Marie Curie makes a rare, and first, appearance at MTSU on Wednesday, Oct. 5, as part of an interview and question-and-answer session on the 100th anniversary of her receipt of the Nobel Prize for chemistry.

Lee Rennick

The 6:30 p.m. appearance by Madame Curie, also known in local theater circles as Lee Rennick, is open to the public as well as the MTSU community. It will be held in the first-floor reading room area in the James E. Walker Library. A reception will follow in Room 475.

A modern journalist, played by speech and theatre professor Dr. Kaylene Gebert, will interview Rennick’s Curie in a sketch titled “Madame Curie Speaks.”

Marie Curie, circa 1911

“Marie Curie will be coming from 1911, talking about her life and work,” Rennick explained, noting that attendees will be able to ask their own questions of Curie. The scientist was the first woman to earn a Nobel Prize and the first person to win in two categories—physics in 1903 and chemistry in 1911.

Rennick is executive director of the Business Education Partnership Foundation at the Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce, where she conducts programs for K-12 teachers and students about applying school curricula to the work world.

In her free time, Rennick writes plays and teaches improvisation to middle- and high-school students. She has been in several community theater productions and has played “Ruthie” for the Daily News Journal’s “Ruthie Awards,” which she created, and Maude Ferguson, the first public-health nurse in Rutherford County, for the 2010 opening of Middle Tennessee Medical Center.

The Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Center at MTSU, the Nashville local section of the American Chemical Society, the MTSU Chemistry Society and MTSU’s Women in Science and Engineering are co-sponsoring the event.

—  Randy Weiler (Randy.Weiler@mtsu.edu)