“Quinn (A Mind of Her Own: The Life of Karen Horney) presents here a carefully researched, well-rounded study of Curie (1867-1934), the physicist credited with isolating radium. Born Marie Sklodowska in Poland, she left her home to study in Paris, where she met and married physics professor Pierre Curie. Agreeing with earlier accounts, Quinn depicts their marriage as a devoted partnership. The Curies together made an investigation of radioactivity, for which they shared the 1903 Nobel Prize for physics. But Quinn breaks ground in her detailed description, drawn from newly available papers, of Marie's life after Pierre's accidental death in 1906. At first so grief-stricken she neglected her two daughters, Irene and Eva, Marie later had a love affair with French scientist Paul Langevin. Because Langevin was married, Marie was vilified by the French press and was almost denied the 1911 Nobel Prize for chemistry.”
—Publisher's Weekly

“Marie Curie ìsucceeds beautifully. Quinn has written a worthy successor to her previous work, the award-winning biography of..Karen Horney.”
—The Washington Post Book Review

“lucid and timely”
—The New York Times Book Review

“absorbing biography…Quinn knows exactly how much to tell”
—The New Yorker Recommended Reading

“The first biography…to show that Marie Curie was a passionate and complex person, and not a monument.” —Jeremy Bernstein

Chosen by Library Journal as one of the best science books of 1995.
Finalist in the LA Times book awards, biography category.

Finalist for the Fawcett Prize in England.

Received the “Grand Prix des lectrices de Elle” (grand prize of the readers of the French Elle Magazine) in 1997.

Translated into eight languages.