Men and women, blue eyed, blond haired or dark eyed, dark haired (or any combination of three of the above) worked in taut silence (or while listening to their iPods) to fulfill the pledge they'd made to blog about a woman in technology as a tribute to Ada Lovelace.
Ada Lovelace Day, the brainchild of Suw Charman-Anderson, is a truly successful viral campaign, launched, from what I could see, almost entirely on Twitter with blog back-up. I'm blown away by this engraving of Ada done by Jake von Slatt - surely he doesn't need to blog, having already created a piece of art?
For a relatively accurate account of Marie Curie's life, the Wikipedia article does well enough. I don't think it captures the romanticism of her life, her heroism, or what must have been her passion. I cannot imagine the kind of dedication it would take to win not one, but two Nobel Prizes, in two different disciplines.
The parody in the first paragraph of the Monday, July 16, 1934, Time obit entitled 'Death of Mme Curie' wasn't meant to be disrespectful. Marie Curie 2.0 could exist - may even exist, although hopefully she's learned to minimize risk in this iteration. MC2.0 would be considered both a homewrecker and a cougar, it seems, since the original had conducted an affair of about a year's duration with physicist Paul Langevin, an ex-student of her late husband.
I don't remember that part of the story from the Greer Garson/Walter Pidgeon film Madame Curie.
Nor do I remember the speech she delivered in the film, 'expressing her belief that science is the path to a better world.' But I know that she was one of my heroines, and that her courage and tenacity paved the way for women like me, who chose briefly to work in the field of nuclear energy and had no fear because of the work begun by Dr. Curie.
While you may quibble (I certainly do) with some of the overly romantic wording of the Wikipedia entry for Marie Skłodowska Curie ('Maria had found a new love, a partner and scientific collaborator that she could depend on.'), it's hard to quibble with this statement: 'She was ahead of her time, emancipated [and] independent.... Albert Einstein is supposed to have remarked that she was probably the only person who was not corrupted by the fame that she had won.'
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4 comments:
Wikipedia is a collaborative effort. If it can be improved, please contribute; that's what it is all about.
Have you written for Wikipedia before? You should, your writing is wonderful!
Thanks for sharing today1
Bill, thank you for reading my post and for commenting, and for the extravagant compliment on my writing - truly appreciated.
I signed up early to take the pledge, and was feeling singularly uninspired last night when writing. The focus on Dr. Curie's love life in the Wikipedia article was a little startling to me, and as a result I decided to poke a little fun at the web 2.0 version of history as well as the melodramatic 'noir' approach of the Times obituary. :)
Wow, it's great to meet someone else who even knows who Marie Curie is, let alone respects her contributions similarly... Long ago I adopted Marie as my personal mentor and role model as a woman in science. I'll give you that there is probably more to her life that I don't need or want to adopt as my own, but in terms of my aspirations and ideals, she fits perfectly. I have always deeply respected the price she paid with her body to bring x-ray technology to the masses, and I have personally revered her for her "unsung hero-ness" for having been passed over for her nobel the first time for her real discovery.
It surprises me that young people aren't taught science or history with more of a view of the people who generated these amazing discoveries. Perhaps if we did, more young people who don't see themselves in science could see themselves participating in the scientific process.
Yay Marie Curie!
I'm not sure if it's because my grade seven and eight science teacher was Polish, or whether we had a biography of Marie Curie at home while I was growing up (my dad worked on early experiments with both fossil and nuclear fuels at the then-federal Department of Energy, Mines and Resources) or whether I just saw the movie about her life, but Marie Curie had a profound influence on my thinking. Not so much on my thinking about science, more so on my thinking about marriage as a working partnership and the need to find one's intellectual equal and to have common ground with one's partner.
In the same way African Americans now KNOW they can become president of the US of A, it's pioneers like Marie Curie who've taught women they don't have to be deferential in any field. While I would have liked to feature a contemporary woman for this post, you've made a great point for featuring a historical figure instead.
So next year we'll get you to take the pledge as well. I have to say, I loved the tongue-in-cheek reference to the temperance movement.
You might be interested, Jocelyn, in the debate that's raging over the GQ 'Rockstars of Science' article - here's @2020science's take on it with a good roundup of all the other commentary to date: http://2020science.org/2009/06/27/celebrity-scientists-–-it-takes-more-than-stardust/
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