Mme. Slodovska
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful woman formally known as Madame Slodovska, but affectionately known as “Mamma” by a young little girl called Manya. Condemned by illness to restricted contact with her own children and peers, Mme. Slodovska still managed to pour her love into her children’s lives. Her children would recall her touch with affection, though she could not hold them, and the woman’s disease remained something of a mystery to them. Such a frail and gracile creature had set out to raise her little brood in a broken Polish World. Set on a stage where Polish history would be robbed of itself, by Russia, and which would make room for them to become the hind-end of much ridicule over their ethnicity for years to come, this beautiful, fragile woman, alongside an old professor would gently push her children forward, putting forth such an effort in her sick state of being as to cobble her own children’s shoes for them. But time and helplessness can be enemies to the ill and young Manya would suffer the loss of her mother to tuberculosis. But for having been the product of such a woman, Manya would become, herself, one of the greatest women of her time.
The youth would struggle for her education, first working as a governess to help a sister through college and then, herself, working hard and living poorly, in order to get her own education. Her life is an epic story of heroism and strength. A battle for knowledge and understanding alongside a struggle for those who suffer. She lived one moment to educate future scientists and the next to attend to her own children and then the next to create (and later to drive) the first mobile x-ray so that she could help take care of soldiers in the field of battle.
Hers is a remarkable, meandering branch of life that changed how people would live their lives within only a single generation.
That’s what the greatest scientists do. Upon writing this, I did not intend to dote upon the memory of the woman that most know as Marie Curie. Instead, I wanted to pay homage to those who use knowledge better live our lives. That’s what Marie Curie did.
There are those, in the World, who live to educate and to give us greater knowledge so that we may enjoy better life circumstances; those who have the foresight to see how they can better the lives of their fellow human. The many legacies left by Curie and her peers, other great scientists, is not only the knowledge which they bestow on us, but it is also a remarkable behavior. Were it not for some of them seeing more than just the next discovery to become more notorious, but to also see a way to improve our lives, we might have lived in a very different place.
Marie Curie
Marie Curie saw things she did as ways to improve upon the World. Her discovery of how to isolate radium was not patented so that it could be more available to the medical community to save lives. Her inventions were regarded by her as things that needed done, not things to gain from. As her friend, Einstein, once said of her, she was “… of all celebrated beings, the only one whom fame has not corrupted.” While I may disagree that there is no other uncorrupted celebrated being, I agree with the admiration of those persons who do not allow their positions to harm their goal of improving humanity.
It is within this bouquet of sentiment that I find myself happy to work with those people who surround me who work toward improving lives without concern over fame or money or gain. I am in awe of their loyalty to science and critical thinking so that they may help end suffering and aid the lives of those who may encounter the products of their efforts. These people are often better people than I and I am honored to be seen, virtually, as one of them. This is my grateful praise for my peers in the skeptical and scientific community. Thank you, so much, for your hard work. While we may not reach the level of humanity that existed within Mme. Curie, it is a pleasure to see so many strive to reach it.
Source: Curie, Eve. Madame Curie, 1937, NY.
Sophie, this was not only informative and thoughtful, it was beautiful. A mix of emotion and science that most skeptic writers would do good to study.
Thank you for writing something I so enjoyed reading. Sorry to just gush, but I loved this article.
Thank you. I had a beautiful subject to write about, so it came out just as it was.