From Smithsonian:
What got me interested was that this part of her life is such a dramatic story. But what kept me interested and what kept me going for the four years I’ve been working on the play was her amazing ability not to let anything stop her. The more I learn, the more I realize what she had to struggle against, and she has become my hero because of that. For most of my life, I couldn’t say I had any heroes—I never really came across somebody like this who was so remarkable in her ability to keep going no matter what. It really had an effect on me.
How did you decide to write a play about her life?
I started out thinking it would be interesting to have a reading of her letters at the World Science Festival in New York, which I help put on every year. Then, I found out that the letters were radioactive—they are all collected in a library in Paris and you have to sign a waiver that you realize you’re handling radioactive material. I just wasn’t brave enough to do it. So [in 2008] I put together a nice one-act play about Einstein. But I became so interested in researching Curie that I really wanted to write about her in a full-length play.
What part of her life does the play focus on?
You could write three or four plays or movies about different parts of her life, but Radiance focuses on the time between the Nobel Prizes, 1903 to 1911. When she won her first Nobel Prize, they not only didn’t want to give it to her, but once they relented and decided to award her the prize along with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, they wouldn’t let her get up on stage to receive it. She had to sit in the audience while Pierre got up to receive it for the both of them. It’s hard to believe.
More here.