In 1891, 24-year-old Marie Sklodowska moved from Warsaw to Paris, where she found work in the laboratory of Pierre Curie, a scientist engaged in research on heat and magnetism. They fell in love and took their honeymoon on bicycles. Then they expanded the periodic table, discovering two new elements with startling properties, radium and polonium. Recognizing radioactivity as an atomic property, they heralded the dawn of a new scientific era, winning the Nobel Prize. Then, in 1906, Pierre was killed in a freak accident. Marie continued their work alone. She won a second Nobel Prize in 1911, and fell in love again. In the century since the Curies began their work, we’ve struggled with nuclear weapons proliferation, debated the role of radiation in medical treatment, and pondered nuclear energy as a solution to climate change. In Radioactive, Redniss links these contentious questions to a gripping love story in 19^th-century Paris.