MARIA SKLODOWSKA-CURIE, a Heroine of the Commons

As Toronto prepares for the Creative Commons global summit to take place in the city from April 13-15, 2018 I’m thinking about  a pioneer of the Open Science movement, double Nobel Prize winner Marie Sklodowska-Curie. After a lifetime of dangerous and back-breaking labour to exact radium from Pitchblende Curie refused to patent her discovery.  For the Curies, Marie and her family, who followed her footsteps in research for the common good, radium, as a natural element, was a part of the earth’s natural commons and so should not be the possession of any individual. Sadly, big business expropriated Marie’s discovery and used it primarily to get rich rather than benefit humankind. As a result, Marie was forced to visit the USA twice after World War 1 to raise funds to buy 1 gram of the substance she had discovered. The full story of Curie’s instructive struggle for the knowledge commons was told in the recent book “Marie Curie and Her Daughters” by Shelley Emling. Both Marie and, later, her daughter Irene, also a Nobel Prize winner in physics, suffered for their values. Marie endured ill health from her work with radium while daughter Irene, a communist who continued her mother’s tradition, experienced criticism and ostracism for her dedication to science for the benefit of all.  

As if all her scientific work was not enough, Curie’s example as a scientist and her support for a greater role for women in society, led to progressive political change. A recent article in the journal Nature (2017, 551:440) -“Trailblazer: when Marie Curie went to Brazil” - describes how Curie’s visit to Brazil in 1926 led to the extension of the right to vote to women in one area of that country and eventually, in 1934, to female enfranchisement throughout Brazil. 

Scientist, feminist, philanthropist, Curie remains a model for all who believe that all have the right to benefit from all that is in our world.