by Winifred Conkling
c.2016, Algonquin Young Readers; $17.95 / $26.95 Canada; 240 pages
Every day, when adults go to work, they expect to be there for certain hours.
They expect to finish their tasks, to know what they’re doing, and they expect to get paid for their toils. These are things they count on happening but, as in the new book Radioactive! by Winifred Conkling, they probably never expect their work to lead to a cataclysmic event.
Perhaps because she was born to a dedicated pair of scientists, Irène Curie was fascinated by the things that happened in a laboratory. Her father, Pierre, and her mother, Marie, were credited for discovering natural radioactivity and boosting the understanding of atomic physics. Irène, an odd and socially-backward child, grew up wanting to be a part of their work. Indeed, she later took her place at her mother’s side, first in the lab and then on the battlefield: at just 17 years old, Irène taught doctors how to use mobile x-ray machines during World War I.
Though others never thought she’d fall in love, Irène met her future husband, Frédéric Joliot, at the Radium Institute at the University of Paris. Soon, her passion became his and the two ultimately earned a reputation as a powerful research team, and for their discovery of artificial radiation. In 1935, they shared a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Their rival, Lise Meitner, didn’t have the same opportunities.
Because she came of age at the turn of the century in Vienna, Lise had to practically beg for schooling. Once educated, she had a hard time finding work as a physicist. Even after she landed a job, she had to relinquish it to flee the Nazis at the beginning of World War II. Working secretly through letters to an old colleague stuck in Germany, Lise eventually figured out something that had the Joliot-Curies baffled.
Once Albert Einstein heard of the work the Joliot-Curies and Meitner were doing, he grasped the gravity of the situation. He understood that their discoveries in radioactivity and nuclear fission could be used to create an atomic bomb. He knew that President Franklin Roosevelt would want to know it, too, and that the U.S. didn’t have time to waste.
