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

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