Marie Curie - Her life in diaries and letters

Topic: Marie Curie - Her life in letters and diaries

Speaker: Dr. Christina Seidel, author, chemist, Halle

Time: Friday, 25.10.2024, 15:00 h

Place: TU Ilmenau, Faradaybau, Weimarer Straße 32

Admission: 5 Euro

At the beginning of the 20th century, Polish scientist Marie Curie and her husband Pierre succeeded in eliminating one gram of radium from three tons of pitchstone and achieving world fame. Born in Warsaw in 1867, she was able to read at the age of four and passed her school-leaving exams with flying colors. But even though she was unable to study as a woman in Russian-occupied Poland, Marie Curie financed her sister’s medical studies in Paris by working as a governess. When she settled there as a doctor after her studies, she took Marie in. After studying physics and chemistry at the prestigious Sorbonne University, Marie Curie continued her hardship-filled path and ultimately brought her fame and honor, even if she never set great store by it.

In her lecture at the TU Ilmenau Citizens’ Campus , Dr. Christina Seidelherself a doctor of chemistry, who sees herself as a kindred spirit of Marie Curie, shows the human side of the revered scientist. With her book "And for me it’s my whole life that’s at stake..." Christina Seidel Christina Seidel sets out to write a different kind of biography: a fictional diary that portrays Marie Curie’s straightforwardness as well as the blows of fate in her private life. The result is a sensitive book that impressively shows what a role model still means today when a person grows by doing their work in a human way.

Ursula Nirsberger

TU Ilmenau Bürgercampus
+ 49 3677 69 4794
buergercampus@tu-ilmenau.de