In Poland, 1891, Marie Curie (then Marya Sklodowski) was engaged to marry a budding Polish mathematician, Kazimierz Zorawski. But when his mother told him she was not good enough, that she was poor and would never amount to anything, he broke off the engagement. A heartbroken Marya left Poland for Paris, where she would attend the Sorbonne to study chemistry and physics, and eventually become the Marie Curie who would change the course of science forever and be the first woman to win the Nobel Prize. But what if, in 1891, at the age of 24, Marya had made a different choice? What if she had stayed in Poland and married Kazimierz, in spite of his mother’s protests? What if she had never attended the Sorbonne or discovered radium? Entwining Marie Curie’s real story and Marya Zorawski’s fictional one, Half Life reveals what might have happened if one woman had made a different choice.