64 Master Minds of Modern Science 



At that time Warsaw was sorely oppressed by her 

 Russian masters, and there began one of the movements 

 for Polish independence. Marie herself was one of the 

 rebels, but the movement failed, and Marie was driven 

 from her home, and fled to Paris. She was only twenty- 

 two, she had no friends, no money, and only her brains 

 and industry to save her from starvation. She rented a 

 garret in a poor quarter, lived on bread and milk, and 

 made her slender living by giving lessons. 



After a while she obtained work at the Sorbonne. It 

 was mainly a matter of washing bottles and preparing 

 furnaces for chemical experiments, but she did the work 

 so well and gave evidence of so much knowledge that 

 presently she attracted the notice of the head of her 

 department, whose name was Gabriel Lippman, and of 

 the great Henri Poincare, who is mentioned in another 

 chapter of this book as one of Einstein's first converts. 

 These two found out who she was, wrote to her father 

 about her, and presently, to her great joy, Marie became 

 a student under the gentle and clever Pierre Curie. 



Marie was a handsome girl with beautiful fair hair and 

 eyes between blue and grey. She had and has a very 

 gentle yet firm manner and a charming voice. Pierre 

 Curie was tall and stooping, with a brilliant smile. Both 

 were poor, yet both were devoted to their work. As we 

 have said, they fell in love, and in 1895, when Pierre was 

 thirty-six and Marie twenty-eight, they were married. 

 They could not afford a servant. Pierre swept the floor, 

 Marie cooked the simple meals, but they were extremely 

 happy. They did not go out much, and often they spent 

 the evening quietly together, talking over some problem 

 of Science. 



In 1895, the year they were married, the whole world 

 was stirred by Rontgen's discovery of X-rays capable 

 of penetrating flesh and many other substances, and of 

 affecting a photographic film even through black paper. 



