in 1906, Pierre was killed in a freak accident. Marie continued their work alone. She won a second Nobel Prize in 1911, and fell in love again, this time with the married physicist Paul Langevin.
About the Author
Lauren Redniss is the author of three books. She has been a Guggenheim fellow, Artist-in-Residence at the American Museum of Natural History, and finalist for the National Book Award. She teaches at Parsons The New School for Design. The National Book Foundation wrote the following in their citation of Radioactive, the first visual book to be named a finalist for the National Book Award in Non-Fiction:"Redniss' achievement is a celebration of the essential power of books to inform, charm, and transport. In marrying the graphic and visual arts with biography and cultural history, she has expanded the realm of non-fiction."
