#896: Marie Curie explain

[Ponytail is looking up at a picture on the wall showing Marie Curie with a white hair bun. She seems to be standing in front of a laboratory table with samples strewn over the surface. Her arms are in front of her like she is working with these samples. A voice comes from off-panel (and is revealed in the next panels to be Zombie Marie Curie.]

Ponytail: My teacher always told me that if I applied myself, I could become the next Marie Curie.

Zombie Marie Curie (off-panel): You know, I wish they’d get over me.

[Inserted panel mainly inside the first panel, but extending a bit it, with a close up of Ponytail who turns her face around swiftly towards the zombie, as indicated by two speed lines curving around her head, even breaking the panels frame.]

Ponytail: Zombie Marie Curie!

[Ponytail has turned towards Zombie Marie Curie, drawn as Hairbun, who is walking towards Ponytail in typical zombie fashion both arms stretched out, with a battered and weathered look Stuff is falling off behind her, presumably mainly earth from when she dug herself out of her grave, and she is leaving a trail of this behind her, and it keeps falling from both of her hands and her body.]

Zombie Marie Curie: Not that I don’t deserve it. These two Nobels ain’t decorative. But I make a sorry role model if girls just see me over and over as the one token lady scientist.

[Close up of Zombie Marie Curie holding a hand up. She clearly has two large pieces of earth stuck to her face, and her hair is in disarray even with the hair bun keeping it in place.]

Zombie Marie Curie: Lise Meitner figured out that nuclear fission was happening, while her colleague Otto was staring blankly at their data in confusion, and proved Enrico Fermi wrong in the process. Enrico and Otto both got Nobel Prizes. Lise got a National Women’s Press Club award.

Zombie Marie Curie: They finally named an element after her, but not until 60 years later.

[Zoom out to both Ponytail and Zombie Marie Curie both with their arms down.]

Zombie Marie Curie: Emmy Noether fought past her Victorian-era finishing-school upbringing, pursued mathematics by auditing classes, and, after finally getting a Ph.D, was permitted to teach only as an unpaid lecturer (often under male colleagues’ names).

Ponytail: Was she as good as them?

Zombie Marie Curie: She revolutionized abstract algebra, filled gaps in relativity, and found what some call the most beautiful, deepest result in theoretical physics.

Ponytail: Oh.

[Close up of Zombie Marie Curie.]

Zombie Marie Curie: But you don’t become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process.

[Zoom out to both Ponytail and Zombie Marie Curie.]

Zombie Marie Curie: So don’t try to be the next me, Noether, or Meitner. Just remember that if you want to do this stuff, you’re not alone.

Ponytail: Thanks.

Zombie Marie Curie: Also, avoid radium. Turns out it kills you.

Ponytail: I’ll try.