Book description
At a moment of great discovery, one Big Idea can change the world...
Marie Curie had one of the finest scientific minds of the
twentieth century, overturning established ideas in both physics and
chemistry. She had an equally profound effect in the social arena,
challenging the commonly held belief that women were intellectually
inferior to men. Her work influenced current cancer research and her
exploration of radioactivity was groundbreaking.
Curie & Radioactivity tells the captivating story of Curie's
early life in which she worked as a governess to support her sister
during medical school, through to her later life, as the first person
ever honoured with Nobel Prizes in two different sciences. Her
untimely death from cancer, due to overexposure to radium, marked the
end of an exceptional career of a woman who was ahead of her time and
never far from controversy. The Big Idea: Curie & Radioactivity is
accessible and absorbing, placing Curie's remarkable life in the
context of the times and rendering the essence of her unprecedented
discoveries in a form comprehensible even to non-scientists.
The Big Idea series is a fascinating look at the greatest
advances in our scientific history, and at the men and women who made
these fundamental breakthroughs.
Paul Strathern was born in London and studied philosophy at Trinity
College, Dublin. He was a lecturer at Kingston University where he
taught philosophy and mathematics. He is a Somerset Maugham
prize-winning novelist of
A Season in Abyssinia
, as well as four other novels. He is also the author of the
Philosophers in 90 Minutes
series
.
He wrote
Mendeleyev's Dream
which was shortlisted for the Aventis Science Book Prize,
Dr.
Strangelove's Game: A History of Economic Genius
,
The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance
,
Napoleon in Egypt
and most recently,
The Artist, The Philosopher and The Warrior
,
which details the convergence of three of Renaissance Italy's most
brilliant minds: Leonardo Da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli and Cesare
Borgia. He lives in London and has three grandchildren.
