Skip to main content

The Curies – Denis Brian ****

The Curies’ story is one that many thought they knew, so the subtitle of Denis Brain’s book, “A Biography of the Most Controversial Family in Science”, is one that inspires interest. What was so controversial? Let’s see…
What’s without doubt is that this is both a fascinating and important story, that Brian tells in detail with obvious affection for his subjects. Part of the Curie story, their huge effort working through tonnes of pitchblende in their shed of a laboratory, exposed to deadly radiation as they attempted to isolate radium is very well known, but this has already happened before page 100 of a 400+ page book. In fact Pierre Curie dies in a tragic traffic accident on page 100 – but the Curie family story is only just beginning. There comes the bizarre public obsession with Mme Curie’s possible affair with fellow scientist Paul Langevin (even leading to a number of duels, though no one was killed) and the increasing role of her daughter Irene, later to form her own Nobel-winning partnership with Pierre Joliot. Equal coverage goes to Marie’s other daughter, Eve, not a scientist but her mother’s biographer. That’s the key to the book’s fascination: it’s not a biography of an individual so much as of a dynasty.
The Curies is thorough and goes into a lot of detail. It has a slightly old fashioned feel when compared with a biography of a more modern scientist (or even with most biographies of Einstein, for instance). It’s hard to pin down exactly what gives this old fashioned aspect – perhaps a certain reverence for the subject, when we’re used to more warts and all approaches, combined with a lack of sensationalism. But this shouldn’t be interpreted as dullness – I really did want to keep turning the page and find out more.
One criticism – early on we learn a little of Pierre’s grandfather, a French army surgeon, who moved the London to practice homeopathy. This is described as “a natural pharmaceutical science that made use of plants and minerals to stimulate the sick person’s natural defenses. He gave his patients small doses of a medicine…” Brian’s description of homeopathy lacks the sort of rigour you would expect in a popular science book. It’s doubtful that homeopathy can be described as a science, given the suspicion with which the vast majority of scientists treat it, and it’s just not true that homeopaths give small doses of a “medicine” – they give water, which once contained a small amount of poison (not medicine), that has been diluted until only the water remains. There are other hints that Brian knows more about the people than the science, most obviously when he falls for the old chestnut of using a light year as a unit of time.
The book could also benefit from some more careful editing. There’s a distinct tendency to say the same thing several times – easily enough done by an author in full flow, but it ought to be picked up in the editing process. For instance we learn on page 130 that “Le Petit Journal got an interview with Langevin’s wife, which was hardly surprising. Her brother-in-law, Henri Bourgeois was one of its editors.” A nice little twist. Or at least it would be if we hadn’t already heard “Mme Langevin’s brother-in-law, Henri Bourgeois, a newspaper editor for Le Petit Journal” on page 126, “despite the dangers of Mme Langevin exposing the affair – especially as her brother-in-law was a newspaper editor” on page 122 and “Perrin… met with Mme Langevin’s brother-in-law, Henri Bourgeois, an editor of the disreputable Petit Journal” on page 120. There are also simple errors of fact that should have been picked up. At one point we read “…would supply Joliot’s laboratory with five tons of uranium oxide, the first five thousand kilograms of which arrived on June 1, 1939.” Erm, Five thousand kilogrammes is five tonnes.
That is just a minor irritation, though. It is still a thoughtful and in-depth look at the Curies as people, and as such is a biography that is very welcome. As for the controversy – there was Marie’s reputed affair, but this was never proved and hardly earth shattering. Joliot could have been said to collaborate with the Germans during the occupation of France – but all the evidence is that he was not a collaborator. He also was a communist in later life, which caused the French government some embarrassment when he headed their nuclear programme. Perhaps this was the controversy Brian had in mind. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. Appreciate an interesting collection of lives.

Paperback:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...

Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact: Keith Cooper ****

There's something appealing (for a reader like me) about a book that brings together science fiction and science fact. I had assumed that the 'Amazing Worlds' part of the title suggested a general overview of the interaction between the two, but Keith Cooper is being literal. This is an examination of exoplanets (planets that orbit a different star to the Sun) as pictured in science fiction and in our best current science, bearing in mind this is a field that is still in the early phases of development. It becomes obvious early on that Cooper, who is a science journalist in his day job, knows his stuff on the fiction side as well as the current science. Of course he brings in the well-known TV and movie tropes (we get a huge amount on Star Trek ), not to mention the likes of Dune, but his coverage of written science fiction goes into much wider picture. He also has consulted some well-known contemporary SF writers such as Alastair Reynolds and Paul McAuley, not just scient...