In our Spotlight On series, we chat with a member of the Writing NSW community to celebrate their success and learn more about their writing practice. This month we put the spotlight on biographer Sydney Srinivas. Sydney spoke with Andrew from Writing NSW about his recently launched biography of Marie Curie, the role of ‘amateur’ historians, and the challenges of writing in multiple languages at once.
You begin your latest book, Marie Curie, with the curious line ‘Another book on Marie Curie?’ How do you go about finding something new to say about a well-trodden subject?
It is true that many books have been written about Marie Curie. ‘Till recently, the only official source we had was the biography written by her daughter Eve Curie in 1937, where she is pictured as a Saint in Science. In addition, the daughter keeps a distance from her mother and calls her Madame Curie (not Marie Curie). A turning point came in 1990 when the Bibliothèque Nationale de France made available to the public Marie Curie’s pile of letters and her diary. A new picture of Marie emerged. No doubt, she was a great scientist. Considering the other aspects of life, she was like any other woman; she had all the common feelings of a woman; she loved, and she failed in love. She suffered like any other woman. A new series of biographies started coming out along with a BBC documentary and the recent movie Radioactivity. My book belongs to this class and contains most of the latest information about her. In addition, it is written for one who may not have any pre-knowledge of Marie Curie. A distinguishing feature of the book is that it describes the scientist and her science in simple language. It brings out the fact that the primary contribution of Marie Curie is that of discovering Radioactivity, which helped many later developments in physics. Then comes her discovery of radium which was used to cure cancer and had tremendous medical application.
How did the book come about? What discussions did you have with the publisher?
I have been writing biographies of great scientists including those of Srinivasa Ramanujan, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, and Charles Darwin in both English and Kannada languages. (Kannada is spoken by about sixty-five million people in the state of Karnataka in India). I had already authored a short book of about 10,000 words on Marie Curie, in Kannada. When I told my publisher, Pranesh Siravara of Prism Books, of my intention to write a 200-page biography of Marie Curie, he readily agreed and suggested that it be written in both languages. Further, I suggested that the books be made attractive by dropping the usual format of a running text with pictures inserted here and there or having a bunch of pages with pictures in the middle. Instead, pictures should be given prominence and then there should be boxes carrying important and interesting information. I got the green signal. With the result, I suggested a layout for the book which was accepted. V Anand, a professional designer, did the layout.
You wrote this book twice. Once in English and then again in Kannada. You’ve said that neither is a translation of the other so how did that process work?
I can write at ease in both languages. One of my bold statements “Kannada comes from my heart and English comes from my brain” has been widely quoted, even in newspapers! I have been writing something or the other in Kannada since 1959. These include short stories (I have an anthology published), Australian folk tales, and numerous articles in science in many newspapers and magazines. In Sydney I have written a number of music and dance reviews and science writings in English.
Coming back to the question, the books in English and Kannada have the same chapters and have the same pictures. I have written the chapters independently of each other.
The real problem cropped up when printing. The colour template of the English version was first prepared. Running text was then flowed into it. Any small adjustments were then made. Then the printer tried to flow the Kannada material into the same template. It would not align well. Then quite a bit of rewriting was done to align the pictures and the corresponding text.
You mention the Writing NSW Open Genre Writing Group in your forward, thanking them for their support. Did you have a similar group for the Kannada text?
The Open Genre group has heard me read every one of books excepting the one on Srinivasa Ramanujan. The help I received was enormous. My English was corrected, organisation of the material improved, the writing became very readable. Later, Aleksandra Grabowska, the Educational Consultant to the Maria Sklodowska Curie Museum in Warsaw read the draft word by word and suggested many changes. This helped me remove a few factual errors.
Being in Sydney I had no access to such a group for my language, Kannada. However, we had an excellent editor in Bengaluru, Malathi Bhat, who is also a journalist. She did an excellent job of editing and helped me find some of the equivalents for scientific words such as isotope.
Your book is filled with images, photographs, and quotes. How difficult is it for a (now) non-academic writer to research a topic such as Marie Curie?
I am a researcher by profession having conducted studies in Fluid Mechanics and Optimisation. I do agree that it is difficult for a non-academic writer to do elaborate research in a different field. If one is interested and serious, there are tools to dig more and find more. The internet is a gold mine. Of course, one must be careful in accepting and rejecting what is found in the piles and piles of information. Further, I have travelled widely to places connected with each one of the scientists I have written about. I have met quite a few people and gathered information. Many times, I have taken the pictures myself.
I have considered these visits as my Science Pilgrimage. Standing in the very office that Marie Curie used, speaking from the very podium she spoke from, holding the very first edition of the On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin, walking along the Darwin Walk behind his house, standing in the very room where Isaac Newton did his famous Light Experiment and standing below the well-known Apple Tree have given me immense joy and made me go into a trance. This to me is an achievement that money cannot buy.
What role do you think non-academic historians and researchers have in bringing to light stories from our past?
There have been academics who have devoted their lives to studying the life of scientists, writers, artists, and philosophers. One example that comes to my mind is that of Richard S Westfall who pioneered in the study of Isaac Newton’s life and authored several books on him. Then I could mention Steven Wienberg (1979 Nobel Laureate in Physics) who wrote the book, To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science which is a masterful commentary on the history of science from the Greeks to modern times. The works by these are very authoritative and authentic because of long resolute and devoted research behind them. However, they are read only by specialist science students. The science but not the scientist, gets the upper hand here.
The non-academic writers are trained writers and are particularly good at presenting facts to a common reader who may not have had much exposure to science (or art). These writers also conduct extensive research on their subject. Walter Isaacson (who has written biographies of Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Elon Musk, and others) and James Gleick (author of biographies on Isaac Newton, Richard Feynman and on chaos) are good examples. Dava Sobel, who has written many books on scientists including Marie Curie (her latest) also belongs to this class. These stress more about the lives of scientists and less about the details of their scientific achievements. Their appeal is not academic. They have been successful in telling common people about many scientists and about scientific concepts. The Scientists but not the science get the upper hand here.
You were an academic at the University of Sydney’s School of Mechanical and Aerospace engineering. So far, your biographies have not featured engineers. Is there a reason for this? What motivates you to write about someone?
I have focussed my attention on scientists who are not simply great in their fields. They are all great thinkers who changed our pattern of thinking. We do not praise Newton, Einstein, or Darwin only for their discoveries. We adore them because they have become icons. That is the reason I have written about them and have been talking about them in platforms such as Sydney U3A.
Take Marie Curie for example. She won a Nobel Prize in Physics and then a Nobel prize in Chemistry too. Nobody else, including men, have had such an honour. Further in her family there were five people who shared four Nobel Prizes. History has not seen such a family. She came from a humble background in Poland and was determined to study science and achieve something great. Nothing was in her favour. She could not enter a university in Poland; girls were not admitted. She moved to Paris and managed with meagre funds. She stood first for the university of the Sorbonne. People hated her because she was a foreigner and a woman. The University did not give her a proper place to work. Although she had done most of the work, her name was not proposed for the first Nobel prize in the beginning. Only her husband’s name was proposed. The list does not stop here. However, later her remains found a place in La Pantheon, which is the highest honour that France could bestow upon its citizens.
You see clearly that her life is an invitation for a writer to write.
Dr. Karkenahalli Srinivas, known as “Sydney Srinivas,” is an Indian-Australian writer and academic who migrated to Australia from India over forty years ago. He was a senior academic in the University of Sydney’s school of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, specialising in Fluid Dynamics. As a prolific writer, Srinivas has authored numerous books, aimed at making science accessible to the general public, including biographies of famous scientists like Galileo Galilei, Marie Curie, and Charles Darwin, and Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. His creative writing includes short stories that often explore the experiences of first-generation migrants in Australia and the cultural dynamics between different generations. Writing in both English and Kannada, his work often serves as a bridge between Indian and Australian cultures, reflecting his own bicultural identity.
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