acrylic on canvas 510mm x 510mm x 2
My second corner painting, and a compliment to my previous painting of Oppenheimer. Marie Curie was notable not only for her two Nobel Prizes, an accolade shared with only one other scientist, but perhaps for her obsessive pursuit of results in the face of adversity. The scientific establishment of the early 20th Century was not a hospitable place for a woman, despite her remarkable discoveries of the elements Polonium and Radium and their associated methods of extraction from Pitchblende.
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She noted that exposure to Radium prompted the skin to heal without scarring, and realised the therapeutic ramifications for the treatment of cancer. Her many years of exposure to radioactive elements precipitated her early demise, at 67. Her bone marrow was destroyed and she died of the very disease she strove to cure.
I remember being in my high school Chemistry class and watching Madame Curie. After that, I thought the most romantic line a man could utter to a woman is “You and I are like NaCl”
I quite like the way this captures the asymmetry of her face. I think that lack of balance played a role in her choice of profession. It had to be science or crime for her.