* Born in obscurity in Poland, she didn't have money for studies. Her sister and her made a pact where one worked as a governess so the other could study. She eventually made it to the University of Paris, at a time when Oxford and Cambridge were closed to women.
* She won TWO Nobel prizes!
* She poisoned herself by exposing herself to x-rays (unwittingly) in mobile x-ray units for the French Army in WW1
* Her affair with the married Langevin drove his jealous wife to steal their incriminating letters, which she then released to the press. It was an amazing scandal, which is what Einstien is referring to here. She was denounced as a Polish foreigner.
There was an amazing documentary on Nova (I believe) but can't seem to find it online.
Pierre Curie died in 1906 and she became romantically involved with Paul Langevin, a former student of Pierre, in 1910. At the time it was considered gauche for a widow of her age (she was 38 at the time of Pierre's death) to remarry. But what really ignited the ire of the press was mostly the fact that Langevin was already married, though estranged from his wife.
Sigh, another website with a custom hacked document viewer that doesn't work on today's very popular small screens. So much effort poured into building systems that work worse then the platform default.
I didn't realize this was a translation! (Marie Curie was French/Polish, I could see Einstein writing to her in English.)
I thought it was just Einstein writing extremely strained English. If the original reads fluidly, then the translation...could use improvement. It's comically strained.
I don't know what languages Curie spoke, but there would have been a strong incentive for European scientists in the 19th and 20th centuries to learn to read German. That would have opened up access to a huge amount of technical literature that was being published in German.
My father said that when he was a kid in the 1960s, there was still a sense in the U.S. that it would be useful to learn some German if you planned to go into fields like math or physics.
But I wonder how European scientists at the time of this letter chose what language to use in their personal correspondence.
In some ways, that is true. But I'd argue the main reason things like nationalism, racism, and other bigotry dies away is because those who support those ideas can't pass them on before they die.
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
* Born in obscurity in Poland, she didn't have money for studies. Her sister and her made a pact where one worked as a governess so the other could study. She eventually made it to the University of Paris, at a time when Oxford and Cambridge were closed to women.
* She won TWO Nobel prizes!
* She poisoned herself by exposing herself to x-rays (unwittingly) in mobile x-ray units for the French Army in WW1
* Her affair with the married Langevin drove his jealous wife to steal their incriminating letters, which she then released to the press. It was an amazing scandal, which is what Einstien is referring to here. She was denounced as a Polish foreigner.
There was an amazing documentary on Nova (I believe) but can't seem to find it online.
[Edit] - found it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do41AJwIjZE