The Half-Life of Marie Curie by Lauren Gunderson at New Mexico Actors Lab

In 1911, Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of the elements radium and polonium. By 1912, she was the object of ruthless gossip over an alleged affair with the married Frenchman Paul Langevin, all but erasing her achievements from public memory. Weakened and demoralized by the press lambasting her as a “foreign" Jewish temptress and a homewrecking traitor, Marie agrees to join her friend and colleague Hertha Ayrton, an electromechanical engineer and suffragette, and recover from the scandal at Hertha's seaside retreat on the British coast.

Lauren Gunderson's The Half-life of Marie Curie revels in the power of female friendship as it explores the relationship between these two brilliant women, both of whom are mothers, widows, and fearless champions of scientific inquiry.