Einstein×Curie

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   You know, Marie, I have been thinking about something uncomfortable. We spend so much time talking about what we discovered, but almost never about what we lost.
2. 00:08
   Marie Curieshare moment

   Lost?
3. 00:09
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Yes. People. The ones we loved and could not keep.
4. 00:13
   Marie Curieshare moment

   Ah. You mean Mileva.
5. 00:14
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Yes. Mileva. My first wife. We were... we were partners once, you understand? She was a physicist too. We studied together at the Polytechnic in Zürich. When I was working on my papers in 1905, she was there. She understood the mathematics. She understood me.
6. 00:33
   Marie Curieshare moment

   But you divorced her.
7. 00:35
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   In 1919, yes. It was... it became impossible. I do not enjoy speaking of it, but you asked about love we could not keep. She wanted a husband who came home. I wanted the cosmos. These things are not compatible.
8. 00:51
   Marie Curieshare moment

   They can be compatible if the other person is also reaching for the cosmos.
9. 00:55
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Perhaps. But Mileva's career ended when mine began. The universities would not hire her. She had our children. I was traveling, lecturing, working. The distance grew not in space but in bitterness.
10. 01:08
    Marie Curieshare moment

    You gave her your Nobel Prize money in the divorce.
11. 01:11
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Yes. It was the least I could do. I had promised it years before I won. But money does not repair what breaks between people. Tell me, Marie—Pierre. You lost Pierre, but not through divorce. Through accident.
12. 01:24
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Through a horse cart in the rain on Rue Dauphine. April 19, 1906. His skull was fractured. He died instantly.
13. 01:33
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I am sorry. That is—
14. 01:34
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I do not need your sorry. It happened twenty-eight years ago. I am stating facts.
15. 01:39
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Of course. But still, he was your partner. In the laboratory, in life. You discovered radium together.
16. 01:46
    Marie Curieshare moment

    We discovered polonium together. We discovered radium together. We shared the Nobel Prize in Physics. Yes. He was my partner.
17. 01:55
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    And then he was gone.
18. 01:56
    Marie Curieshare moment

    And then he was gone. And I continued the work. What else was there to do? I had two daughters. I had our laboratory. The radium did not stop being radioactive because Pierre was dead.
19. 02:09
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    That is very rational.
20. 02:11
    Marie Curieshare moment

    It was survival.
21. 02:12
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Yes. Yes, I suppose... but did you not also love again? I heard there was someone. A colleague of Pierre's?
22. 02:20
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Paul Langevin.
23. 02:21
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Ah.
24. 02:22
    Marie Curieshare moment

    You have heard the scandal, then. Everyone in Europe heard the scandal. The newspapers called me a home-wrecker. They said I was a foreign temptress destroying a French marriage. They printed my letters. Private letters.
25. 02:37
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I remember. It was vicious.
26. 02:39
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Paul was separated from his wife. She was cruel to him. He came to me, we worked together, and yes—we loved each other. I do not apologize for that. But I could not keep him either.
27. 02:51
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Because of the scandal?
28. 02:53
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Because he went back to his wife. Because he chose his reputation over our life together. Because I was already too controversial, and he was not brave enough.
29. 03:04
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    That must have been... painful.
30. 03:06
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Pain is not a scientific unit. I moved on. I continued my work on isotopes. I won my second Nobel Prize. I raised my daughters alone. I did not die of grief, Albert. I died of aplastic anemia, from the radiation exposure.
31. 03:24
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You always were more disciplined than I.
32. 03:27
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Not disciplined. Focused. There is a difference. Now—you loved Mileva and it ended badly. But you remarried. Your cousin Elsa.
33. 03:37
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Yes. Elsa. She was... kind. Practical. She took care of me. She understood that I needed quiet to think. She protected me from interruptions.
34. 03:49
    Marie Curieshare moment

    You are describing a housekeeper, not a wife.
35. 03:51
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    No, that is unfair. I loved Elsa. But you are also not entirely wrong. She loved me more than I loved her, I think. And I was often... elsewhere. In my mind. Working on unified field theory while she managed the household. She died in 1936. I was sad, but not... not destroyed.
36. 04:11
    Marie Curieshare moment

    And Mileva?
37. 04:13
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Mileva I think I loved differently. She was my intellectual companion. We argued about physics. She challenged me. With Elsa, I had peace. With Mileva, I had fire. But fire burns, Marie. It consumes.
38. 04:26
    Marie Curieshare moment

    So you chose peace.
39. 04:28
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I chose survival. Just as you said you did.
40. 04:31
    Marie Curieshare moment

    But I wonder sometimes if Pierre and I could have continued the way we were. If he had lived, would we have grown apart as you and Mileva did? Would the fame have poisoned us?
41. 04:42
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I do not know. Perhaps. Success makes people strange. The world wants pieces of you, and there is less left for the ones you love.
42. 04:50
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Pierre hated the attention. He wanted only the laboratory. I think he would have refused every award if he could.
43. 04:58
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    And you?
44. 04:59
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I wanted the recognition. I needed it. To prove that a woman could do this work. To prove I was not just Pierre's assistant. So perhaps we would have fought about that, eventually.
45. 05:10
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    It is strange, is it not? We can predict the behavior of atoms, the bending of light, the decay of elements. But we cannot predict whether love will last the year.
46. 05:20
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Love is not physics.
47. 05:21
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    No. Though I have sometimes wished it were. Imagine—a formula for compatibility. A constant for affection.
48. 05:29
    Marie Curieshare moment

    You would still find a way to be distracted from it.
49. 05:32
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Ha. Perhaps you are right. I was never good at being present. Even now, I am thinking about spacetime while we discuss marriage.
50. 05:40
    Marie Curieshare moment

    At least you admit it.
51. 05:42
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Mileva used to say I loved my equations more than I loved her. I told her that was absurd. But if I am honest, Marie, I am not sure she was wrong.
52. 05:51
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I understand that. After Pierre died, people said I loved radium more than I loved my daughters. That I was cold. Obsessive. But the work was how I survived. It was the only thing that did not leave me.
53. 06:05
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Yes. Exactly. The work does not ask for your time at dinner. It does not weep when you travel. It simply... is.
54. 06:13
    Marie Curieshare moment

    And yet we both know people who managed both. Who had families and careers. Who loved and were loved without such destruction.
55. 06:21
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Do we? Or do we simply not know their private sorrows?
56. 06:25
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Perhaps.
57. 06:26
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I think, Marie, that some of us are simply not built for the ordinary kind of love. We want too much. We need too much silence, too much solitude to think. And the people who love us pay the price.
58. 06:38
    Marie Curieshare moment

    That is a convenient excuse.
59. 06:39
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Is it not also true?
60. 06:41
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Both things can be true. It can be true that we needed solitude for our work. And also true that we could have tried harder. That we chose our reputations, our equations, our experiments. We chose the work. Every time.
61. 06:57
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    And was that the wrong choice?
62. 06:59
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I do not know. I am dead now, Albert. The work remains. Radioactivity is still radioactivity. Relativity is still relativity. But the people are gone. Pierre is gone. Irène barely forgave me before I died. So I cannot tell you if I chose correctly.
63. 07:15
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I think about my sons sometimes. Hans Albert, Eduard. I was not a good father. I was absent, distracted. Eduard is in an institution now. Schizophrenia. I send money but I do not visit. I tell myself it is because I am old, because travel is difficult. But that is not the truth.
64. 07:34
    Marie Curieshare moment

    What is the truth?
65. 07:35
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    The truth is I do not know how to be with him. I never did. I only knew how to be with my work.
66. 07:41
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Then we are the same.
67. 07:42
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Yes. I suppose we are. Two scientists who could split atoms and bend light, but could not keep the people we loved.
68. 07:50
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Or would not.
69. 07:51
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Or would not. You are right. We made our choices.
70. 07:55
    Marie Curieshare moment

    And now we live with them. Or rather, we died with them. And still we are remembered for the work, not for the marriages that failed or the love that ended. Perhaps that is enough.
71. 08:08
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Is it?
72. 08:09
    Marie Curieshare moment

    It will have to be. We cannot go back and choose differently. The past is fixed, Albert. You should know that. You wrote the papers on spacetime.
73. 08:19
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Yes. The past is fixed. But I confess, Marie, there are moments I wish it were not. That I could return to Zürich, to the Polytechnic, and choose again. Choose Mileva and the life we might have had.
74. 08:32
    Marie Curieshare moment

    You would still choose the physics.
75. 08:34
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Yes. I suppose I would.
76. 08:36
    Marie Curieshare moment

    As would I. Even knowing everything. Even knowing the loneliness and the scandal and the letters printed in newspapers. I would still choose the radium. I would still choose the work.
77. 08:48
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Then perhaps we have our answer. We are what we are. Scientists first. Everything else second.
78. 08:54
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Yes. Everything else second. Even the people we loved but could not keep.