The Scandal That Almost Destroyed Marie Curie's Career
Marie Curie’s husband, Pierre, died in April of 1906. It was during this tragic time that she resolved to distinguish herself. Not as one-half of a remarkable husband-and-wife team — her husband help shape physics as we know it today (per Biography) — but as a brilliant and pioneering scientist in her own right. There’s no denying that she accomplished just that, nor that she attracted a great deal of controversy along the way.
The American Institute of Physics explains that five years after her husband’s death, a scandal arose involving her and one Paul Langevin. He was a fellow scientist who had reportedly relocated to the French capital alone, his relationship with his wife seeming to be damaged beyond repair. Curie and Langevin developed a working relationship and attended a Belgian scientific conference in 1911 with other big names in their field — Albert Einstein among them.
It was believed that the pair had become much closer beyond a professional level. In “Marie Curie: A Life,” Susan Quinn writes, “by mid-July of 1910, all the evidence suggests, Marie and Paul had become lovers. On July 15, they rented an apartment together near the Sorbonne.”
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