Perhaps the most illustrious woman of her era, Marie Curie is well known for her Nobel Prize-winning research in physics and chemistry and for her discovery, with her husband Pierre Curie, of polonium and radium.

Less familiar is the complex character of the woman whom Einstein called "the only person fame has not corrupted." Françoise Giroud's fascinating, highly personal study presents this other side of Curie, her life. We see at what private cost the young Marie Sklodowska left Poland—where the university was closed to women—to continue her education; married and had children while establishing with the greatest difficulty her famous laboratory; and carried on her research following the tragic death of her husband. We also see the excruciating price she paid for her renown, when, for example, she was subject to merciless public scrutiny and criticism in the aftermath of her liaison with Professor Paul Langevin.

While grounding her work in historicla context, Giroud thus provides a fresh human perspeective onthe life of the renowned yet enigmatic precursor of today's atomic scientists.