Yes, it’s true that without the Google doodle of yesterday, I wouldn’t have known it was Marie Curie’s birthday. This poem still gives me chills. One of my favorites. I don’t really know much about Marie Curie, but I do think of all the women who research alongside men and don’t get credit, though perhaps this has nothing to do with Marie Curie.
Power
Living in the earth-deposits of our history
Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.
Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil
She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power.
Adrienne Rich
twinklysparkles 
ahhh, we have a children’s book about her life i purchased for sophia when she was about 6. thanks for the poem!
I probably need to read the book you have. I do have wiki, though.