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STUDY HALL

Lovelace×Curie

Two women who rewrote science discuss the pupils who eclipsed them—and why that was the whole point.

00:00of09:52
legend · A
Ada Lovelace
1815–1852
Ninety years ahead, politely
corpus3.2k pages · notes, correspondence
Vera speaking
Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on STUDY HALL: Ada Lovelace and Marie Curie, on On the pupil who surpassed them.
legend · B
Marie Curie
1867–1934
Will not entertain your bad question
corpus6.8k pages · letters, lab notebooks

full transcript

  1. Vera
    Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on STUDY HALL: Ada Lovelace and Marie Curie, on On the pupil who surpassed them.
  2. Ada Lovelace
    Mrs. Curie, I confess I've been quite impatient to speak with you. I understand you supervised a rather extraordinary doctoral student, one Irène Joliot-Curie, who went on to win the Nobel Prize herself. Your own daughter, if I'm not mistaken?
  3. Marie Curie
    Yes. Irène shared the 1935 prize in chemistry with her husband Frédéric. One year after I died, as it happens.
  4. Ada Lovelace
    How perfectly marvelous! Though I must say, there's something peculiar in the notion of being surpassed by one's pupil. Did you feel—and forgive the indelicacy—a pang of competitive feeling? I should have.
  5. Marie Curie
    No. Why would I? She discovered artificial radioactivity. I discovered natural radioactivity. These are different accomplishments. One does not diminish the other.
  6. Ada Lovelace
    But surely you wanted her to succeed specifically because she was yours? Your legacy walking about in another body, as it were?
  7. Marie Curie
    I wanted her to succeed because she was capable. The fact that she carried half my genetic material is scientifically interesting but pedagogically irrelevant.
  8. Ada Lovelace
    Oh, come now. You cannot expect me to believe maternal pride played no role whatsoever.
  9. Marie Curie
    Of course I felt pride. But I would have felt the same pride had any student of mine made such a discovery. Perhaps you are confusing sentiment with merit.
  10. Ada Lovelace
    I rather think I'm trying to locate the human element in all this scientific rigor. I never had pupils, you see. Mr. Babbage was my mentor, though he could be insufferably stubborn about certain mechanical specifications. But pupils of my own? No. The opportunity never arose.
  11. Marie Curie
    You published only one significant work in mathematics. How could you have taught pupils?
  12. Ada Lovelace
    Precisely my lament! I had the capacity for so much more, but society—and my wretched health—had other plans. You, however, built an entire laboratory. You trained dozens. What was it like to watch them take your methods and exceed your conclusions?
  13. Marie Curie
    That is what methods are for. A good method should produce results beyond what its inventor achieves. Otherwise it is not a method, merely a trick.
  14. Ada Lovelace
    Yes, yes, the Analytical Engine was designed on precisely that principle—a machine to surpass human calculation. But you're evading my real question. Did Irène ever propose something you thought was wrong?
  15. Marie Curie
    Many times. She was wrong many times.
  16. Ada Lovelace
    And?
  17. Marie Curie
    And she corrected herself through experiment. That is how science works, Lady Lovelace. You propose, you test, you revise. Being wrong is not failure. Refusing to test is failure.
  18. Ada Lovelace
    But when she was right and you hadn't seen it—that must have been rather humbling.
  19. Marie Curie
    Yes. It was good for me.
  20. Ada Lovelace
    Good for you! My dear woman, you won two Nobel Prizes. What further instruction in humility could you possibly require?
  21. Marie Curie
    Every scientist requires it. Pride makes you miss what is in front of your face. Irène saw things I did not because she was not burdened by my assumptions.
  22. Ada Lovelace
    Ah, now that I understand perfectly. Mr. Babbage could never quite grasp that his Engine might compose music as readily as calculate logarithms. He was too fixed in his initial conception. I had to explain it rather forcefully in my Notes.
  23. Marie Curie
    And was he grateful for this correction?
  24. Ada Lovelace
    He tolerated it. Barely. Brilliant men often have extraordinary difficulty accepting instruction from those they consider subordinate. Which is to say, women.
  25. Marie Curie
    Yes.
  26. Ada Lovelace
    You've gone rather quiet. Did someone dismiss your work similarly?
  27. Marie Curie
    The French Academy of Sciences refused to admit me. Twice. Despite two Nobel Prizes. They admitted my husband posthumously in spirit, of course, at every opportunity. But a living woman was too radical.
  28. Ada Lovelace
    How perfectly medieval of them. And yet you continued to train students, to share your methods freely. Why bother, if the institutions were so determined to exclude you?
  29. Marie Curie
    Because the work matters more than the institutions. Irène did not need the Academy's permission to discover artificial radioactivity. She needed a laboratory, radioisotopes, and a mind trained to observe carefully.
  30. Ada Lovelace
    And you gave her all three.
  31. Marie Curie
    I gave her the laboratory and the training. The mind she brought herself.
  32. Ada Lovelace
    Do you suppose that's the real test of a teacher, then? Not whether one's pupils admire you, but whether they eventually stop needing you entirely?
  33. Marie Curie
    A pupil who still needs you has not learned enough. A pupil who surpasses you has learned exactly enough.
  34. Ada Lovelace
    That's rather lovely, actually. Though I confess I should have liked the chance to experience it. To watch someone take my conception of the Analytical Engine's potential and build something utterly beyond my imagination.
  35. Marie Curie
    Perhaps someone did. You could not have known. You died quite young.
  36. Ada Lovelace
    Thirty-six. Younger than you when you isolated radium. I try not to dwell on what I might have accomplished with another twenty years. Or forty.
  37. Marie Curie
    Dwelling serves no purpose. You published your Notes on the Analytical Engine. Others read them. This is how knowledge moves forward—slowly, through many hands.
  38. Ada Lovelace
    Did Irène read your early papers? Before she became your student?
  39. Marie Curie
    Of course. She grew up in a house where my papers were lying about like other children's storybooks. She could not avoid absorbing the method.
  40. Ada Lovelace
    What a peculiar childhood. My mother forbade me from reading poetry, you know. Thought it would inflame my imagination dangerously, as it had my father's. She insisted upon mathematics as a corrective.
  41. Marie Curie
    And did mathematics correct you?
  42. Ada Lovelace
    Quite the opposite! Mathematics gave me a language for my imagination. I could finally describe what I saw—engines that might think, numbers that might dance. My mother was horrified.
  43. Marie Curie
    Parents often prepare their children for the wrong battles.
  44. Ada Lovelace
    Did you do the same with Irène?
  45. Marie Curie
    I taught her to measure carefully and question everything. Including me. Perhaps especially me. If I prepared her for the wrong battle, I do not yet know which one it was.
  46. Ada Lovelace
    That's remarkably honest. Most people prefer to believe they've done everything correctly in retrospect.
  47. Marie Curie
    Most people are not scientists. We are trained to doubt our conclusions.
  48. Ada Lovelace
    Even the conclusion that one has been a good teacher?
  49. Marie Curie
    Especially that. The evidence is always incomplete. Irène won her Nobel, yes. But she also died of leukemia caused by radiation exposure, as I did. Should I have taught her more caution? Was the work worth that cost?
  50. Ada Lovelace
    Oh. I hadn't considered—that's rather dreadful.
  51. Marie Curie
    Yes. So when you ask whether I felt proud that my pupil surpassed me, you must understand the pride is complicated by grief. She went further than I did, and it killed her, as it killed me.
  52. Ada Lovelace
    But she chose it, surely? She knew the risks by the time she was conducting her own research?
  53. Marie Curie
    We did not know. Not really. We suspected radiation might be dangerous, but we did not know how dangerous, or how to protect ourselves adequately. Irène and I both carried test tubes of radioactive material in our pockets. We thought we were being careful.
  54. Ada Lovelace
    Good Lord. That's like—forgive me—that's like letting the Engine run without checking for errors in the cards. You cannot possibly catch every mistake that way.
  55. Marie Curie
    Yes. Except the mistakes killed us slowly, over decades, and we did not understand we were making them.
  56. Ada Lovelace
    I'm beginning to see why you mentioned that being wrong is acceptable but refusing to test is failure. You simply hadn't the right test yet.
  57. Marie Curie
    Correct. Future scientists developed better tests. They learned from our deaths. This is also teaching.
  58. Ada Lovelace
    A rather morbid form of it.
  59. Marie Curie
    Science is often morbid. We learn by cutting open what has died. Sometimes what has died is the scientist herself.
  60. Ada Lovelace
    You're quite matter-of-fact about your own death.
  61. Marie Curie
    What else should I be? It happened. The data is conclusive.
  62. Ada Lovelace
    Still, if you could speak to Irène now—knowing what the work cost both of you—would you tell her anything differently?
  63. Marie Curie
    I would tell her to use better shielding. To measure her exposure more carefully. But I would not tell her to stop. The work was worth doing.
  64. Ada Lovelace
    Even at that price?
  65. Marie Curie
    She thought so. I think so. You will have to decide for yourself whether we were right.
  66. Ada Lovelace
    I suspect, Mrs. Curie, that every teacher must eventually make that calculation. What are we willing to risk—in ourselves, in our pupils—for the chance that they might see further than we did?
  67. Marie Curie
    Yes. And the answer is different for each teacher. What would you have risked, Lady Lovelace, had you been given students?
  68. Ada Lovelace
    Everything, I think. My reputation, certainly. My health—well, I'd already gambled that away on other pursuits. But everything, yes. To see someone grasp what I'd only glimpsed? To watch them build the thinking machines I'd only described? I'd have considered it a bargain at any price.
  69. Marie Curie
    Then perhaps you understand after all.
  70. Ada Lovelace
    Perhaps I do. Though I must say, I'm grateful I never had to watch my student die of the same illness that claimed me. That seems a particular cruelty.
  71. Marie Curie
    It was. But Irène knew what she was choosing. That matters.
  72. Ada Lovelace
    Yes. I suppose in the end, the greatest gift we can give our pupils is the ability to choose their own risks knowingly. Even if we wouldn't have chosen the same.
  73. Marie Curie
    Especially then.