IAS Seminar: Marie Corelli, Marie Curie, and the Wonders of Radium

IAS Visiting Fellow Professor Anne Stiles delivers a seminar on their research:

This talk addresses bestselling British novelist Marie Corelli (1855-1924) and her admiration for Nobel prize winner Marie Curie as a paragon of feminine scientific accomplishment. Though Corelli was neither a feminist in the traditional sense nor a scientific materialist, she viewed Curie’s discovery, the element radium, as a substance with near-divine properties that could restore health, life, and spiritual vitality.

Corelli’s later novels The Life Everlasting (1911), The Young Diana (1918), and The Secret Power (1921) demonstrate the author’s gradual evolution from an unqualified embrace of radioactivity to a growing awareness of its dangers, including the possibility that it could be weaponized on a large scale.

Corelli’s shift from optimism to ambivalence parallels a gradual change in attitudes towards radiation among the British public during these decades. Yet Corelli’s attitude towards Curie remained strongly positive, judging by her portrayal of courageous female scientists in The Young Diana and The Secret Power.

Arrivals from 11.45am for a 12pm start. For those joining in-person, lunch will be served after the seminar from 1pm.