A short life of the author
Eve Denise Curie Labouisse (6 December 1904 – 22 October 2007) was a French-American author, journalist, concert pianist, war correspondent, and diplomat whose biography of her mother — Madame Curie (1937) — became one of the most celebrated and widely read biographies of the twentieth century. She was the younger daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie; unlike her elder sister Irène Joliot-Curie, who followed her parents into physics and won her own Nobel Prize, Eve pursued the arts and public life. She lived to the age of 102, making her one of the longest-lived members of any Nobel-associated family and the only member of the Curie family who did not win a Nobel Prize — though she quipped that she was “the only one in the family without a Nobel, and it was a shame.”
Life
Born in Paris, Eve Curie grew up in one of the most extraordinary scientific households in history. Her mother, Marie Curie, had won Nobel Prizes in both physics (1903, shared with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel) and chemistry (1911). Her father, Pierre Curie, died in a street accident in 1906 when Eve was an infant. Her sister Irène, twelve years her senior, became a nuclear physicist and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 with her husband Frédéric Joliot.
Eve, by contrast, showed no aptitude or inclination for science. She trained as a concert pianist and performed professionally in Paris and Belgium in the 1920s and early 1930s. She also wrote music criticism and worked as a journalist. She was noted for her elegance, intelligence, and social connections — she moved in Parisian literary and artistic circles and was frequently described as one of the most beautiful women in France.
Madame Curie (1937)
After Marie Curie’s death from aplastic anemia in 1934 — caused by decades of radiation exposure — Eve undertook to write her mother’s biography. The result, Madame Curie: A Biography (1937), was published to immediate international acclaim. Translated into more than twenty-five languages, it became a global bestseller and was adapted into a Hollywood film starring Greer Garson (1943, directed by Mervyn LeRoy).
The biography is a work of devoted filial admiration — Eve presents her mother as a saint of science, a figure of almost superhuman dedication and moral purity. The book’s power lies in its vivid reconstruction of Marie Curie’s early life: the poverty-stricken student years in Paris, the garret rooms, the cold, the obsessive laboratory work, the discovery of radium in a leaking shed, and the scandalous affair with Paul Langevin that nearly destroyed Marie’s career. Eve’s writing is confident, warm, and emotionally direct — she was writing about a mother she adored, and the love is palpable.
Later scholars have noted that Madame Curie idealises its subject — it downplays Marie’s difficult temperament, her strained relationships with colleagues, and the Langevin affair. But as a work of popular biography, it remains compelling, and it introduced Marie Curie to millions of readers who would never have encountered a scientific biography otherwise. Its influence on women’s aspirations in science, though impossible to quantify, was surely enormous.
War Correspondent
During World War II, Eve Curie became a war correspondent. She travelled to the battle fronts in Libya, Russia, Burma, and China, and published Journey Among Warriors (1943), an account of her travels that was well received as a piece of wartime journalism. She worked with the Free French forces, served briefly as co-editor of the Paris newspaper Paris-Presse, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre.
Diplomatic Career
In 1954, she married Henry Richardson Labouisse Jr., an American diplomat who later served as executive director of UNICEF. Through her marriage she became an American citizen. She accompanied Labouisse on his diplomatic postings and became involved in international humanitarian work. She lived in New York in her later years and died there in 2007, aged 102.
Critical Standing
Madame Curie is one of the enduring popular biographies of the twentieth century — still widely read, still assigned in schools, and still the introduction most English-speaking readers have to Marie Curie’s life. Eve Curie’s other work is minor but her single major book is a lasting achievement.
Collecting Curie
Madame Curie (1937, Doubleday, Doran & Co., translated by Vincent Sheean) in first American edition with dust jacket brings $100–$300. The French first edition — Madame Curie (1937, Gallimard) — brings $150–$400. Journey Among Warriors (1943, Doubleday) brings $20–$40. Eve Curie’s autograph is uncommon but not rare; signed copies of Madame Curie bring $200–$500. Items associated with the Curie family in general are highly sought by collectors of scientific history.