Navigating Literary License and Adaptations in Biographical Writing

In her new biography, The Elements of Marie Curie, Dava Sobel explores not just on Curie’s legendary genius, but the 45 women who worked in her lab—from Marguerite Perey, who discovered the element francium, to Curie’s elder daughter, Irène, winner of the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Sobel chronicles Curie’s remarkable life of discovery alongside the lives of the women who followed down the trail she blazed. Sobel discusses her new book with science journalist Angela Saini.