man and i said well how did you get into this business and he said i separated radioisotopes from mary curie and right away my my my hair stood on end because of course i had read about her and her discovery of radium and how she. and her well as a child you don't read this in children's biography she was a heroine of mine not so much now after i read from a biography biographies of her when i was researching my book yeah she lost a child in five months you know a baby and she her daughter died of radiation poisoning as did she but. you know i thought my goodness you know when you're when you're growing up and you're reading about people like mary curie you're thinking they're so far back in the past and here you're sitting next to a man who actually knew her she only died in one thousand nine hundred four so that was one thing and then the other was talking to a man at that conference i took him aside and i said by the way mostly men were at these conferences so i was sort of the odd person out plus i was young then so anyway and. i said to this man what's this all about and he said we're t

thought my goodness you know when you're when you're growing up and you're reading about people like mary curie you're thinking they're so far back in the past and here you're sitting next to a man who actually knew her she only died in one thousand nine hundred four so that was one thing and then the other was talking to a man at that conference i took him aside and i said by the way mostly men were at these conferences so i was sort of the odd person out plus i was young and so anyway and. i said to this man what's this all about and he said we're talking about the war and peace issues of our day and i said that's interesting and so you know it sort of planted a seed i think i still was on a steep learning curve i thought reactors were reactors and bombs were bombs i didn't understand that there was a relationship between the two and a very close one and what is there. with that so that's a whole. separate area that i that i got into in that i learned as i went along which is that the fuel cycle which is starting from uranium in the ground to processing it and putting it through an enrichment

the same is true for marie curie. after a while you start recognizing the way they talk and the way they related to and the way they would third -- phrase things. washington the same way. after a while they are so familiar that they almost become like a friend because you know that the way they put their thoughts together. and it was in those letters that i found out the color of the charlie, you know, the smell of what he could see and smell. the few cities of of the faces of those refugees. it was through his word there really made him come to life for me. i think it is the very personal research into they're own words that really makes the difference . that's what i try to bring. i try to bring that to life so that again readers can feel it and hear it. >> much as george washington is portrayed as a color of the country of the dollar bill, martha washington is this grandmotherly figure. what did you learn about her that interested you and you thought we should know about? >> i had to cut martha out of the book. so