Marie Curie Got Her Start at a Secret University for Women

I suppose they would spend most of their time looking for work or a way to make a living.

There might be a thin slice of people, just below the wealthy but above the desperately poor who just need the opportunity.

From a study of modern Asian and Pacific "free time" [1]:

"People in Cambodia (note the caveat of age – the sample is of those 5 years and older) and Pakistan have the largest amounts of free time (Figure 1.4). Cambodians have more than 16 hours of free time per day (1 000 minutes), whereas in Mongolia, which is the country where people work the longest, people have only 13 hours (800 minutes) of free time. Generally speaking, men have slightly more free time than women (Figure 1.5), reflecting longer total working time for women (Figure 1.1)."[2]

[1]: "Free time" is defined as time not spent working, and can be subdivided as "personal care time" and "leisure time". Furthermore, personal care includes time spent sleeping and accounts for > 3/5 of "free time" usage in most cases.

[2]: https://www.oecd.org/els/soc/49306957.pdf

It's a really interesting article. It leads to the corollary of "How and why do people in poorer countries spend their leisure time differently then those in wealthier ones". My personal opinion is that the differences between both demographics where narrow down over time such as "Both poor and rich spend an average of 2hrs/day on Netflix".

I first met him at our PhD program orientation in the US. He speaks four languages and and is one of the most well educated people I've ever met. Granted, he's an exceptional person but by no means of a unique one.

Edit: can't help sharing something that just happened last week, I was with my wife in Athens, where she had just started her thesis research, interviewing Afghan refugees in one of the big Greek refugee camps. She befriends a 17 year old Afghan kid named Javad, no family or money, speaks nothing but Dari, and one of the first things he asks her is "can you send me a PDF of an intermediate to advanced level mechanical engineering textbook?" We're planning on sending him an ipad with a bunch of PDFs and sci hub articles.

I realize these are just two personal anecdotes but they have definitely changed my mind on this subject. Curious people tend to be curious regardless of their life circumstances.

Not only that, but physical activity plus our mental strain screws with our cortisol levels.

Personally, I used to work out a lot. Then I realized I was getting crabby all the time. I think I have cortisol problems, but not sure.

Anybody refer me to research with stress and and physical workouts and not getting enough sleep?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/22/north-korea...

I have a keen interest in WWII, so I had to do some brief research into this claim as I was surprised and had never heard it before. A few minutes of browsing seems to indicate there is a history of dispute in the area. This area was apparently given to the Poles as part of Versailles Treaty and the Czech's took it back by force in 1920.

I now I have some reading to do.

More importantly, since Poland was under Russian and German rule nobles were often dispossesed and persecuted.

Maria Skłodowska-Curie herself had to earn her living (mostly by being private tutor), as did her husband, parents and others.

So no, education was not rich women's entertainment, it was necessity.

I seriously doubt most of these women were living a life of leisure. Additionally, let's assume you are right: How on earth does that rebut my comment about educating people who desire to learn? Because surely the leisure class could have been bar hopping and throwing or attending wild parties instead of trying to learn something in spite of it being against the rules to get an education.