EINSTEIN DEFENDS MARIE CURIE FROM HER DETRACTORS

(Albert Einstein’s letter to Marie Curie when she was facing relentless attacks on her personal life. She was denied a seat in the French Academy of Sciences in January 1911 for reasons that probably included gender and religion.

In 1903, Curie won the Nobel Prize in Physics for her research of radiation phenomena. She was also the first woman in France to attain a PhD in Physics, and the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne. In 1911, she won a second Nobel Prize in chemistry for the discovery of polonium and radium.)

Prague, 23 November 1911

Highly esteemed Mrs. Curie:
Do not laugh at me for writing you without having anything sensible to say.

But I am so enraged by the base manner in which the public is presently daring to concern itself with you that I absolutely must give vent to this feeling. However, I am convinced that you consistently despise this rabble, whether it obsequiously lavishes respect on you or whether it attempts to satiate its lust for sensationalism!

I am impelled to tell you how much I have come to admire your intellect, your drive, and your honesty, and that I consider myself lucky to have made your personal acquaintance in Brussels. Anyone who does not number among these reptiles is certainly happy, now as before, that we have such personages among us as you, and Langevin too, real people with whom one feels privileged to be in contact. 

If the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then simply don't read that hogwash, but rather leave it to the reptile for whom it has been fabricated.

With most amicable regards to you, Langevin, and Perrin, yours very truly,

A. Einstein

P.S. I have determined the statistical law of motion of the diatomic molecule in Planck's radiation field by means of a comical witticism, naturally under the constraint that the structure's motion follows the laws of standard mechanics.

My hope that this law is valid in reality is very small, though.