Moreover, the image becomes literal in Curie’s co-discovery of radium with Pierre Curie and Gustave Bémont: a new, intensely radioactive element hidden in ore (P. Curie, M. S.-Curie, G. Bémont, C. R. Acad. Sci., 1898). Eve Curie later described jars of radium salts casting an eerie blue-green glow across the darkened lab—light drawn, quite literally, from stone (E. Curie, Madame Curie, 1937). After processing tons of pitchblende, Curie isolated mere fractions of a gram that shimmered in the night. The metaphor thus resolves into reality: careful hands, relentless method, and the patience to reveal radiance concealed within rough matter. [...]
