Acclaimed author and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Dava Sobel, will speak about her new book “The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science.” Following her presentation, Ms. Sobel will be available to autograph copies of her book, which will be available for purchase.

The discovery of two new elements—polonium, named for her homeland, and radium with its strange powers—brought the Polish-born Marie Sklodowska Curie to the world’s attention in 1898. Both elements were “radioactive,” a term she coined to describe their unusual behavior.

As radioactivity reshaped physics and chemistry in the early 20th century, Mme. Curie met regularly with a coterie of scientists, including her friend Albert Einstein. For decades she stood out at international conferences as the only woman in the room. Meanwhile she made room in her laboratory between 1906 and 1933 for more than forty aspiring female scientists. During the First World War, she drove her personally outfitted mobile X-ray units to combat zones accompanied by her seventeen-year-old daughter, Irène. Together they trained some 150 French women as X-ray technicians. After Irène completed her university studies, she followed her mother into the lab and won her own Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935.

Weather permitting, in-person attendees will enjoy stargazing by telescope with Hamptons Observatory founding Board member and Academic Chair of Science at Suffolk County Community College, Sean Tvelia. Feel free to bring your own telescope.