Marie Curie’s husband, Pierre, died in April of 1906. It was during this tragic time that she resolved to distinguish herself. Not as one-half of a remarkable husband-and-wife team — her husband help shape physics as we know it today (per Biography) — but as a brilliant and pioneering scientist in her own right. There’s no denying that she accomplished just that, nor that she attracted a great deal of controversy along the way.
The American Institute of Physics explains that five years after her husband’s death, a scandal arose involving her and one Paul Langevin. He was a fellow scientist who had reportedly relocated to the French capital alone, his relationship with his wife seeming to be damaged beyond repair. Curie and Langevin developed a working relationship and attended a Belgian scientific conference in 1911 with other big names in their field — Albert Einstein among them.
It was believed that the pair had become much closer beyond a professional level. In “Marie Curie: A Life,” Susan Quinn writes, “by mid-July of 1910, all the evidence suggests, Marie and Paul had become lovers. On July 15, they rented an apartment together near the Sorbonne.”
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