Einstein×Curie

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   You're with Reborn Radio. Coming up: Albert Einstein sits down with Marie Curie for STUDY HALL. The subject — On a friendship that ended badly, and which side they were really on.
2. 00:11
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Marie, I have thought about this many times. Not about the science, you understand, but about what happened after Brussels. The conference in 1911.
3. 00:18
   Marie Curieshare moment

   You mean the Solvay Conference. Yes. What about it?
4. 00:22
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Well, after that—the letters. The newspapers. I remember reading about you in Switzerland, and thinking, this is not physics anymore, this is something else.
5. 00:30
   Marie Curieshare moment

   It was never just physics, Albert. Not for me. I was a woman in their world. Every achievement came with a price they did not charge the men.
6. 00:39
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   But Paul Langevin—he was your friend. Your colleague. And then...
7. 00:42
   Marie Curieshare moment

   And then the newspapers said I was a home-wrecker. A foreign temptress. They printed stolen letters—stolen from my own belongings, you understand—as if I were a criminal. Do you know what that feels like?
8. 00:55
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   I know something about newspapers and what they invent. But you and Langevin, you were close. This is not an invention, yes?
9. 01:01
   Marie Curieshare moment

   We were colleagues. He was brilliant. His wife was—she was violent, Albert. She threatened him. He needed someone who understood the work, who understood what it means to think about these problems all the hours of the day.
10. 01:15
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But the friendship became... more?
11. 01:17
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Yes. It became more. I am not ashamed of this. But I am a widow, and Pierre had been gone five years, and still they said I was destroying a marriage. As if his marriage was not already destroyed.
12. 01:29
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I wrote to you then. I hope you remember. I said—I think I said—that you should not read the trash they print. That you should work.
13. 01:36
    Marie Curieshare moment

    You told me I belonged to science, not to them. Yes, I remember.
14. 01:39
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    And you went to Stockholm anyway. For the second Nobel. Even when they said you should not come.
15. 01:44
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Svante Arrhenius himself wrote and told me to stay away. The chairman of the Nobel Committee. He said the prize was for my earlier work, before the scandal, and I should not embarrass them by appearing. Can you imagine?
16. 01:57
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    What did you say to him?
17. 01:59
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I told him that the prize was for the discovery of radium and polonium, which I made regardless of my private life. That science does not concern itself with gossip. And I went.
18. 02:09
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Good. This was the right answer. But Marie—I must ask—did the friendship survive? With Langevin?
19. 02:14
    Marie Curieshare moment

    No. It did not survive. We tried. For some time we tried to continue. But the weight of it—the attention, the judgment—it killed what was between us.
20. 02:25
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    And his wife, she took him back?
21. 02:27
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Eventually, yes. After a very public legal fight. She had hired someone to steal my letters from his apartment. They were published in the newspapers. My words, my private thoughts, for everyone to read and mock.
22. 02:40
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I remember some of this. There was even talk of a duel, yes? Someone wanted to challenge him?
23. 02:45
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Gustave Téry. A journalist who printed the worst lies. Paul did nearly fight him. It was absurd. Medieval. As if physics is settled with pistols.
24. 02:56
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But you—forgive me—you were angry with Paul in the end? Or with the world that made it impossible?
25. 03:01
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Both. I was angry with both. He should have been stronger. He should have left her properly or stayed properly. Instead he was—what is the word—indecisive. Caught between.
26. 03:12
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Indecision, yes, I know this problem. In marriage especially.
27. 03:15
    Marie Curieshare moment

    You stayed with Mileva for years when you were unhappy. I know this about you, Albert. So perhaps you understand Paul better than I do.
28. 03:23
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Perhaps. But I also know that when you are unhappy at home, the work suffers. Everything suffers. Paul—did his work suffer?
29. 03:30
    Marie Curieshare moment

    For a time. But he recovered. He was always brilliant. The Langevin equation, his work on paramagnetism—this came later. He kept working.
30. 03:39
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    And you? The scandal, the stress—you became very ill, I think?
31. 03:42
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I collapsed. They took me to a hospital under a false name so the reporters would not find me. My kidneys were failing. I was... I was not sure I would live.
32. 03:53
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    And still you went to Stockholm.
33. 03:54
    Marie Curieshare moment

    And still I went to Stockholm. Because if I did not, they would say the work was not mine. They would say Pierre did it, or Paul did it, or any man they could name. I had to stand there and claim it.
34. 04:06
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    This I understand. Completely. The need to say: this is mine, I made this.
35. 04:11
    Marie Curieshare moment

    But you asked me which side I was on. His or mine. And I think this is the wrong question, Albert.
36. 04:16
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Why wrong?
37. 04:17
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Because there were not two sides. There was the world, which wanted to punish me for being a foreign woman who dared to love someone. And there was Paul, who could not decide if he wanted to be punished with me or forgiven without me. And there was me, who wanted only to work and to be left alone.
38. 04:34
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    So you were on your own side.
39. 04:36
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Yes. I learned that I must be. No one else would defend the work the way it needed to be defended.
40. 04:42
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But you and Paul—later, did you speak again? Collaborate?
41. 04:45
    Marie Curieshare moment

    We were civil. Professional. He came to my laboratory sometimes. We discussed experiments. But the friendship—the real friendship, the one where you show each other your half-formed ideas and your mistakes—that was gone.
42. 04:58
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    This is the saddest part, I think. Not the scandal, but losing the person who understands the questions you are asking.
43. 05:04
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Yes. I had that with Pierre. I thought perhaps I could have it again. But the world does not allow it twice.
44. 05:11
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Did you ever regret it? The relationship?
45. 05:13
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I regret that it became public. I regret that my daughters had to read those things about their mother in the newspapers. But the feeling itself? No. I do not regret having felt something. Even if it ended badly.
46. 05:27
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You know, I think about this also with Mileva. We had something once—we studied together, we talked about ideas. And then it became... heavy. Full of resentment and lawyers. But the beginning, I do not regret the beginning.
47. 05:40
    Marie Curieshare moment

    The beginning is always easier. Before you know what the cost will be.
48. 05:44
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But Marie—did you ever think, maybe I should have been more careful? Maybe I should have hidden it better?
49. 05:49
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Of course I thought that. Every day for months I thought that. But then I decided: no. If I must hide my humanity to do science, then science is not worth doing. So I stopped hiding.
50. 06:01
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    And they nearly destroyed you for it.
51. 06:03
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Nearly. But not quite. I am still here. The radium is still radioactive. The measurements do not change because a journalist prints lies about me.
52. 06:13
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    This is true. The measurements remain. But you remained also. This is perhaps more difficult.
53. 06:18
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Much more difficult. The radium did not require courage. Only patience. But to walk into that auditorium in Stockholm, to give my lecture knowing what they were all thinking—that required something else.
54. 06:35
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    And Paul? Did he ever apologize?
55. 06:37
    Marie Curieshare moment

    For what? For loving me? For being weak? For not leaving his wife? He was sorry, I think. But sorry is not the same as apologizing. Sorry is just a feeling. An apology is a decision.
56. 06:49
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    And he never decided.
57. 06:50
    Marie Curieshare moment

    No. He stayed in the middle. Which meant I had to choose: stay in the middle with him, or move forward alone. I moved forward.
58. 06:58
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    This is what I admire about you, Marie. You did not wait for permission to continue.
59. 07:02
    Marie Curieshare moment

    There was no one to give permission. So I gave it to myself. And I built a laboratory, and I trained students, and I made more measurements. Because that is what you do when a friendship ends badly: you return to the work.
60. 07:15
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Yes. You return to the work. This is the only thing that does not betray you.
61. 07:19
    Marie Curieshare moment

    The only thing. Everything else can be taken away. But what you discover—that remains true, even after you are gone. Even after everyone who gossiped about you is forgotten.
62. 07:31
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I think Paul knew that. I think he knew you were right.
63. 07:34
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Perhaps. But knowing is not the same as doing. And in the end, we are judged by what we do, not by what we know.