Focusing on the first family in science, this biography explores Marie Curie's relationship with her two daughters. Marie Curie was the first person to be honored by two Nobel Prizes and she pioneered the use of radiation therapy for cancer patients. But she was also a mother, widowed young, who raised two extraordinary daughters alone: Irene, a Nobel Prize winning chemist in her own right, who played an important role in the development of the atomic bomb, and Eve, a highly regarded humanitarian and journalist, who fought alongside the French Resistance during WWII. As a woman fighting to succeed in a male dominated profession and a Polish immigrant caught in a xenophobic society, she had to find ways to support her research. Drawing on personal interviews with Curie's descendents, including personal letters released by Curie's only granddaughter, as well as revelatory new archives, this is a wholly new story about Marie Curie, and a family of women inextricably connected to the dawn of nuclear physics. The author continues the family story into the third generation, showing how the passion for science has endured with Curie's grandaughter Helene Langevin-Joliot.

Prologue : America: a fresh point of departure for the world's greatest scientist -- An absolutely miserable year -- Moving on -- Meeting Missy -- Finally, America -- The White House -- New and improved -- Another dynamic duo -- Turning to America, again -- Into the spotlight -- The end of a quest -- Tributes and new causes -- All about Eve -- The ravages of another world war -- Rough waters -- The legacy.