In the early 20th century, when many scientists achieved cult celebrity status in the mainstream, the extraordinary Marie Curie came under fire for an affair she had following the death of her husband.
In the midst of a huge scandal that threatened to destroy his legacy and life’s work, another luminary of science, the great Albert Einstein, came to his rescue. He did this by writing her an extraordinary letter of support that, in his characteristic style, is full of wisdom that is still relevant today.
The accusation of not being deserving
In 1903, Marie Curie became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, which she shared with her husband Pierre for their groundbreaking research into radioactivity, a term she coined.
In 1911 Marie won another Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the discovery of the elements polonium and radium, thanks to the techniques she invented for isolating radioactive isotopes. To date, he is the only person in history to have won a Nobel Prize in two different fields.
But, despite her notable academic achievements, Marie suffered many injustices. Imagine Madame Marie Sklodowska Curie, a double Nobel Prize winner, being rejected for the only vacancy for a physicist at the French Academy of Sciences for which she had applied: that’s exactly what happened.
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After he formally applied for the vacant seat in November 1910, French tabloids began covering his reputation on an almost daily basis. All sorts of slanders and falsifications were said about Marie, including that she was Jewish, not truly French and therefore by the criteria of the time “not deserving” to be admitted to the French Academy.
The right-wing press also loved to touch on other topics that had nothing to do with her extraordinary scientific career, but rather concerning Marie’s life, while praising her rival, the physicist Edouard Branly, a pioneer in the development of radio waves and transmission.
His candidacy for the French Academy was questioned on the basis of racist statements and alleged scientific analyzes of his handwriting and facial features. Branly won the election on 23 January 1911 by two votes and Curie reacted as she always had when faced with a serious setback, throwing herself headlong into work. However, this experience was nothing compared to the scandal that was about to erupt that same year.
The relationship with Paul Langevin
In 1906, Pierre Curie died in a freak car accident in Paris, after tripping and falling under the wheels of a horse-drawn carriage, suffering a fatal skull fracture. Marie was devastated by the loss, as was Paul Langevin, Pierre’s former doctoral student and protégé.
Langevin was brilliant and acclaimed for a thesis on ionized gases. Being French by birth and a man, he had no difficulty in getting elected to the College de France and the Academy of Sciences. He was also daring, having climbed the Eiffel Tower in an attempt to find the city’s purest air for a study on electrical currents in the atmosphere.
United by pain and genius, the two began a relationship. However, Langevin was married, although he was not at all satisfied with his relationship with his wife. Madame Langevin was aware of her husband’s occasional infidelities, but found his relationship with Marie more upsetting than the others, and before long a violent hostility arose between the two women.
The two lovers had secretly rented an apartment in Paris and this was also no secret to Langevin’s wife, Jeanne. The wife hired a private investigator who broke into the apartment while the couple was away and stole letters written to each other.
The publication of the letters
Jeanne threatened to take the letters to the press and make them public so Curie and Langevin remained separated for much of 1911. They reunited in October at the Solvay Conference in Brussels, an international conference attended by 20 other world-famous scientists, including Albert Einstein.
Curie was the only woman present at the 1911 Brussels academic conference. When Curie returned home from the conference, she found that her affair with Langevin had made the front page of every French tabloid. She was even greeted by an angry crowd who gathered outside her home in Sceaux, which terribly upset her daughters, 14-year-old Irène and 7-year-old Eve.
Curie and her daughters had to take refuge in the homes of friends in Paris, including that of the mathematician Emile Borel, scientific director of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, who was threatened with losing his job after the Minister of Public Education accused him of having tarnished French academic honor.
She denied the allegations until another tabloid published some of the love letters, along with angry editorials from editors calling Curie a “family ruiner” and a shame for France.
At that point Jeanne formally asked for a divorce and the trial date was set just when Marie was due to receive her second Nobel Prize in Stockholm, on 10 December. The members of the Nobel Committee were becoming very nervous and proceeded to privately urge Marie Curie not to appear at the award ceremony, for fear of causing embarrassment.
Einstein’s letter of encouragement
And it is precisely in these circumstances that Albert Einstein intervened and we return to the starting point of our discussion. Einstein (who had already had an illegitimate child with a former student of his) thought radically differently and wrote a letter of encouragement to Marie Curie, urging her not to listen to all those slanders.
The letter reads:
Dearest Madame Curie,
Don’t laugh at me for writing to you without having anything sensible to say. But I am so enraged by the mean way in which the public dares to deal with her that I absolutely must give vent to this feeling. However, I am convinced that you constantly despise these scum, whether you respect them obsequiously or try to satiate their craving for sensationalism!
I am compelled to tell you how much I admired your intellect, drive and honesty and that I consider myself lucky to have met you personally in Brussels. Those who are not part of these reptiles are certainly happy, now as then, to have characters like you and Langevin among us, real people with whom we have the privilege of coming into contact. If the mob continues to deal with you, then simply do not read that nonsense, but leave it to the reptile for which it was created.
With warmest regards to you, Langevin and Perrin, my most sincere greetings,
A. Einstein
PS I determined the statistical law of the motion of the diatomic molecule in the Planck radiation field by means of a comic joke, naturally under the constraint that the motion of the structure follows the laws of standard mechanics. However, my hope that this law is valid in reality is very small.
Albert Einstein, November 23, 1911.
Curie eventually went to collect the Nobel Prize
Einstein’s letter contains wise advice that is very timely:
If the mob continues to deal with you, then simply do not read that nonsense, but leave it to the reptile for which it was created.
It’s certainly something we should all take to heart, especially in an era where despicable comments of all kinds from classic “keyboard lions” abound on social media.
You are surely wondering how it ended. Did Marie Curie listen to Einstein’s words? Perhaps encouraged by this letter, she went to Stockholm to receive the prize for her historic discovery of radium and polonium. The ceremony took place without major incident, much to the relief of Nobel bureaucrats.
In fact, not only did everything go well, but Curie even had an 11-course dinner with the King of Sweden, who was certainly no saint. Years later, it was discovered that King Gustav was having an affair with a married man, in spite of the respectability so required of Marie.
Curie and Langevin separated, but the friendship with Einstein became intense
And to complete the picture, ten days after the Nobel ceremony, the Langevins settled their differences in court. Jeanne got custody of their four children, while Paul got visitation rights. Unfortunately, the scandal had had repercussions on the relationship between Curie and Langevin.
The two would remain cordially in touch and maintain a scientific relationship, but their love story was over. But Curie continued to form a close friendship with Einstein, so much so that the two went on holiday together with their children in the summer of 1913.
When France was shaken by a wave of anti-German sentiment in the 1920s, Curie returned the favor. In fact, he lobbied on Einstein’s behalf to secure him a post as a lecturer in Paris.
Upon Marie Curie’s death in 1935, Einstein had only kind words at a memorial service at the Roerich Museum in New York. He told the audience:
I admired his human greatness more and more. Her strength, her purity of will, her austerity towards herself, her objectivity, her incorruptible judgement. All this was of a kind which is rarely found united in a single individual. If only a small part of Madame Curie’s strength of character and devotion were alive in European intellectuals, Europe would have a brighter future.
Words which, like those written in the letter, still resonate prophetic today.
The second episode of our Lenti Podcast is also dedicated to this story, which you can listen to here:
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