The Elements of Marie Curie with Dava Sobel

How did Marie Curie’s discoveries in radioactivity change our understanding of the natural world? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice sit down with science writer Dava Sobel, author of a new book on Curie, to explore the enduring impact of her work on radioactivity.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So 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 Davis Sobel. Yeah. 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, Davis Sobel.

• 0:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. Got Chuck Nice with me, Chuck, your baby. Hey, Neil. Yeah, so 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. Can you see it right here? Can we see all the cameras get that? 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. Davis Sobel, we're unworthy. We're not worthy. You were there at the beginning.

• 1:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh. We call that telescopes that rocked our world. And, yeah. And back then, it was only audio, so we didn't, nope, that's all we had.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Okay, well, here we are.

• 1:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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?

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Oh, it was in upstate New York when I worked for them. And

• 2:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Them is Gannett and Gannett is everywhere.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Was right. It was the Binghamton Evening in Sunday Press.

• 2:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Binghamton? Wow, okay. Binghamton town in New York, uh, New York.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  And there was IBM there. I was briefly, very briefly, a technical writer for IBM.

• 2:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you had some science chops early.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  I went to your high school, too.

• 2:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Graduate of the Bronx High School of Science. Whoa. Uh-oh. Oh, that's serious bona fides, as they say. Okay, so you already had a science baptism, becoming a journalist.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  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, just a lost soul for a long time.

• 2:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  But I'm happy now.

• 2:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been found. Saved by science. Saved by science. I think most people came to know you through your, I don't know if it's your first book, but the first book that did really, really well, of course, and that was, uh, the chronometer story.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Longitude.

• 3:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Longitude, yes. Uh, the story, the subtitle. You know, if you, if you read the title and the subtitle of this book, you say, I ain't buying that. Who's gonna be care-

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Exactly. I didn't think anybody would buy it.

• 3:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, buy me the subtitle. What was it?

• 3:20Speaker 01

  The true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time.

• 3:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, no, I'm buying that book. Wait, wait, wait. Are you kidding me? That's, that's like a scientific telenovela. Well, I know, but, but it's titled Longitude.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Longitude.

• 3:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I'm saying. You might have lost me there. That's what I'm saying.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  And people still ask me, what's it about, really?

• 3:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's hilarious. And you wouldn't utter the man's name, because no one heard of him, but Harrison?

• 3:46Speaker 01

  John Harrison.

• 3:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  John Harrison, who invented the first seaworthy chronometer, which was a runaway mega bestseller, okay? Right. And another one, uh, Galileo's daughter.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, whose name was?

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Well, she was Virginia.

• 4:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  But then she became Swor Maria Celeste.

• 4:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Celeste.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  When she Celeste.

• 4:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Celeste, yeah, that's the sky, right there. Okay, okay. And then there was the glass ceiling.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Actually, it was called the glass universe.

• 4:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The glass uni-

• 4:18Speaker 01

  But you know, even my editor called it the glass ceiling all the time.

• 4:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so that one was, that was a good one. Uh, 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, but 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 in particularly early astronomy. Yeah, the glass.

• 4:52Chuck Nice?

  Glass universe.

• 4:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what was the subtitle on that one?

• 4:56Speaker 01

  How the latest of the Harvard Observatory took the measure of the stars.

• 5:00Chuck Nice?

  Ooh, wow. You make great titles.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 5:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, we've got you here and now, cause you have yet another book.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 5:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just setting the record straight.

• 5:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 5:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just let's do it. Uh, Marie Curie.

• 5:16Chuck Nice?

  Ooh, okay. How everyone don't-

• 5:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, okay. I'm not gonna read the subtitle, cause I want you to compliment her on the yet another subtitle.

• 5:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 5:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here it goes.

• 5:25Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give it to us. Marie Curie.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  How the glow of radium lit a path for women in science.

• 5:31Chuck Nice?

  Oh, so you're just showing off now. You're just showing off.

• 5:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The glow of radium.

• 5:38Chuck Nice?

  The glow of radium. That's pretty wild, yeah. And, and how, like, I see what you did there too, cause she, right, didn't she discover radium?

• 5:47Speaker 01

  She did.

• 5:48Chuck Nice?

  Right?

• 5:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:48Chuck Nice?

  She discovered radium and was it polonium?

• 5:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll get the whole-

• 5:51Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 5:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll go get the whole thing.

• 5:52Chuck Nice?

  I'm just trying to remember my-

• 5:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you remember polonium? Oh my god, thoughts about polonium?

• 5:55Chuck Nice?

  That was another one that she discovered.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was actually the first one.

• 5:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and so we can't name them all, you know.

• 6:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Curium.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  She didn't name any of them curium, that came later.

• 6:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and the first radioactive element was radium.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Well, uranium was the first one.

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, sure, sure, but what she worked with.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  She discovered, the first one was polonium.

• 6:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, how many elements did she discover?

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Two. Which two? Polonium and radium.

• 6:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. All right, and later on, we would name an element in her honor, curium. Gotcha. So, how did Marie Curie land in your lap?

• 6:32Speaker 01

  I had a, almost a religious experience in the course of writing The Glass Universe. Because the story was all about women. And 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.

• 7:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  True.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  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 in the nineteen-

• 7:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You had a man bias.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  I definitely did. And so, it stunned me. And then I had, 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. Here 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,

• 8:07Speaker 01

  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. And in reading the profiles of these women, six or seven of them had a direct connection to Marie Curie.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  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. So this was something I knew that nobody knew about Madame Curie.

• 9:13Chuck Nice?

  She was like the Harpo Studios of science before Oprah.

• 9:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they gave you access to these records?

• 9:21Speaker 01

  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.

• 9:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the stable of other women working in Marie Curie's laboratory?

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forty-five women?

• 9:44Chuck Nice?

  Forty-five. That's phenomenal.

• 9:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How does it even get to that number?

• 9:50Speaker 01

  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.

• 10:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, his name is Curie.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Yes. Her name was Sklodowska.

• 10:09Chuck Nice?

  Sklodowska.

• 10:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, so she's Polish, though we think of her as...

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Think of her as French.

• 10:15Chuck Nice?

  As French, right. Because of Madame Curie, of course.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  She had to go to Paris to go to university.

• 10:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Because in Warsaw, where she was born, women were not allowed to attend university.

• 10:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're not talking about the 1600s here.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  No, no, we're talking about the late 1800s. Yeah, yeah. First woman ever to teach at the University of Paris.

• 10:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  So now she is really a phenomenon and a magnet for women scientists.

• 10:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, of course.

• 10:51Chuck Nice?

  Oh, cool, yeah. And... All the other women in Poland who weren't allowed to go to school.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Some of those.

• 10:55Chuck Nice?

  They were like, we're headed to Paris to study under Marie.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Norway.

• 10:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't want to undervalue the value of her visibility.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the ambitions of others. Oh, my gosh.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Whereas I think women have always been interested in science, found ways to participate in science. She was the first one who really was in charge of a laboratory and a professorship.

• 11:37Speaker 03

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

• 11:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so today, most people, when asked, "Name a famous female scientist", the only scientist they can name is Marie Curie.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  That is the sad truth.

• 12:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you're not helping that matter because you just published a book on Marie Curie.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Guilty as charged.

• 12:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So maybe the rest of these women, are there stories that can be highlighted among them?

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, well.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's also part of the book?

• 12:19Speaker 01

  That is what the book is about.

• 12:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  It's about all these other women.

• 12:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a big buffalo legacy.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it was during her lifetime. They came because of her. And then she collaborated with them, published with them. She 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.

• 12:51Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  That was her, that was her field. So she shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre. But then

• 12:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  1903.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  In 1903. But then in 1911, they awarded her, the Nobel Committee awarded her the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

• 13:09Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  And she alone. So she didn't share it with anyone.

• 13:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, most Nobel Prizes are shared.

• 13:15Chuck Nice?

  Thank, thank goodness that she did that. Because, and I mean, I hate to be cynical, but if you share a Nobel Prize

• 13:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With your husband.

• 13:26Chuck Nice?

  With a husband, you also share his name.

• 13:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you have his name, right.

• 13:32Chuck Nice?

  People are going to automatically fall into the bias of, well, clearly she was his assistant.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  He did.

• 13:40Chuck Nice?

  He did the work.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  That happened. Even though she won a second Nobel Prize.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  It's really rough for women, let me tell you.

• 13:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's tough.

• 13:50Chuck Nice?

  That's why I was glad she won a second one. So to erase any stigma that might have been attached.

• 13:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Second one outright.

• 13:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, this is all her.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  No, it's still, it's still got said that she was just his assistant.

• 14:04Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  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.

• 14:17Chuck Nice?

  Just like a man, okay?

• 14:20Speaker 01

  I didn't say that.

• 14:22Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm saying it.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  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

• 14:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to manage.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  That no one could say that Hertha was her husband's assistant.

• 14:40Chuck Nice?

  The assistant.

• 14:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So highlight some of the science that came out of her lab and her, and her brilliance.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  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.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  A thousand papers on X-rays got published.

• 15:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That got the first Nobel Prize in Physics.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wilhelm Röntgen in 1900.

• 15:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 15:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The discovery of X-rays.

• 15:14Chuck Nice?

  What an unfortunate name, but.

• 15:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What Wilhelm?

• 15:16Chuck Nice?

  Wilhelm Röntgen.

• 15:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Röntgen. In fact, we're the only ones who call them X-rays. Everybody else calls them Röntgen rays.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Rankin rays, right.

• 15:23Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 15:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You didn't know that?

• 15:24Chuck Nice?

  No, I did not. I'm sorry. We got your Rankins back.

• 15:28Chuck Nice?

  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.

• 15:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What did Wilhelm call them?

• 15:37Speaker 01

  He called them X-rays.

• 15:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, then, we're good here. We're good here.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  So the very next year, Becquerel in France.

• 15:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oui.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Henri Becquerel.

• 15:49Chuck Nice?

  You know, that's a good name.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Multicultural we are.

• 15:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's a good one.

• 15:52Chuck Nice?

  Oh, oui.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  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, um,

• 16:21Speaker 01

  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 Madame Curie, now looking for a thesis topic, thought, that'll be good for me because it's interesting. And her husband was an inventor of instruments and.

• 16:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Scientific instruments.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Scientific instruments. And there was a way to measure the strength of these uranic rays.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  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.

• 17:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Name Thor.

• 17:20Chuck Nice?

  You know, the god of the bifrost.

• 17:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thor.

• 17:25Chuck Nice?

  Thor.

• 17:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it was a huge fun history of culture and mythology and people embedded in the periodic table. But go to thorium.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  And then she was testing some uranium ore and got a reading that was far higher than either uranium or thorium. And 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.

• 17:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And did you say that earlier? That whatever, this other ingredient is found with uranium?

• 18:02Speaker 01

  With uranium, yes.

• 18:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's pretty wild. She inferred its existence.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 18:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because pure uranium wouldn't do that.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  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.

• 18:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  And this, this is part of the excitement of this period, that the periodic table was a work in progress.

• 18:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It still is, but there are no gaps, is the point.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Right, there are no more gaps.

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're still increasing at the high end, making bigger, fatter elements.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Like uranium.

• 18:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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. That is called, we think there's an island of stability, just a few more elements down. Where if you make those elements, then they're permanent and they're not, 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, we're still working the table. But everything, you're talking about filling in gaps.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Filling in the gaps.

• 19:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That were there.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Right, there were a lot of gaps. And...

• 19:17Speaker 01

  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.

• 19:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  And then...

• 19:34Chuck Nice?

  Because of her.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Because of her.

• 19:35Chuck Nice?

  Yes, yeah.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Because she was very fiercely Polish.

• 19:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. And had originally intended to get educated in Paris and then go back to Poland and teach and uplift her country people.

• 19:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  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. Neither of them expected that, but...

• 20:05Chuck Nice?

  And what was her line?

• 20:08Speaker 01

  It was, she wrote to one of her family members that, "It's a grief to me."

• 20:15Chuck Nice?

  It's a grief to me.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  To remain forever in Paris.

• 20:19Chuck Nice?

  But I am deeply in love. Wow.

• 20:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Today, there would just be an emoji.

• 20:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've lost all ability to communicate.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  I want to say, she could really write. Her scientific papers are so clear. They are a marvel of clarity.

• 20:37Chuck Nice?

  By the way, my wife would leave me for plane tickets to Paris.

• 20:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Much less a secret lover.

• 20:52Chuck Nice?

  Just the plane ticket. She's like, "Listen, man, I'm sorry this didn't work out."

• 20:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was good up till now.

• 20:58Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 20:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, just been there forever.

• 21:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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...

• 21:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  will harm healthy tissue. So what, give me some backstory on that.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Well, you'd think they would have figured it out right away because they had burns on their hands. And 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.

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For tumors, you would, you would attack the cells of a tumor.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 21:56Chuck Nice?

  Radiate the cells of the tumor.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 21:59Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 21:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How would they do? Would they drop radium into the tumor itself? Or what would they do?

• 22:03Speaker 01

  It changed over time. So the first two patients, two women with breast cancer, were actually brought into the Curie's laboratory.

• 22:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  And had their.

• 22:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So somebody had to have that thought to even consider this.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  Right. There was harm associated with it, obviously, but it was doing so much good and it was so interesting.

• 22:22Chuck Nice?

  When did they find out that radioactivity also causes cancer?

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Well, I think the real big moment was in the 1920s with the, 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.

• 22:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  And they were told to put the paintbrush between their lips to get a nice point.

• 22:54Chuck Nice?

  Nice tip, yes.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  And it destroyed their jaws and they died.

• 22:58Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Yes. Their teeth fell out. Their, yeah, it was horrible.

• 23:03Chuck Nice?

  That's terrible.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  And of course, Madame Curie never advocated paint.

• 23:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Full of radium. That was not what she was.

• 23:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  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? Even in the paint, the radium shoots out an alpha particle that excites the other ingredients in the paint, and that's what's glowing.

• 23:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That renders it visible.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. This is a pivotal moment in the history of science.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 23:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Physics and chemistry.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Absolutely. Because it's not just-

• 23:59Speaker 01

  And it's a moment when physics and chemistry really meet.

• 24:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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?

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Yes. She wasn't doing that work, but other people in her lab were, including some of the women.

• 24:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. 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, right? It's very alchemical, isn't it? Ah, look at that. Look at that.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Which was a big problem at first.

• 24:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Changing one element into another, is that even possible?

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we'd already given up on alchemy.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 24:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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. Yeah.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Yes, the age of the Earth was determined in the wake of these discoveries.

• 25:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  And it was much older than anybody had thought.

• 25:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Older than 6,000 years?

• 25:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You think?

• 25:17Chuck Nice?

  That's so funny.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell me about hers. Her second Nobel Prize. What was she cited for in that? The one in chemistry.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  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.

• 25:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know how big, how much a gram weighs?

• 25:44Chuck Nice?

  Um, how big is the cracker? No, I don't know. How much is a gram?

• 25:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's hardly anything. It's one thirtieth of one ounce.

• 25:55Chuck Nice?

  One thirtieth of an ounce?

• 25:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 25:57Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. See, that is information, as a proud American, I will never need.

• 26:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell me about her daughter.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 26:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's up with that?

• 26:28Speaker 01

  So she had, 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.

• 26:42Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 26:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn, talk about a bloodline, right there.

• 26:44Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 26:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when was her, the daughter's Nobel Prize?

• 26:47Speaker 01

  1935.

• 26:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what she do it for?

• 26:49Speaker 01

  She and her husband found a way to create...

• 26:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, the husband is in there.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  There's another husband. She repeated the story. Married the lab partner, worked together.

• 27:01Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  And made these tremendous discoveries and shared the Nobel Prize with him.

• 27:06Chuck Nice?

  Look at that. You have become your mother.

• 27:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what was it, what did she discover?

• 27:12Speaker 01

  They discovered a way to make artificial radioe 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.

• 27:30Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 27:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very important in medicine.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  In medicine, exactly. Exactly. Because you don't really want to be using radium to treat your cancer.

• 27:39Chuck Nice?

  That's fascinating.

• 27:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because not all elements are created equal.

• 27:44Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 27:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some decay faster than others.

• 27:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so that their lethality or their harm factor drops exponentially.

• 27:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 27:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From when you needed it at its, at its peak.

• 27:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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.

• 28:02Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 28:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 28:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 28:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So she's creating the ideas and the foundations for whatever medical instruments would later be built.

• 28:12Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the service of human health.

• 28:14Chuck Nice?

  So the people who got the Nobel Prize for those discoveries, basically she would call them and go, "You're welcome."

• 28:26Speaker 01

  How science builds on itself.

• 28:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Did you want to talk about the love affair?

• 28:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So by the time of her second Nobel Prize, her husband's gone.

• 28:35Chuck Nice?

  He's deceased.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  He was, yes, five, five years.

• 28:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gone. And from what I understand, there was some highly written about in the media, affair between her and a married man? Is that, do I remembering this correctly?

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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, right?

• 29:08Chuck Nice?

  That's what we do.

• 29:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, that's how that goes. So did this matter to the Nobel Committee? Were they?

• 29:16Speaker 01

  It mattered to everyone. She was vilified, she was called a home wrecker and a foreigner because he was a married man with children. So 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.

• 29:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rutherford discovered the nucleus of the atom. These are, these are some heavy hitters.

• 29:50Chuck Nice?

  Heavy.

• 29:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 29:51Chuck Nice?

  Big time.

• 29:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So she's vilified and the cheating husband is not vilified.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Right. Right, he's a victim.

• 29:58Chuck Nice?

  Oh, he's a victim.

• 29:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 30:00Chuck Nice?

  So they, uh...

• 30:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the, it's the harlot scientist.

• 30:03Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  You know, she's a foreigner and she, she's, she had recently tried to gain election to the Academy of Sciences.

• 30:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that people got jingoistic, she's a foreigner.

• 30:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She's, she's a homewrecker. A man married with kids.

• 30:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And...

• 30:23Chuck Nice?

  He's a victim.

• 30:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what happened at the meeting and then what happened with the Nobel Committee?

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Well, the meeting was already over and Einstein wrote to her outraged that she had been pinpointed this way and said, he, he's sorry that the rabble was concerning itself and he thought very highly of her.

• 30:45Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. That sounds, see, that's great because his deal is, what does any of this have to do with science?

• 30:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  The Nobel Committee decided that maybe it would not be a good idea for her to come to Stockholm to accept the prize in the midst of this scandal.

• 31:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But would, would they have given her the prize even if he didn't show up?

• 31:05Speaker 01

  I think so, but I'm, I can't...

• 31:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they just didn't want the media circus?

• 31:08Chuck Nice?

  They didn't want the optics.

• 31:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, just the whole...

• 31:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or the circus that would unfold.

• 31:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they wouldn't be asking about, that would, that would change the mood of the, of the ceremony.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  The ceremony, but at that, and she had offered at first not to come. And they told her, no, no one here believes the lies, but then they changed their minds and asked her not to come. And she said, "I fail to see any connection between my scientific work and scandalous attacks on my private life."

• 31:40Chuck Nice?

  It's a...

• 31:41Speaker 01

  And she went to Stockholm.

• 31:42Chuck Nice?

  However, I will say that the illicit sex that I've had with my lab partner is indeed radioactive. Oh, stop, shut up.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  No comment.

• 31:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a novel inside Chuck somewhere.

• 31:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get that out. So, so she went and got the, got the prize.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  She got the prize, yeah, and she took her daughter with her. So Iran got to, got a foretaste of, of, of her.

• 32:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hey, I'm gonna think I'm gonna come by here in 20 years.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  I'm gonna come back, yeah.

• 32:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  25 years, I'll be back. I'll be back. Watch me. So your book, who published the book?

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Grove Atlantic Monthly Press.

• 32:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. And, and it's out now?

• 32:27Speaker 01

  It is.

• 32:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is out now. All right, so is this a movie ready, ready to be made? Sounds like one. Did someone buy, buy the movie rights?

• 32:34Speaker 01

  From your lips, Neil.

• 32:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw recently a play about Marie Curie.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Yes, there've been plays, there've been movies.

• 32:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  But, as I said, this is a different story. We'll see what happens.

• 32:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Do you, do you remember her on the, on the mural? Of course you do.

• 32:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The, the huge mosaic at the front entrance of the Bronx High School of Science. You walk under that every single day. And it, it's very biblical in its scale and in the posturing of the characters. And every single character is a mathematician, a scientist, or an engineer. And one of them is Marie Curie, prominently featured.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  And she's the only woman there, yeah.

• 33:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. And she's there looking at a test tube or something chemical. And we've got like a Galileo figure, a Newton, we have Imhotep, architect of ancient Egypt. Right. All these folk. And you walk under that every day. And you say, yeah.

• 33:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One day I'm gonna be on that mural. It's cool. Now, that's, that's, that's fantastic. It seems to me, everything Marie Curie touched in and around her lab might still be radioactive today.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that true?

• 33:51Speaker 01

  I'm sure it is.

• 33:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, how about her notes, her clothing, her, her effects?

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Radium has a half-life of 1,600 years.

• 34:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, well, there you have it. That's it? Yeah. 1,600 years. To remind people about half-life, so whatever, how much radium you have today, in 1,600 years, you have half that much. Right. And then 1,600 years, you have half of that. Half of that, so 3,200 years, you'll have one fourth of what's sitting in front of you right now. So clearly that's. So you day it. What is she, what does she die of?

• 34:21Speaker 01

  She died of aplastic anemia. So her body could no longer create red blood cells. Partly radioactivity exposure, but also X-ray exposure. Because during World War I, she outfitted a van with X-ray equipment and drove to the front because it was going to be the first time that battle wounds could be X-rayed.

• 34:46Chuck Nice?

  She created a mobile X-ray unit?

• 34:49Speaker 01

  She did.

• 34:49Chuck Nice?

  Wow. It was instantly obvious what the value of X-rays were when they were discovered.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  Even so, she had to argue with some of the doctors who had never seen it because it was still relatively new.

• 35:03Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  And so she, she created this car that had all the equipment. And then, because people were very quickly convinced and were willing to have, have something permanent wherever the field hospitals were. So she set up a course. She created a six-week course in X-ray, electricity, human anatomy, and she trained 150 French women to do that same work.

• 35:32Chuck Nice?

  Wow. So every X-ray technician owes her Yes. a debt because they're, she created their job. Yes.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Well, there were some before that, but they were coming up through the medical ranks. Her feeling was, this is a crisis and there are a lot of women who want to help. And I can, I can

• 35:55Chuck Nice?

  Women are not on the front.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  I can tell them, I can tell them what they need to know and they can go and do it.

• 36:01Chuck Nice?

  It's amazing because you learn about Marie Curie and like, they just say, radioactivity, they say that. Just the shortlist. The shortlist. They're like, radioactivity, Nobel Prize, woman scientist, and moving on. You know, like that's it. This is, I mean, I'm just absolutely gobsmacked by all the accomplishments this woman and what she's responsible for.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  When I started this book, the pandemic happened. So I didn't get to go to Paris. But what I discovered was that everything about Madame Curie has been digitized. So her personal notebooks, the most touching of which is the grief journals she kept for a year after her husband's death, in which she spoke to him. You can read the whole thing online.

• 36:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you had access to digital records, so you didn't have to expose yourself to what might be residual radium?

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Well, I couldn't even have the grief of going to Paris, you know. It was, it was what I had to settle for. But I was fascinated by the wealth of the material. You can read all of the weekly publications of the Academy of Sciences back centuries, and it's easy to get at. And then her notebooks? Yes.

• 37:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  It's just...

• 37:25Chuck Nice?

  Sold me!

• 37:26Speaker 01

  It's just free.

• 37:28Chuck Nice?

  Had me at free.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Get up your French reading, is the only thing.

• 37:32Chuck Nice?

  I was all in French.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:34Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course.

• 37:35Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, unless it's just English and a really bad French accent, I'm screwed.

• 37:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He does a Frenchman bad accent really well.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  I bet, I bet, yeah.

• 37:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you always give him a cigarette.

• 37:49Chuck Nice?

  But of course, you have to have a cigarette, okay? It is French law. You do not want me to be arrested?

• 38:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How soon we forget, or perhaps never knew, or worse yet, suppressed, the contributions of so many people, so many scientists, engineers, seekers of cosmic truths, being in a laboratory or in the sky, anywhere. The number of people represented in that population is huge. Yet, we only ever read about a few of them here and there. And somehow... Some of us are prone to think the information, knowledge, discovery just somehow is handed to us from on high, from a tablet in the sky. No, it's hard work. And scientists who are

• 38:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  committed have done this often without reward. The only reward is the act of discovery and the knowledge that the universe is knowable and you on the frontier, on that moving frontier, have contributed to that base of knowledge that we call science. Marie Curie, among others, and all the women in her lab, and all the other labs that we have yet to hear about, because Davis Sobel hasn't written about them yet. Who knows how many labs lurk in our ignorance for us to get a full appreciation of the foundations of what we take for granted

• 39:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  as modern science. And that is a cosmic perspective. So, David, our first ever StarTalk guest, I want you to come back for every book that you write.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  I want to write another one just for that.

• 39:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you need incentive to come back to StarTalk, write another damn book.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  I got it. Okay.

• 39:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got it. Thanks for being on the show. Chuck, good to have you, man. Always a pleasure. All right. This has been StarTalk with our inaugural guest returning, coming back to us in this, the 600th episode of what she started as episode number one, Davis Sobel.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 40:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for coming back.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 40:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Neil Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist, as always. Keep looking up.