Dec. 6: Ève Curie

(Yes, I did the accent. I'm pretentious)

Ève Curie (b. 1904, d. Oct 22 2007)

Ève Curie may have been the only person in her family to not win a Nobel Prize, but that's no reason to dismiss her. The youngest daughter of Marie Curie, she was surrounded by brilliant scientists from an early age and chose to go off and be brilliant in an entirely different way. She became a pianist, a journalist, a humanitarian, and a political activist.

Ève, like her chemist sister, graduated from the Collège Sévigné with degrees in science and philosophy. However, she chose instead to pursue art. She had been a talented pianist as a child and had improved during her years at the Collège. The year that she graduated, 1925, was also the year that she gave her first performance in Paris as a concert pianist.

During World War II, piano had to take a backseat. When the Nazis invaded France, she fled to England and there joined the Free French Forces (or, as I and the French like to call them, les Forces Françaises Libres. Have I mentioned that I'm a francophile?)

Her participation was more than just talk. She visited fronts in Africa, Asia, and Russia, gathering interviews with everyone from common soldiers to Winston Churchill. She was already famous for writing a popular biography of her mother entitled Madame Curie, so she was able to promote the Free French cause to Americans and increase pro-war sentiment there.  A compilation of her experiences on the fronts was published in 1943 as Journey Among Warriors.

After the war she still worked in politics, spending her time alternately editing a newspaper and being in charge of women's affairs under Charles de Gaulle. 

About a decade later, she married the American ambassador to Greece, Henry Richardson Labouisse and shortly afterward became an American citizen. Later on, when Labouisse was appointed the director of UNICEF (I don't have to explain this one to you, right? You all know what UNICEF is), she became known as its "First Lady". This meant that she ended up visiting hundreds of countries and that her husband too received a Nobel Prize. Ève would joke that she was a disappointment because she didn't have one, but nobody would dream of diminishing her accomplishments. Even after her husband's death she continued to work for UNICEF and otherwise be an active humanitarian. 

Obviously I love Marie Curie. I love that a woman was able to break into the world of science and make undeniable contributions. But I also love that a girl surrounded by science from the beginning could decide to forge her own path and become a concert pianist. It's also a great use of fame to help those without a voice, as she did with occupied France and later, Third World countries. I generally just like Ève Curie.

Honorable mention: Elizabeth Yates (b. 1905, d. 2001), journalist and author of the Newbery-award winning Mountain Born.