Mme. Marie Curie, A Martyr To Science - An Outstanding Role Model

August 10, 2013

I was reminded that Mme Marie Curie would be a wonderful addition to my continuing series on role models by this post on brainpickings.org. Someday, Maria Popova, the brain behind this wonderfully curated website might herself feature in this blog.

I cannot do better than what Maria Popova highlights from the New York Times obituary on July 5, 1934.

Few persons contributed more to the general welfare of mankind and to the advancement of science than the modest, self-effacing woman whom the world knew as Mme. Curie. Her epoch-making discoveries of polonium and radium, the subsequent honors that were bestowed upon her — she was the only person to receive two Nobel prizes — and the fortunes that could have been hers had she wanted them did not change her mode of life. She remained a worker in the cause of science, preferring her laboratory to a great social place in the sun. The road which she and her husband had chosen she followed throughout her life, disdaining all pomp. And thus she not only conquered great secrets of science but the hearts of the people the world over.

Mme Marie Curie broke through barriers to women in science long before anyone raised it as an issue. In this, her life becomes her message.

Reading the obituary, it reminds me that the virtue of humility is at the top of the list of qualities that Śrī Kṛṣṇa mentions in Chapter 13.

अमानित्वमदम्भित्वमहिंसा क्षान्तिरार्जवम् ||१३-८||
amaanitvamadambhitvamahi.nsaa kShaantiraarjavam.h ..13-8..

Humility, unpretentiousness, non-injury, forgiveness, uprightness....

Hari Om and Namaskaar until the next post

Comments

Geeta in Literature - IF by Rudyard Kipling

September 12, 2011 I came across a nice YouTube video that is an animation of Rudyard Kipling reading his famous poem IF . The full text sourced from wikisource is below: If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same: If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools; If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And los...

Geeta Dhyānaṁ 2 - Vyāsā's Vast Intellect

January 7, 2013 Previously on Geeta Jayanti, I had posted on the eternal debt of gratitude to Mother Geeta that is the basis of Geeta Dhyānaṁ. I love Param Pujya Gurudev 's commentary on the Geeta Dhyānaṁ. Pujya Gurudev's commentary is after the introduction to the Bhagavad Geeta in the commentary on Chapters 1 & 2 published by the the Chinmaya Mission. I personally believe it should be a book by itself. After invoking Mother Geeta, we now pay tribute to the wise Vyāsa Rishi - the Guru whose Jayanti marks Guru Pūrnima every year. Pujya Gurudev starts His tribute to Veda Vyāsā in his commentary on the 1st verse of the Dhyānaṁ. Vyāsa, the father of the Vedās, who, first collected, edited and published the Veda texts and who thereafter, gave us the dialectics of Vedānta in his Brahma Sūtra, himself a great man of realization, was indeed well fitted for the job. The ancient seer had both the mastery of the theoretical science of religion - Hinduism and also the practical expe...

Philip Glass and "Satyagraha", the Opera

May 27, 2012 The famous music composer Philip Glass composed an Opera called Satyagraha on Mahatma Gandhi's movement against the South African apartheid laws (strictly speaking the system wasn't officially called apartheid until ater the Second World War). I was intrigued by this because the Wikipedia entry for this opera says that the opera is sung in Sanskrit. Yet the link to the libretto (the latin name for the lyrics of an opera) on the Metropolitan's website, shows the text in English. Act 1 of opera is titled "The Kuru Field of Justice" begins with Gandhiji narrating, "I see them here assembled, ready to fight, seeking to please the King’s sinful son by waging war.” And thus addressed by Arjuna, Krishna brought that splendid chariot to a halt between the two armies. In front of Bhisma and Drona and all the rulers of the world, he said, “Behold Arjuna, these kinsmen assembled here.” And the Prince marked on each hand relatives and friends in both a...

Everyday Geeta

Search This Blog