Biografies of remarkable women

Marie Curie

Marie Skłodowska Curie’s revolutionary research laid the groundwork for our understanding of physics and chemistry, blazing trails in oncology, technology, medicine, and nuclear physics, to name a few. But what did she actually do? Shohini Ghose expounds on some of Marie Skłodowska Curie’s most revolutionary discoveries.

Dr. Marie Curie transformed science and society with her discoveries. Her scientific partnership with Pierre Curie and the story of their heroic efforts that led to the discovery of polonium and radium are legendary. Despite her scientific contributions and winning her first Nobel prize in 1903, as a woman and an immigrant, she was not elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1911. She also faced vicious and xenophobic attacks from the press for an alleged affair with the scientist Paul Langevin. That year she won her second Nobel prize, but she never again applied for membership in the Academy. 

When war broke out in 1914, Dr. Curie and her daughter Irène helped to equip vans with X-ray technology for medical use, and she herself drove one of the vans, which soldiers called ‘petite Curies’. After the war, she worked for the rest of her career at her Radium Institute, which became a world-leading centre under her leadership. She visited the US twice and in 1921 she received a gift 1 gram of radium, worth a small fortune, from US President Warren Harding on behalf of the women of America. Watch a video of the event here. Dr. Curie’s studies of radioactivity laid the foundations for modern cancer treatment.

The Curie family was truly distinguished. Not only were Pierre and Marie Curie Nobel laureates, but their daughter Irène and son-in-law Frédéric Joliot also shared a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1935 for their synthesis of new radioactive elements. Their younger daughter Eve wrote a bestselling book about her mother’s extraordinary life. A movie based on the book was released in 1943, but for a slice of real history, watch Dr. Curie at work in her lab here.

Simone de Beauvoir

At the age of 21, Simone de Beauvoir became the youngest person to take the philosophy exams at France’s most esteemed university. But as soon as she mastered the rules of philosophy, she wanted to break them. Her desire to explore the physical world to its fullest would shape her life, and eventually, inspire radical new philosophies. Iseult Gillespie explores the life of the revolutionary thinker.

For Simone De Beauvoir, philosophy was a way of understanding our place in the world and determining our direction. As a pioneering existential philosopher, she dedicated her life to mining human experience for meaning and action; making some radical arguments about what needed to change along the way. For a crash course in existentialism, read 10 Reasons to be an Existentialist.

A core belief of existentialism is the idea that “existence proceeds essence”, in the words of De Beauvoir’s intellectual and romantic life partner Jean-Paul Sartre. This means that humans do not possess our traits “naturally,” but adapt to the social and cultural world we’re born into.

De Beauvoir applies this idea to gender in The Second Sex, which she summarizes in the trailblazing statement: “one is not born, but rather becomes, woman.” Here she makes a crucial distinction that revolutionized the way we think about bodies and behavior: gender is socially and culturally constructed. To learn more about why you should read The Second Sex, visit this page; then take a look at this visual essay about De Beauvoir’s life and work. You can access the introduction to The Second Sex here.

De Beauvoir insisted that systems of oppression and exclusion can never be taken to be natural - rather, we must all understand ourselves as molded by society. Thus The Second Sex is not solely about the plight of women. Rather, it is De Beauvoir’s attempt to reveal the power structures that govern our perception of the world. As she states in this interview, “I’m against all forms of oppression.” You can listen to a detailed discussion of her legacy and ideas in this radio documentary.

Her argument resonated with many readers who struggled to untangle social, sexual and political hierarchies. In its first week of publication alone, the book sold 22,000 copies. While many readers admired her candor and rigorous intellectual standards, others were dismissive of her anger or scandalized by her frank discussion of women’s bodies. De Beauvoir lambasted numerous myths that many believed to be hard facts about women - that they have an inherent maternal instinct, for instance, or that they are more emotional than men. She argued that women can only escape these narrow roles by pursuing her own version of freedom, independently.

As this essay argues, the importance of pursuing concrete, livable versions of freedom is one of De Beauvoir’s biggest contributions to a philosophy that was often abstract. Visit this page for an exploration of De Beauvoir’s radical thoughts on happiness as an important form of freedom.

De Beauvoir knew that the pursuit of freedom was by no means easy: her own refusal of social norms was a life-long process. Although she had wanted to be a nun as a child, she rejected her strict Catholic upbringing and studied math, philosophy and literature at university. She led a long open relationship with Sartre, which involved editing each other’s work and collaborating on intellectual projects such as the journal Les Temps modernes. Read this article to learn more about her colorful life and social circles at university.

Despite being a prolific philosopher, memoirist, and accomplished editor, De Beauvoir became embroiled in a publishing debacle which ironically involved the sort of suppression of female thought she resisted in her work. Soon after The Second Sex was published, the wife of the New York publisher Alfred Knopf, Blanche, was traveling through France. Initially under the impression that the book everyone was talking about was a sex manual, Knopf purchased the rights and enlisted Howard M. Parshlety to translate it from French. But Parshlety was a zoologist with little knowledge of existential feminist philosophy, who dismissed De Beauvoir’s deep analysis as “verbal diarrhea.” He cut or paraphrased swathes of the original text, and De Beauvoir could do nothing to stop the translation’s release. Read more about this controversy here.

Subsequent editions has since reversed many of these errors, and De Beauvoir’s language and ideology continue to ignite curiosity and debate. Many of the ideas expressed in The Second Sex became crucial reference points in feminist theory, literature and activism. Over time, people have grappled with concepts proposed by De Beauvoir as the project of intersectional feminism continues. For an interactive overview of intersectional feminism (and consideration of De Beauvoir’s role in it), click here. As key texts of radical feminism and philosophy, the work of Simone De Beauvoir never be static - rather it’s a living archive to return to, dispute and discuss.

Frida Kahlo

In 1925, Frida Kahlo was on her way home from school in Mexico City when the bus she was riding collided with a streetcar. She suffered near-fatal injuries and her disability became a major theme in her paintings. Over the course of her life, she would establish herself as the creator and muse behind extraordinary pieces of art. Iseult Gillespie dives into the life and work of Frida Kahlo.

Born in Coyoacán in 1907, Kahlo is known for her resplendent imagery and unapologetic individualism. Animals and plants, along with her body, pain and spirituality, became signature themes of her unique visual language. She painted many eerie portraits, still lives and spiritual scenes - but it is her mesmerizing self-portraits which first caught people's attention, and continued to captivate after her death.

Such work is groundbreaking because it turned self-portraiture inward - especially at a time when women often inhabited art only as men saw them. Kahlo insisted her personal experience mattered, and boldly documented the circumstances of her body, beliefs and every day life. These are often conveyed through symbols, which can be as sensuous as they are gruesome: from giant floating flowers and undulating landscapes, to transplanted body parts, skulls and billowing clouds of demons. Click here for an online archive of her art, then listen to this radio documentary about her life and work. You can also access Kahlo’s life in her own words, through her published diary and journal sketches.

A closer look at her reality reveals the stuff of dreams brought to life. Kahlo split her time between her deep blue childhood home, La Casa Azul (which you can now visit as a museum dedicated to her life and work) and her modern studio in Mexico City, which was connected by a bridge to her husband’s quarters, the painter Diego Rivera. Today, their connected studios is also a museum, and known as an architectural wonder. At home, Kahlo was often accompanied by her numerous wild pets including deers, birds and monkeys – all of which played a role in her art.

Along with her artistic commitments, she held uncompromising political beliefs. She had a deep affinity with Mexicanidad, a movement which celebrated indigenous culture after the Revolution. Click here to view a short documentary about the relationship of political revolution to the development of Mexican art at this time.

Kahlo also expressed her nationalism in her daily life. She frequently wore traditional Tehuana dress, and dedicated herself to the study of Mexican traditions and spirituality. .She was also was a devotee of Karl Marx, who appears in several of her paintings, and a fierce member of the Mexican Communist party.

It was at a Communist gathering that she met Rivera. Their tempestuous relationship was marked by infidelity on both sides – Kahlo was openly bisexual - and the two divorced in 1939…only to remarry a year later. Rivera features prominently in Kahlo’s work, appearing in person in more realistic portraits as well in the wild forms like a giant baby, or as Kahlo’s third eye. Read extracts of her beautiful tribute to Rivera here.

Over the past few years, fans have flocked to her colorful biography, style and legacy.. The trend for Kahlo merchandise and fascination with her life has been termed “Frida-mania”, and has sometimes been criticized for simplifying her life and appropriating her unique and complex vision. This article argues for the value of looking at her identity and work in all its complexity – from her experience as a woman with disabilities, to her relationship with her country’s history and heritage and her radical political views.

In Kahlo's work, there are no simple answers or singular truths about a woman who became an icon Rather she explores a blazing desire to survive on her own terms alongside some of the rawest visual depictions of despair. By mining her reality for multiple meanings, she provided us with an extraordinary body of work - and an insight into the contents of her soul.