Something Out of Nothing: Marie Curie and Radium - Hardcover

McClafferty, Carla Killough

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374380368 ISBN 13: 9780374380366

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2006

Synopsis

Marie Curie's story has fascinated and inspired young readers
decades. The poor Polish girl who worked eight years to be able
to afford to attend the Sorbonne in Paris became one of the
most important scientists of her day, winning not one but two
Nobel Prizes. Her life is a fascinating one, filled with hard work,
humanitarianism, and tragedy. Her work with her husband,
Pierre - the study of radioactivity and the discovery of the
elements radium and polonium - changed science forever. But
she is less well known for her selfless efforts during World War
to establish mobile X-ray units so that wounded French soldiers
could get better care faster. When she stood to profit greatly
from her scientific work, she chose not to, making her methods
and findings known and available to all of science. As a result,
this famous woman spent most of her life in need of money,
often to buy the very elements she discovered.

Marie Curie's life and work are given a fresh telling, one that
also explores the larger picture of the effects of radium in world
culture, and its exploitation and sad misuse.

About this title

About the Author

CARLA KILLOUGH MCCLAFFERTY is also the author of The
Head Bone's Connected to the Neck Bone: The Weird, Wacky, and
Wonderful X-Ray, an NSTA-CBC Outstanding Science Trade
Book for Children. She lives in North Little Rock, Arkansas.

Reviews

Grade 5-7 The author of The Head Bone's Connected to the Neck Bone: The Weird, Wacky and Wonderful X-Ray (Farrar, 2001) takes on a related topic with equal success in this profile of the driven scientist most closely associated with the discovery of radium. Born Manya Sklodowska and educated in her native Poland at a Floating University that operated in defiance of harsh Russian policies, Curie moved to Paris to continue her studies. There, both before and after the tragic death of her beloved, kindred spirit Pierre, she dedicated her life to pure research and enlisted her father-in-law to care for her children. She never took out patents, so even as she was rising to international fame, entrepreneurs worldwide began trumpeting wild claims for the healing benefits of radioactive products. McClafferty chronicles both that fad and its dismal outcome, as the effects of long-term radiation poisoning slowly became horribly apparent. Noting that Curie maintained lifelong ties with her native land and also did significant medical work in WWI, the author follows her career to its final, illness-ridden days, then ends with an apt summation of her legacy. Archival photos and substantial multimedia resource lists enhance an engrossing study of a great scientist who tried to turn away from the world and ended up changing it profoundly. John Peters, New York Public Library
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Gr. 7-10. Like Nick Healy's overview, Marie Curie (2005), this readable biography examines Curie's life and work as a groundbreaking scientist and as an independent woman. Unlike Healy's, though, McClafferty's account is more detailed and includes extensive documentation with chapter source notes. The groundbreaking science is as thrilling as the personal story, which describes Curie's struggle to get to college, her happy marriage to Pierre Curie and their work together, and her recognition as the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, a prize she won again later for her work in chemistry. In addition to the triumph, though, McClafferty shows that Curie could be harsh and indifferent to her own family. The spacious design makes the text easy to read, and occasional photos, including one of the interior of the shed where she and Pierre began their research, bring the story closer. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374380368
• ISBN 13: 9780374380366
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144