All language subtitles for BBC.The.Genius.of.Marie.Curie.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.eng

In 1927 the world's greatest
scientists assembled in Belgium,

to thrash out some of the most
fundamental problems in physics.

29 showed up, 17 of whom would
become Nobel prize-winners,

but one of their number could
trump them all.

Someone who'd bagged two Nobel
prizes in two different sciences.

In a man's world, a woman had broken
through - Madame Marie Curie.

This is the story of Marie Curie's
life - the adventures

of a woman who refused to conform
to the social mores of her time.

A woman who could pop in on
presidents, and holidayed with
Einstein...

..who once trod the boards
on Broadway...

..ran mobile X-ray units on the
front as the French battled the
Hun...

..who even had duels
fought over her.

And wonderfully, for such
a fiercely private woman,

we've been left a unique view of her
inner struggles in life and love.

Because in the decades that
followed her death,

her family released her most
intimate letters.

"I am impatient to see you,

"much more than I am uneasy
about the difficulties to come.

"It will be good to hear your voice
again and see your dear eyes.

"Until Saturday, my darling,
I will not stop thinking of you."

The letters reveal the real Marie -

a woman full of passion,
an obsessive genius,

whose life was beset by tragedy
and scandal.

In every great life, there's
a moment that comes to define you.

A moment of crisis that forces
you to dig deep

and establish who you truly are.

For Marie Curie, that
moment came in the autumn of 1911,

some five years after the tragic
death of her husband, Pierre Curie.

She was at the world's first
international meeting

of physicists and chemists.

An historic, invitation-only event,

which would become
known as the Solvay Conference.

And she was happy -

perhaps because she had just
received a telegram confirming

she had won a SECOND Nobel prize.

Or perhaps because she was
there with her lover.

Paul Langevin, he was a physicist,
and at some point,

he was actually
a student of Pierre Curie's.

And he had worked with the Curies.

I mean, certainly both of them
knew him.

And he was a physicist of renown -
everyone knew who he was.

Most of what we know of their affair
comes from the letters that

Marie wrote to Paul.

"The instinct which led us
to each other was very powerful.

"I believe that we could derive
everything from it - good work

"in common, a good solid friendship,
courage for life and even

"beautiful children of love in the
most beautiful meaning of the word."

Jeanne Langevin, Paul's wife,

understandably was rather jealous
and unhappy about this.

She was a really intense,
rather violent woman.

According to a witness,
Madame Langevin accosted Marie

in the street,
where she threatened to kill her
if she didn't leave France.

Marie implored Paul to end
the marriage.

"When I know you are with her, my
nights are atrocious. I can't sleep.

"I wake up with a sensation of fever
and I can't work."

Marie's downfall came
when pictures were published of Paul

and her at the Solvay conference.

Enraged, Madame Langevin
decided to act.

One day, when she was sure
Paul Langevin wasn't there,

she somehow managed to
persuade someone

to break into the apartment, where
this person found a cache of very

intimate love letters between
Marie Curie and Paul Langevin.

Marie came back from her conference
to discover that

parts of the letters had been
published in the press.

This had suddenly become a very,
very public affair.

The press ran a series of scurrilous
claims against her.

This venomous publicity stirred
up an angry mob,

who surrounded her home
and threw stones at the windows.

GLASS SMASHING

The whole affair
spiralled into a farcical nightmare.

For Langevin, the final straw came
when he read an article

in a newspaper accusing him of
hiding behind a Polish woman's
skirts.

And for him, that was such an insult
to his French dignity

that he challenged the editor
of the paper to a duel.

They met at exactly 11 o'clock
in the morning.

They paced out 25 yards.

They raised their pistols
at each other

and the editor reported afterwards
that he looked at Langevin

and he thought,
"I can't possibly kill this man.

"He's one of France's greatest
scientists!" so he pointed

his pistol to the ground.

So then there was Langevin,
and he thought,

"I can't possibly shoot this man.
He's not pointing a gun at me,"

so he put his gun down as well.

And that was the end of the duel
between them.

Paul Langevin returned to his wife
with honour restored

and reputation intact.

Marie fared less well.

Publicly humiliated,
she'd lost her companion

and the controversy meant
she couldn't continue

the scientific work that had brought
her so much happiness.

She fled into hiding with her
daughters,

and entered a deep depression.

The story of how Marie Curie
ascended to become the world's most

famous female scientist, how she
lost it all and subsequently
achieved redemption

is one of the greatest
sagas in the history of science.

And it starts not in Paris, but a
thousand miles away to the east.

Marie Curie was born in obscurity,
in a different country

and under a completely
different name.

This is the museum
of Maria Sklodowska-Curie.

In 1867, on the seventh of November,
it was the place where

Maria Sklodowska was born.

From the beginning,
Maria, as she'd been christened,

had to face prejudice every day.

Marie Sklodowska was born when
Poland was divided by three
countries -

Russia, Prussia and Austria.

And in that time,
Warsaw was occupied by Russians.

It was forbidden to talk in Polish,
to learn Polish history.

To make Polish science.

Indeed, ever since Napoleon's
defeat at Waterloo in 1815,

Warsaw had been under
the rule of Tsarist Russia.

The occupiers
set about a cultural cleansing,

banning Polish folk songs
and dancing.

Russian became the state language.

So it was in private that
her father,

Professor Wladyslaw Sklodowski,
sparked her passion for science.

At home he kept a cabinet full of
scientific apparatus that fascinated

the young Maria, who by the age of
four was already a confident reader.

Later the same year, her mother
began to lose weight

and would cough constantly - a sign
that tuberculosis was taking hold.

And of course doctors said,
you know,

you have to stay of clear
your daughter

and so she didn't have a lot of
physical affection from her mother.

Her mother finally
succumbed to the disease in 1878

when Maria was just 12 years old.

"For many years,
we all felt weighing on us

"the loss of the one who had been
the soul of the house."

So for most of her formative years,
her father raised her as best

he could as a poorly paid teacher.

She adored him
and it was from him that she

inherited her questioning nature
and her life-long love of science.

EASTERN EUROPEAN FOLK MUSIC

Maria left school aged 15 with
a gold medal for topping her year.

But Warsaw University was
closed to women,

so she was forced to give up her
passion for science.

She abandoned her studies and left
to join her relatives in the
country.

EASTERN EUROPEAN FOLK SINGING

"We do everything that comes
to our minds. Sometimes we sleep

"at night, sometimes during the day.
We dance, and in all, we frolic

"so much that sometimes we might
deserve to be locked up in a mental
home..."

For most girls of her age, finding
a good husband was the next step.

But she and her older sister
Bronia would break the convention.

MUSIC STOPS

Whoo! Bravo!

APPLAUSE

They concocted an audacious plan
that would allow them

both to get a university education.

Maria would remain in the Polish
countryside,

to seek work as a governess.

She would support Bronia
as she left to study medicine at the
Sorbonne University in Paris.

In return, Bronia would later
help Maria to join her there.

And so it was that in the winter of
1886, Maria arrived at the family
home of a wealthy beetroot farmer...

..the ruins of which still stand on
land owned by Teresa Kaczorowska.

Almost at once, Maria felt at home.

Maria taught the Zorawski children
upstairs in her little room.

And it was here that one day
she met their eldest brother,

a meeting that threatened to
derail all her plans.

The rejection of the Zorawski family
sent her into a depression

that saw her abandon all
thoughts of leaving Poland.

"I have been stupid,

"I am stupid and I shall remain
stupid all the days of my life.

"I dreamed of Paris
as of redemption,

"but the hope of going there
left me a long time ago."

Heartbroken, Maria returned to her
ageing father in Warsaw.

And here she may have remained
in obscurity, if it wasn't for

what went on in this building, the
Museum of Industry and Agriculture,

because behind its impressive facade
was a secret Polish laboratory.

This is a very important place in
Maria's scientific life. When she was

about 18-19 years old she started to
learn here chemical analysis.

The lab was part of the so-called
Flying University,

which moved from location
to location around Warsaw

to avoid the suspicion of the
Russians.

Here, all Poles could advance their
education, be they male or female.

"I tried to reproduce various
experiments described in treatises

"on physics and chemistry. From time
to time a little unhoped-for success

"would encourage me, and at others I
sank into despair.

"But on the whole, I discovered my
taste for experimental research
during these first trials."

Marie had rediscovered her appetite
for science. She wrote to Bronia.

"If my coming is just possible,
tell me,

"and tell me what entrance
examinations I must pass,

"and what is the latest date at which
I can register as a student.

"I am so nervous at the prospect
of my departure that

"I can't speak of anything else.

Bronia could at last repay her
little sister as Maria prepared

to give herself to physics.

At the close of the nineteenth
century, the study of physics
was a backwater.

In the universities of Europe,
it was widely accepted that all

the important laws of nature
had been discovered.

Theories of electromagnetism,
thermodynamics and mechanics seemed
to explain everything.

No-one could foresee that there
was a scientific revolution looming,

even less that one of its leaders
would be a poor young woman

from Poland who had just
enrolled in the physics faculty.

# Leave your home

# Change your name

# Live alone... #

In the spring of 1891,
Maria Sklodowska arrived in Paris.

She found herself
in France at a time

when there was some ill-feeling
towards foreigners.

So to better fit in,

she changed her name to the more
Gallic-sounding Marie.

Her university, the Sorbonne,
was one of the few elite

European academic institutions
that admitted women.

In Britain, it would be the 1920s
before Oxford and Cambridge allowed
women degrees.

She excelled, graduating first
out of her entire year in science.

But life was hard.

After paying rent for her tiny
garret room,

she had very little
left over for food or fun.

If she was to stay in Paris,
she needed a job.

She worked on magnets,

which now might not
sound a terribly exciting subject,

but you need magnets when you're
making electric motors and dynamos.

This was when the electricity
industry was just beginning
to take off.

Electricity companies were
hungry to improve

the quality of the magnets
in their generators

and thereby produce more
electricity to keep the lights on.

Marie was hired to help.

She carried out lots of very precise
research on exactly what

alloys you use to make a very
powerful, very permanent magnet.

Now she needed
a lab in which to work.

And thanks to some shrewd
matchmaking from a fellow Pole,

she was about to meet lab owner and
expert in magnetism, Pierre Curie.

"When I came in, Pierre Curie
was standing in the window.

"He seemed very young to me,
though he was aged 35.

"I was struck by the expression
of his clear gaze,

"and by a slight appearance of
carelessness in his lofty stature."

30 years later, she remembered that
very first moment that she

saw him across the room
and she was terribly struck.

So I guess it was
love at first sight.

She moved into the corridor
of Pierre's lab

at Ecole de Physique et Chimie
and set to work.

Here, an extraordinary romance
unfolded.

"He caught the habit
of speaking to me

"of his dream of an existence
consecrated entirely

"to scientific research,
and asked me to share that life."

Marie had her doubts. She was
homesick and missed her father.

But Pierre pleaded with her to stay
and make a life with him in France.

# Am I to be the one

# To hold you
back and make you come my way

# I know I'm the only one to do
what's to be done... #

So where shall I put this?
Oh, in the cupboard there.

In desperation, he insisted that
if she left,

he would throw in his career
and follow her to Poland.

He won Marie over.

"It is a sorrow to me to have to stay
for ever in Paris,
but what am I to do?

"Fate has made us
deeply attached to each other

"and we cannot endure
the idea of separating."

Marie and Pierre were
married on the 26th of July 1895.

# Am I to be the one

# To hold you back
and make you come my way

# I know I'm the only one to do... #

They honeymooned on two wheels
during the so-called Golden Age of
Bicycles.

# Am I to be the one

# To hold you back and make you come
my way... #

On the newly invented
pneumatic tyre,

they rode far and wide
across the French countryside.

# To do what's to be done... #

A year and a half later,
still working hard on magnetism,

Marie found herself
bearing her first child.

She approached her pregnancy
rather like a modern woman.

She went on working right
until the very end,

whereas most woman of that period
after a couple of months,

they would have completely
retired from public view

and they'd have spent a lot of time
resting and lying down.

In due course, Pierre's father,
Dr Eugene Curie,

delivered Marie's healthy six-pound
baby girl, whom she named Irene.

She really didn't want her pregnancy
to hinder her work at all,

and she was the sort of woman who
was sort of back at the lab bench

within a couple of days
of the baby being born.

Indeed, just weeks after the birth,

Marie published her first
scientific paper.

It was an important work,
which quickly spread

around the world, standardising the
manufacturing process of magnets.

But soon after,
she abandoned all work on magnetism,

because she'd heard of a stunning
new discovery -

one that would be the making of her
as a professional scientist.

It was now 1896,
and another Paris-based physicist,

Henri Becquerel, was exploring
the properties of uranium.

Finishing work early one day,

he placed his materials
away in a desk drawer,

leaving a nugget of uranium on top
of a sealed photographic plate.

When he opened the drawer
the following day and examined
the plate,

he saw that it appeared to
have been exposed to a bright light.

Serendipity had led Becquerel to the
discovery that uranium was

emitting unknown rays that could
pass through solid matter.

Nobody had any idea what it was.

It was not seen as a particularly
fruitful research topic,

which is probably why she,
as a Polish woman, was enabled

to pick it up, because there wasn't
a lot of competition for it.

But after publishing,
Becquerel promptly gave up on the
strange new rays,

leaving the field clear
for the Curies.

But how to measure
these invisible rays?

Marie needed something more
sensitive than a crude

photographic plate.

Fortunately, she'd married
a brilliant electrical engineer,

and he designed a way of accurately
measuring the strength of any

potential source of these rays.

So this instrument is called
ionization chamber.

As Marie Curie did, we just have to
put our sample between the two
metal plates.

The new rays would then ionise
the air between the plates

and a small electrical current would
flow to another instrument called an
electrometer.

This measured exactly
how much current was produced.

The electricity will be
transmitted and it will reach

this instrument which is
called electrometer.

And then using the piezoelectrical
quartz invented

by Pierre Curie, it was possible to
measure very precisely the rays
emitted

by the sample.

Marie undertook the enormous
task of measuring all the metals,

minerals and compounds
she could get her hands on, to see

if any others were producing
these invisible rays.

And around this time, she started to
refer to the phenomenon

she was seeking as radioactivity.

She'd given a whole new
area of physics its name.

But Marie's growing obsession with
radioactivity came at a price.

Irene, and later her second daughter
Eve, were cared for by others.

Her father-in-law took
care of her daughters

and that opened things up
entirely for her.

He was a widower at that stage,

and I mean literally there
were whole years

when he was their caretaker.

There are little suggestions
of the daughters being resentful.

And I say this
because there were letters -

certainly Irene would write letters
and she would say, you know,
"When are you going to come home?

"When are you going to be able
to read to me

"instead of Grandfather
reading to me?"

In time, Irene would understand
Marie's passion for science but Eve
never would.

And her resentment would
remain throughout her life.

Marie continued to
work at Pierre's apparatus,

until one day, whilst testing
a substance called pitchblende,

she got a result that sent
the electrometer off the scale.

This was the highest reading anyone
had seen, and since it was so much

stronger than uranium, it must be
coming from an entirely new element.

The question was, what was it?

Since pitchblende was a mixture of
different elements jumbled together,

somehow she had to free her new
element from the compound material.

In Marie Curie's notebooks,

she talks about starting
with 100g of material.

We're losing bits all over
the place.

You know, really substantial amounts
of rock and this is really hardcore
physical labour.

You've just got to pound and grind
until you've got

a nice, fine, free-flowing material

and at that point you can move
really from the engineering into the
chemistry.

The next step is going to be to
actually try and dissolve it out

and she would have chosen nitric
acid - because what she would have

known was that this could dissolve
up pretty well any metallic ion.

At this point, Marie Curie would
really have been reaching

a kind of branching point,

in that there would have been
the immediate question

of where is the radioactivity?

Is it actually soluble in the acid,
or is it left behind?

A quick check with the electrometer
and she deduced - correctly -

that her new element
was in the liquid.

But there was a problem.

The pitchblende only contained
a tiny quantity of this new element.

# So I can't get enough
of that stuff... #

So to isolate it,
she'd have to process

tons of the stuff to find her
needle in a haystack.

# And I've tried and I've tried

# But all night I have cried

# No, I can't get enough of that
stuff... #

We're standing in the car
park of what's now called the ESPCI,

which is a big physics
and chemistry institute in Paris.

And behind me here there's a white
line on the ground and that marks
out one corner of a shed

that Pierre and Marie Curie were
given to work in.

# Do you think that's it's smart to
pump it through my heart

# No, I can't get enough
of that stuff... #

The shed was run down -

draughty
and freezing cold in the winter,

stifling hot under
the glass in the summer.

And this is where all
the horse-carts of pitchblende

would line up and deposit
all their deliveries for Pierre

and Marie Curie to refine.

When you think about the kind of lab
operations that she was doing,

I mean a lot of it was really kind
of repetitive, tedious drudgery

and in a way you wonder what
kept her going.

And it's when you start looking at
the notebooks that maybe one
gets a kind of clue.

And here on the 27th of June 1898
she starts with

180 grams of powdered
pitchblende.

But at the end of half a page of
description, suddenly there she is -

very large letters saying "300 times
more active than uranium".

There was always, in a sense,
this sort of little

light at the end of the tunnel which
was getting brighter and brighter.

For four years she persevered,

gradually getting closer to
isolating her new element.

And as she continued to
concentrate the material,

something wonderful unfolded.

Before they started all the
experimenting, Pierre had said to
Marie,

"I wonder what sort of colour
our new product is going to be?"

And he fantasised that it would be
some sort of bluey-greeny

magic colour. And that was indeed
what happened.

As the pitchblende became more and
more concentrated as they went on
purifying it,

this sort of strange eerie
blue-green glow could be seen all
over the walls

of the little shed that they
were working in.

MUSIC: "Clair de Lune"
by Claude Debussy

And they used to come here at night,
and watch it and marvel at it

and they had a family at home,
but for them,

it was a scientific child that they
had worked on together for so long

and dreamt about it and finally here
they were, they were producing it

in this tiny dilapidated
shed with a glass roof.

And then you get to page 66 with
a big underlined heading

which says "Dosage" - determination.

The 28th of March 1902 -
she says 0.1179 grams.

And then there's a quick calculation
and at the end of it in really large
letters there's "Ra = 225.9".

She now knows the atomic mass

and she really knows exactly where
in the periodic table this fits.

This is kind of the moment
of triumph.

It's the culmination of years
of work. She's arrived.

Congratulations.

After four years
of bone-crushingly hard work,

Marie and Pierre had discovered
a new element - radium.

Its highly radioactive nature

and eerie green glow
set the world alight.

MUSIC: "I Can't Get Enough"
by the Dead Brothers

# No, I can't get
enough of that stuff

# No, I can't get
enough of that stuff... #

I think nowadays we're terribly
aware of how dangerous

radiation of any kind can be.

But when it first appeared,
it seemed that this new miracle
source of energy -

it was a universal panacea -
and it was being advertised for

throat medicines, and cough cures,
and you could buy radium toothpaste.

It was sort of the new
hope for the future.

As the radium craze spread,
some could still not believe

the central role Marie had
played in the discovery.

There's this marvellous caricature
that came out in Vanity Fair

and there's Marie Curie
and Pierre Curie in Man of the Year.

And he's there and he's holding up
this great big test-tube

and the radium is shining out
onto his forehead.

and so his forehead is glowing
with genius.

And she's this little diminutive
figure behind him

with a hand on his shoulder,
sort of peering over him,

and you can almost hear her saying,
"Oh, Pierre! You're so clever."

So all the glory of the discovery
is being attributed to him.

Even though it was very much
a collaborative piece of work.

The years of toil had paid off.

In 1903, the Nobel committee
decided to honour

the discoverers of radioactivity.

But in a blatant show of sexism,
the committee only nominated

Henri Becquerel and Pierre.

Marie was ignored.

Pierre responded that
if this nomination was serious

he could not accept the prize unless
Madame Curie's name was included.

The committee was forced to relent,

and all three shared
the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics.

"We have been awarded half of the
Nobel prize. We are inundated with

"letters and visits by journalists
and photographers, and yesterday

"an American wrote, asking
permission to name a racehorse
after me."

The Curies were on their way to
scientific stardom, but their health

was beginning to suffer from
the years of exposure to radiation.

Pierre was feeling especially
unwell as he left Marie

on the 19th of April 1906 for
a series of appointments in Paris.

Pierre Curie's just had his lunch.

He's in a hurry, he's got to
get to the printer's down there.

It was raining - he had an umbrella
and he crossed the road.

He slipped onto the cobbles

and he saw these two horses in front
of him and he grabbed the harness

and tried to save himself but then
he got thrown down on the ground.

And for a moment it seemed that
everything was fine.

The carriage missed him
but then, just at the last moment,

the back wheels of the carriage
swerved and they went right

over his head.

And it crushed
his skull and he died immediately.

"I put my head against the coffin.

"And in great distress,
I spoke to you.

"I told you that I loved you

"and that I had always loved you
with all my heart."

MUSIC: "Adieu Mon Coeur"
by Edith Piaf

# Adieu mon coeur

# On te jette au malheur

# Tu n'auras pas mes yeux

# Pour mourir... #

Slowly, Marie emerged from her pain.

Seven months after his death,

she took on Pierre's
professorship at the Sorbonne,

supported by her closest friends...

..one of whom, Paul Langevin,
had been Pierre's student.

He too was unhappy,
trapped in a loveless marriage,

so it was perhaps only
natural that the two became close.

So we're standing near the Sorbonne.

Somewhere in the area, Paul Langevin
rented a small apartment

and he used to meet Marie Curie
there and this is where they

conducted their affair and where
their love relationship blossomed.

They were together when Marie's name
was put forward for

a second Nobel prize, in Chemistry,
in recognition of her work

isolating radium and a second new
element, polonium.

To this day, she is the only person

to win two Nobel prizes in two
different sciences.

And so it was that she found herself
sharing the wonderful news

with Paul at the Solvay conference.

She'd made it to the top
table of physics.

But her union with Paul was doomed.

Although in an extraordinary twist,

this would not be the last
Curie-Langevin relationship.

Because two generations
later, Marie's granddaughter

married Paul's grandson.

And to this day, her grandmother's
affair remains a raw subject.

It was a big problem.

There was all
the campaigns in the newspapers.

It was not only the Polish woman,

but woman taking the husband
in a family

with four children
and so on, and so on.

And there was a publication
of letters.

When his wife disclosed
these supposed love letters,

we think they were real,
but we don't know all the details.

My feeling is that really
they were falsified.

But nobody took care of this point.

She was a widow,
so she was not married

so she was not
adulterous in any way.

The problem is, for her, this affair
showed that she was a sexual being.

And the reason why that was
so damning for her

in ways it would not have been for a
man was because it showed that

her science was not nearly as saintly
as everyone had made it to look.

Because of course,
a woman's sexuality

and her science were somehow
seen as one and the same.

I mean, you know,
when Einstein had his affairs,

no-one looked at what
he was doing in his private life

and what he was doing in his science
life as related in any way.

Whether the letters were fake or
not, the effect was devastating.

For the French tabloids,

the story of a famous female
immigrant ruining the marriage

of a prestigious Frenchman perfectly
suited their nationalistic agenda.

She was vilified, hounded

and abandoned by many of her
previous supporters.

It was a very difficult
period for all the family

and the children in particular.

Somehow, Marie had to find
the strength to carry on.

The turning point came
when the Nobel committee once again

questioned her suitability
for the prize in Chemistry.

Incredulous, Marie rediscovered the
inner steel that had got her so far.

She wrote back -

"I believe there is no connection
between my scientific work

"and the facts of private life.

"I cannot accept the idea in
principle that the appreciation of

"the value of scientific work should
be influenced by libel and slander."

A harder, prouder, more aggressive
Madame Curie emerged,

who in her address to the
Nobel prize ceremony,

firmly established her ownership
of the field of radioactivity.

"The discoveries of radium

"and polonium were made by Pierre
Curie in collaboration with me.

"The chemical work aimed at
isolating radium was carried out

"especially by me."

With this newfound determination,
she set about rebuilding her life.

And though she would never find love
again,

she would see
her reputation shift once more,

as she took on an almost
legendary status.

Marie decided to take
charge of her own destiny.

Rather than work in someone else's
lab, she would build her own.

She designed her Radium Institute
to be a state-of-the-art laboratory

built around a charming
little square

where she could indulge her love
of gardening.

Here she planted many of the trees
and roses that grow to this day.

But her peace did not last,
because on the 3rd of August 1914...

..Germany declared war on France.

Fearful of a German invasion
of Paris, many fled the capital.

Marie however stayed,

though all work on her new institute
stopped.

As the war began to bite, Marie
learned that lives were being lost

because the entire French army
had only one X-ray station.

So in a moment of organizational
brilliance,

she conceived the idea of
mobile X-ray units -

small cars adapted to
carry their own generator

and lightweight X-ray equipment.

To help the war effort,
Marie taught herself to drive,

and took the so-called Petites
Curies to wherever they were needed,

where she'd unload the equipment,
hook up the generator

and activate the X-ray machine,

with little or no protection
from the rays for herself.

But she desperately needed
more technicians,

so she brought her elder
daughter to the front.

In the 17-year-old Irene,
Marie had found a new collaborator,

a relationship that would last
until her death.

By the end of the Great War in 1918,

Marie's X-ray units had treated over
a million wounded soldiers.

And with the subsequent
treaty of Versailles,

Poland was given its independence
after 123 years of occupation.

Marie had lived to see her
mother-country free at last.

The French government never formally
recognised her efforts

during the war, but social attitudes
towards Marie did begin to soften.

She returned to the Radium
Institute, where she continued

her radioactivity research here in
her laboratory.

Marie had never taken out patents on
any of her discoveries, so money was

a constant worry and she was running
short of her precious radium.

That's why in 1920 -
perhaps sensing an opportunity -

she agreed to meet one "Missy"
Mattingly Meloney, an American

journalist who had come all the way
to Paris to interview her.

Over the course of the interview,

she comes to discover that

Madame Curie, who had discovered
radium,

did not actually have a
gram of it to run her experiments.

So Meloney decides, "Well, I'm going
to start this big radium campaign in
the United States,"

and she's the perfect person to do
this because of course she's very
well-connected.

And indeed she comes back to the
United States and within months,

she raises well over the $100,000
she needs for this gram of radium.

MUSIC: "Rhapsody in Blue"
by George Gershwin

And so, on the 11th of May 1921,

Marie arrived in New York's Hudson
Bay to collect more radium.

It was still incredibly rare

and if she was to ensure her
institute's future, she needed more.

Accompanied by her daughters,
she'd crossed the Atlantic

on the Titanic's sister ship,
the Olympic.

She was in her suite and, uh,

Marie Mattingly Meloney, Missy,

warned her that she was going
to have to meet some reporters

and that there were photographers
and she took a little while

then she finally came out
and she was interviewed

by a battery of reporters.

This is where she supposedly
said that radium could cure

all diseases,
even the very deep tumours.

Marie Curie's name was increasingly
being linked to a radical

cancer treatment that she
and Pierre had developed.

For cancers that were readily
accessible, say on the face,

tiny flecks of radium would be
carefully positioned over the
tumour.

The radiation would kill
the cancer cells.

And if the patient was lucky,

their healthy cells would in time
repair the lesion.

Marie herself had little to do
with cancer treatment.

Her focus remained
purely on radioactivity research.

But Missy was a master of spin.
She knew that selling a dedicated

scientist to the American
public would be tough.

She needs to make her look likeable.

But that also means making her
look appropriate.

She has to depict her

not as scientist at all
but as this maternal figure,

who of course didn't actually
discover radium because she was

doing science for science's sake
like men do, she was doing it because

of course she wanted to rid humanity
of cancer, like any good mother

would want to and this is really why
she discovered radium. And so this

is the publicity that Curie walks
into when she comes to New York
in 1921.

MUSIC: "Freddie Freeloader"
by Miles Davis

Marie began a series
of public engagements

that Missy had laid on
that would last for eight weeks.

"The programme seemed
very intimidating.

"It was assumed that I would not
only attend a ceremony
at the White House

"but also visit many universities
and colleges in several towns.

"Some of these institutions had
contributed to the fund.

"All desired to offer me honours."

The timing of her coming to the
United States was not a coincidence.

Women had just won suffrage
in the United States in 1920.

They're just starting to get
the right to vote in this country.

So she's thinking she's a very good
role model for American women.

Marie Curie began her US tour
here in the city of New York.

And it was immediately clear
that amongst American women,

she had become a star.

We're here in Carnegie Hall and I'm
thinking back to May 18th, 1921,

when Marie Curie was honoured.

APPLAUSE

We know that when Marie Curie
entered, there was

thunderous applause and the applause
took maybe five minutes to die down.

The event was sponsored
by American university women

and it was a celebration of Curie
but it was also a celebration
of, really,

higher education for women
in the United States.

According to newspaper accounts,
there were supposedly 3,500 women
in attendance.

The colleges decorated the hall
with their banners.

It must have been very colourful.
Certainly very exciting.

Marie was an instant hit.

And all the while
as she toured the States,

Missy worked hard to protect
the legend she was creating.

Everybody was very good about not
mentioning the scandal,

the sex scandal in Paris.
And of course, remember, this was

Meloney making very clear, "When you
cover her, do not discuss this."

Exhausted, Marie finally
arrived in Washington

for her last appointment
at the White House itself.

"It was a deeply moving
ceremony in all of its simplicity.

"It comprised a short presentation
by the French ambassador,

"a speech by Missy Meloney on behalf
of the American women,

"and then the address
of President Harding."

MUSIC: "Rhapsody in Blue"
by George Gershwin

At last, she received what she'd
come to America for.

When Harding hands her the
ceremonial box of radium, he says

"This is a gift from the American
people," and he even goes so far
as to say, you know,

"We are just in awe of you,
not only for your science but

"because you did all this, and still
were the perfect wife and mother."

Marie returned to France
with her name restored

and the future of her beloved
Institute secure.

She would return again
to America to collect more

radium for a second Radium Institute
in Warsaw she was helping
to establish.

But it would take an even greater
toll on her failing health.

Soon after she came home,
she wrote to Missy.

"My very dear friend, your letter
distressed me.

"I did not know that you had a bad
accident.

"I too had troubles, a kind
of general disease which obliged me

"to take a very strict diet,
probably to last for the future."

After years of ill health,

her family helped nurse
Marie during her final months.

Eve really comes to terms with
her mother later in life.

She's the one that really
cares for her in her final days.

And I think that there's a sort
of reconciliation, but it was

a very um...I mean, the relationship
between them was torn for some time.

It took her mother dying, I think,

and her being there to take care of
her for them to sort of reconcile.

On the 4th of July 1934,
Marie Curie died, aged 67,

with Eve by her side.

Her doctor gave the cause of death
as aplastic pernicious anaemia.

Her bone marrow had been injured by
the long accumulation of radiation.

So it seemed her child,
radium, had killed her.

She was buried in this cemetery
just outside Paris,

where she shared a grave
with Pierre.

And here they lay
together for over sixty years.

Until one spring day in 1995,

when radioprotection expert Jean-Luc
Pasquier came to examine
her remains.

HE SPEAKS FRENCH

Since the half-life of radium
is 1,600 years,

they were worried that Marie
was still radioactive,

because they were about to
move her body.

This surprised everyone,
because if the myth was correct

and radium exposure had made her
a martyr to her science,

her remains should still
exceed today's safe levels.

So it led the team to speculate that
something else had caused her
premature demise.

If X-rays killed Marie, then
she was a different kind of martyr.

Her life ended prematurely -
like so many others -

as a result of her
efforts in the Great War.

A few days later,
here in the heart of Paris,

the Curies were given a full
state funeral.

# Adieu mon coeur... #

This square and the street down
there are absolutely packed
with people,

and there's a big white carpet
coming all the way

up the street, across the square
and up the steps into the Pantheon.

# ..mes yeux

# Pour mourir... #

They'd made it into France's
national mausoleum.

# Adieu mon coeur... #

In a sense, it was a final
journey for Pierre and Marie Curie

but for Marie Curie in particular,
it was a very momentous occasion,

because she was the first woman
to be buried in the Pantheon

as a tribute
to her own individual achievements.

At last, France had made it up
to Marie Curie.

This brave, brilliant Polish
scientist, so cruelly

shamed in life, had received her
adopted country's highest honour.

# Autrefois tu respirais
le soleil d'or

# Tu marchais sur des tresors

# On etait vagabonds

# On aimait les chansons
C'a fini dans les prisons... #

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