During the World War Imother and daughter shared work to save soldiers with advanced technology for medical use. They were nothing less than Marie Curie and one of her two descendants, called Irène.
The Polish scientist had incredible coincidences with her that range from display of the greatest social recognition in his field, until the election of the type of person with which they would spend their lives. And the starting point in both aspects was the science.
“They taught me that the path of progress is neither quick nor easy”Madame Curie once said. In that certainty, the impulse that motivated her to continue was the intellectual passion that her first-born daughter shared since she was little.
Irene Joliot-Curie -born in 1897- had a mother at home who ended up being one of the few people to win two Nobel Prizes (for physics in 1903 and for chemistry in 1911), which involved a particular training.
The unique school of Irène Joliot-Curie
Being a reference of modern physics, pioneer in radioactivity Maria Sklodowska Curie found surprises in his laboratories, such as having discovered the chemical elements radium and polonium at the end of the 19th century.
But that was not the only place. On your own family he marveled at an intelligence as outstanding as his own.
Through his daughter Irène he launched – together with his intellectual friends – a itinerant school called the Cooperative.
Another of his reasons for organizing this project was rejection of the educational system from that time. «Sometimes I think that it would be better to drown children than to lock them in current schools,» the scientist wrote, according to an article in the media. The Guardian published in 2003 by journalist Paul Webster.
This is how the outstanding intellectual capacity of the eldest of the two daughters of Marie and Pierre Curie was cultivated, with the teachers (the parents of the little ones) taking turns in a comprehensive teaching method based on freedom.
The upbringing with the grandfather that led to the taste for politics
The absence of their references under the home roof was as notable as their reasoning. For this reason, given the long days of accumulating scientific knowledge of their parents, Irène was left in the care of her paternal grandfather.
Already retired, the doctor raised her with walks in naturereading poetry and the interest in political issuesespecially of left.
The girl, once an adult, committed herself to the defense of peace, women’s rights and even the independence of Indochina. For his part, his anti-fascist spirit He brought her closer to the Popular Front coalition.
His ideological positioning and expertise earned him an important responsibility: he became part of the French government in 1936 as Undersecretary of State for Scientific Researchbeing thus designated by the socialist minister Léon Blum.
However, he maintained his difference with this leader on geopolitical issues, such as the intervention in the Spanish Civil War.
It was precisely this fiery international commitment that brought him problems beyond France. In 1948 she was arrested in the United Stateswhere he went to speak in support of the Spanish Republicans.
Listed as an “undesirable person” by the North American authorities and under a prevailing anti-communist climate, protests were formed supported by figures such as Albert Einstein.
In this way, the physicist – who was already over 50 years old – achieved her release. Not only did he meet his named colleague at Princeton University, but he also managed to successfully complete his lecture tour.
A break from university to participate in the war
Before the honorary public job she held in her adulthood, Curie Daughter learned first-hand the drama of those who suffer on the front lines of an armed conflict. To the 17 years He did not hesitate to accompany his mother in the mobile radiography units which was developed for treating soldiers in World War I.
Those trucks equipped with x-ray machines They were baptized as “Little Curie” in a biography written by Eve Curie, the youngest daughter of the man who changed modern science.
With the x-rays it was possible to determine where the fractures or bullets were located in the injured bodies and finally get the treatments right.
To achieve the laudable purpose, the girl who was brought into the world in Paris –there a difference with the first woman to win the famous Swedish insignia, born in Warsaw when the Poles were under Russian rule- made a strong decision: stop your university studies in At the Sorbonne to fully participate in the war conflict that began in 1914.
Once the war ended in 1918, Irène returned to the historic Parisian classrooms -walked in the past by his parents- and graduated in physics and mathematics. As an adult, she would return to work as a teacher, like Pierre Curie.
The love for science that maintained romantic relationships until the end
Later, with a thesis on the alpha rays of polonium – which was named in honor of the country of origin of its discoverer – Irène Joliot-Curie obtained a doctorate while researching at the Radium Institute. The same one in which Curie mother had a founding role and which is currently known by this famous surname.
It was right there where he found romantic love. More precisely with Frédéric Joliot, a laboratory assistant whom she decided to marry in 1926. They had two children and the Frenchman was with her until the end of her days. A couple of years after he left, he too said goodbye.
The opposite happened to Marie Curie, who lost her husband after he was run over by a carriage in 1906. Irene was a girl then, but as she grew up she replicated the passing of the hours with a man with great enthusiasm for scientific studies.
Likewise, as happened with the first great award that his mother received, Irène obtained her maximum recognition in company.
Together with her husband she obtained the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 for having discovered artificial radioactivity. Something that served in the fight against cancer and that later was fundamental for the creation of the atomic bomb in the Manhattan Project.
But such joy did not come without a prior fatality. Marie Curie had died a year earlier. at 66 on French soil.
In this consequence of living there was another similarity. The cause of death was the same as that of Irène in 1956 -although this one did it eight years younger-: a leukemia product of prolonged exposure to the energy with which they passionately surrounded themselves.
