Marie Curie: The Woman Behind the Mind

In grade school, when my teacher asked the class what historical woman we would like to have lunch with if given the chance, I chose Marie Curie. In a time when most women were still working in the home, Curie (1867-1934) discovered radium, won not one but two Nobel prizes, and paved the way for nuclear physics and cancer therapy. Drawing on interviews with researchers and biographers (including Rice University's Dr. Nathan Harshman and author Susan Quinn), filmmaker Alana Cash's documentary explores the personal life of the young Polish-born Maria Sklodowska, who would one day grow up to become the world-renowned French physicist Madame Curie, from her poverty-stricken Eastern European childhood and later struggles to gain an education at a time when women did not attend universities, to her various romantic relationships, including one love affair that almost cost her the Nobel Prize. Unfortunately, while Cash's last film Mileva Maric (on Einstein's wife, reviewed in VL-11/00) was self-distributed and priced at $24.95, this one costs more than 10 times as much, limiting the purchasing audience to flush academic libraries prepared to spend $295 on a biographical portrait of a scientist. Optional. Aud: H, C, P. (J. Asala)