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droplets of ink-jet printers, regulating time in quartz watches, controlling the shrill wail of smoke detectors, turning the adjustable lenses of autofocus cameras, acting as the pickups of electric guitars, giving a spark to electric cigarette lighters, reducing vibrations within tennis rackets, and sending out high-frequency audio to monitor the heartbeats of fetuses.
    Lord Kelvin was so taken with the Curie brothers’ work on electric quartz that he arranged for a number of visits with Pierre in his lab the first week of October 1893, the same period that the impoverished teacher was meeting the great love of his life. Marie Curie:“As I entered the room, Pierre Curie was standing in the recess of a French window opening on a balcony.He seemed to me very young, though he was at that time thirty-five years old. I was struck by the open expression of his face and by the slight suggestion of detachment in his whole attitude. His speech, rather slow and deliberate, his simplicity, and his smile, at once grave and youthful, inspired confidence. . . . There was, between his conceptions and mine, despite the difference between our native countries, a surprising kinship, no doubt attributable to a certain likeness in the moral atmosphere in which we were both raised by our families. . . . Soon he caught the habit of speaking to me of his dream of an existence consecrated entirely to scientific research, and he asked me to share that life. It was not, however, easy for me to make such a decision, for it meant separation from my country and my family, and the renouncement of certain social projects that were dear to me. Having grown up in an atmosphere of patriotism kept alive by the oppression of Poland, I wished, like many other young people of my country, to contribute my effort toward the conservation of our national spirit.”
    Marie was the first woman Pierre had encountered in fifteen years who was both attractive physically and shared his great passion for science. She felt likewise; besides his professional achievements, Marie “noticed the grave and gentle expression of his face, as well as a certain abandon in his attitude, suggesting the dreamer absorbed in his reflections.” But then he asked if she planned to remain in France permanently, and she said, “Certainly not. . . . I shall be a teacher in Poland; I shall try to be useful. Poles have no right to abandon their country.”
    After a few months passed, Marie made plans for a trip to Warsaw, for a vacation with her family, and to apply to graduate school in her native country. Pierre suddenly insisted, “Promise me that you will come back! If you stay in Poland you can’t possibly continue your studies. You have no right to abandon science.” Marie later said that she felt what Pierre really meant by this was “You have no right to abandon me.” But she could never, in turn, imagine abandoning Poland, or marrying a man who wasn’t Polish, and only allowed Pierre to consider themselves as friends.
    While Marie was away, a torrent of letters arrived from Pierre in his childlike writing, signed “your very devoted friend” and begging her to return: “We promised each other (isn’t it true?) to have, for each other, at least a great affection. As long as you do not change your mind! For there are no promises which hold: these are things that do not admit of compulsion.” Pierre “had a touching desire to know all that was dear to me,” Marie said. He even learned a bit of her difficult native language and, when she finally returned in October, made a remarkably abject offer: he would moveto Poland and find some kind of position, if only she would marry him. Pierre Curie: “It would, nevertheless, be a beautiful thing in which I hardly dare believe, to pass through life together hypnotized in our dreams: your dream for your country; our dream for humanity; our dream for science. Of all these dreams, I believe the last, alone, is legitimate. I