Beyond Curie

Two women have won Nobel Prizes in physics: Marie Curie in 1903 and Maria Mayer in 1963. During the sixty years between those two awards, several women did work in physics of similar caliber, among them Cecilia Payne, Lise Meitner, Chien-Shiung Wu, and Mayer herself. Beyond Curie: Four Women in Physics and Their Remarkable Discoveries, 1903 to 1963 focuses on Payne, Meitner, Wu, and Mayer, providing for each a biography focussing on how they came to be in a position to make their key discoveries, and on the reception that met those discoveries. Along the way, issues such as the Nobel process, questions of priority, and the need for childcare in two-professor families are discussed. Each biography also includes an explanation of the science underlying each physicist’s key discovery.