21 March 2020| New Scientist | 33Scientific stars: Marie and
Pierre Curie (Rosamund
Pike and Sam Riley)“ Curie’s notebooks are
still too radioactive to
be handled without
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TOP:LANDMAR
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AMY^ BOTTOM:LONDON^ GAMESimportant for me is ethics in
sciences,” she says. For her, if the
purpose of science is to discover
the secrets of nature, the real
problem is what humans do
with our discoveries.
Throughout Radioactive,
we periodically jump forward
in time. One leap is to 1957,
when Gordon Isaacs became the
first person to be successfully
treated with a linear accelerator
(essentially targeted radiation
therapy), for a type of eye cancer
called retinoblastoma.
Then on to Operation Nougat,
a series of nuclear tests conducted
in Nevada beginning in 1961, and
the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power
plant disaster.
Parts of Pierre Curie’s prescient
Nobel lecture, delivered in 1905,
are included almost verbatim. “It
can even be thought that radium
could become very dangerous
in criminal hands, and here the
question can be raised whether
mankind benefits from knowing
the secrets of nature.
“The example of the discoveries
of Nobel is characteristic, as
powerful explosives have enabled
man to do wonderful work.
They are also a terrible means
of destruction in the hands of
great criminals who are leading
the peoples towards war,” he says.
Poignantly, the speech is
interspersed with a highly
stylised scene of the atomic bomb
dropping onto Hiroshima in 1945.
It ends: “I am one of those who
believe with Nobel that mankind
will derive more good than harm
from the new discoveries.”
Scientific progress has never
been without a seriously dark
side. The impact of the Curies’
discoveries reminds us of the
German chemist Fritz Haber,
whose work on synthesising
ammonia created both modern
warfare and the fertiliser that
better enables us to feed the world.
The atomic bomb is perhaps
one of the Curies’ dark legacies.
“The bomb has more to do with
the discovery of nuclear fission,”
says Satrapi. “But that said, if you
don’t discover radioactivity, how
do you discover nuclear fission?”
Overall, Radioactive is stronger
in its ethical provocations than
in the emotional resonance of
its characters. The repercussions
of the Curies’ research into
radioactivity are allowed to speak
for themselves, but the actors can
only breathe so much life into
what are sketches of people.
Perhaps this is the inevitable
result of a struggle, especially
in the case of Marie Curie, to
reimagine someone we feel
we know so well.
Yet, in its earnest, imperfect
manner, the film portrays
a luminary whose legacy
remains undimmed. ❚