Louisiana Guru       St. Gabriel & the Great River Road...by Burton LeBlanc 

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The Curie family was one of the most distinguished families in history. It included a number of geniuses. One of them, Eve Curie, who was a great writer, has written about them in “Madame Curie – A Biography By Eve Curie.”

Madame Curie was the most famous of the Curies and Eve was her youngest daughter.  Born in Poland as Marya Sklodovskis, Madame Curie had many nicknames, including Manya, Manyusya (a name of affection), and Anciupecio, a comic nickname dating from her earliest infancy.  “Delicate hands, too pale and too thin, tied the undone ribbons of the apron and smoothed the short curls from the stubborn face of the future scientist. Little by little the child relaxed and was at peace.”  “Manya had an infinite love for her mother. It seemed to her that no other creature on earth could be so graceful, so good or so wise.”

Mme. Slovovska was the eldest daughter in a family of country squires. Her father, Felix Boguski, belonged to that small landowning nobility which has so many representatives in Poland.  Of their six children Madame Sklodovska was certainly the most beautiful, the most balanced and the most intelligent. She received a very good education in a private school in Warsaw, and having decided to devote herself to teaching, became a professor in the same school and finally director of the institution. 

The Slodovskis had lived well as farmers in the eighteenth century.  Later Joseph, in his desire to improve his own condition and to honor the name of which he was so proud, that he turned toward study, and after a career involving wars and revolutions, became director of a boy’s school in Lublin. He was the first intellectual in the family. 

Marie Curie’s parents were judicious. He, imitating his father’s example, went far in his scientific studies at the University of Petersburg and returned to Warsaw to teach mathematics and physics. She successfully conducted a school to which the best families of the town sent their daughters. When Vladislav Sklodovska left the school where he had been teaching tp become professor and under inspector of  a high school on Novolipki Street, his wife gave up her work teaching at a boarding school and moved with him from the Freta Street home where some months before (November 7, 1867), she had given birth to Marie Curie, little Manya. 

 “A very special timidity reddened Manya’s cheeks when she broached the subject of reading, the year before, in the country.  Bronya, finding it extremely boring to have to learn the whole alphabet, by herself, had taken it into her head… “  to play teacher to Manya.  Manya. who was then four, took the opened book from Bronya’s hands, and read aloud the opening sentence on the page.

Manya asked her sister Zosia, when they were going to take their summer trip to Zwola. With her extraordinary memory, Manya could recall every detail of her previous summer trip. 

On one occasion, when Manya was five she asked Zosia to tell her a story. “Nobody-not even the professor or his wife-could tell a story like Zosia. Her imagination added extraordinary touches, like the brilliant  variations of a virtuoso, to every anecdote or fairy tale. She also composed short comedies, which she performed with spirit in front of her astonished sisters and brother.” 

“It was a cruel fate, in the year 1872, to be a Pole, a “Russian subject”, and to belong to that vibrant “intelligentsia” whose nerves were so near the surface: among them revolt was ever brooding, and they suffered more painfully than any other class in society from the servitude imposed upon them.” The battle had therefore changed ground. The new heroes were the intellectuals, the artists, priests, schoolteachers—those upon whom the mine of the new generation depended. 

In their home was a glass case which the Professor had loaded with glass tubes, small scales, minerals and even a gold leaf electroscope.  Manya could not imagine what these fascinating trinkets were. One day, straining on the tips of her toes, she was blissfully contemplating them  when her father simply told her their name: “Phy-sics app-a-ra-tus.”  A funny name.  She did not forget it—she never forgot anything—and, as she was in high spirits, she sang the words in tune.

M. Hornberg, the government inspector, came to the class. “Please call on one of these young people”, he told the techer.  In the third row Marya was frightened; she knew it would be her.  Marya recited Our Father in perfect Russian and accent, a humiliation the inspectors imposed. She was asked questions about the Russian royal family and    their titles and she answered perfectly.  The teacher Tupsia raised her head, said, “Come here, my little soul”, and gave her a kiss. 

The Professor’s salary was reduced and they had to move and take a boarder.  Zosia caught typhus and died soon after. 

Manya’s baptism had taken place in the church of St.Mary, and her first communion at the Domenica. The girls came often to St.Paul’s church on Sunday to listen to the sermon in German.

The boarding house was a knowledge factory.  Some of the students could only recite in Polish, not Russian. They envied those who could faultlessly recite a poem after reading it twice.

There was the dull, constant sadness caused by the illness of her mother.  The patient, once so beautiful was now hardly more  than shadow, and soon departed.  Then a moment of expansion came for the family. 

“Death, carrying off Zosia, had taken a hostage from among five ardent and intelligent children.  But the others, the four young people born of a consumptive mother and an Intellectual worn out by work, carried an invincible force within them. They were to conquer adversity, to disdain all obstacles and to become, all four, exceptional human beings.” 

They were a superb spectacle, this sunny morning in the spring of 1882, gathered for breakfast around the table. Hela was sixteen: tall and graceful, incontestably “the beauty of the family.”  Bronya had golden hair and the face of an opened flower; Joseph, the eldest displayed the lines of a Nordic athlete in his student’s uniform.”  Manya, at fourteen years of age, had become one of the most brilliant pupils of a Government Gymnasium, the same Gymnasium, where Bronya, the eldest of the three sisters, had finished her studies the year before by winning a gold medal and a great deal of glory.

Bronya, no longer a schoolgirl, had taken over management of the house.  Joseph had been awarded a gold medal like Bronya’s, when he left the boy’s school.  Envied and admired by his sisters, he was studying at the Faculty of Medicine. How lucky they thought him! Already tormented by intellectual ambition, the three Sklodovski girls grumbled at the rule forbidding women to enter the University of Warsaw; and they listened in rapt attention to their brother’s stories of student life in the “Tsar’s University”—mediocre though it was—where the teachers were ambitious Russians and subservient Poles. 

The girls changed school to an Imperial Gymnasium, since they were the only ones which conferred recognized diplomas.  They had Russian and German teachers. Mlle.Mayer was a detestable superintendent of studies.  In Manya’s class Polish, Jewish, Russian and German girls sat side by side without serious  disagreement. But as soon as school was over each one returned to her language, her patriotism and her religion.

But what was the matter with Kunicka?  Manya and Kazia ceased smiling and ran towards their friend.  “It’s my brother…he was in a plot…he was denounced.   We haven’t known where he was for three days.  Stifled by sobs, she added:  “They are going to hang him tomorrow.”

One gold medal, two gold medals, three gold medals in the Sklodovski family.  The third was for Manya and marked the end of her secondary studies on June 22, 1873.  Manya had worked very hard, and very well.   Mr. Sklodoviski decided that she was to go to the country for a year  before choosing her means of livelihood. 

A years holiday!  One might be tempted to imagine the child of genius,    obsessed by an early vacation, studying scientific books in secret.  But such was not the case. In the course of the mysterious passage called Adolescence, while her body was transformed and her face grew finer, Manya suddenly became lazy.

During her year of laziness, during which her intellectual ardor seemed to drowse, the young girl was seized by a passion which was to last as long as her life: the passion for the country.

The Comtesse de Fleury was a Polish woman married to a Frenchman.  She suggested that his two daughters could come to her house in the country for two months. The beautiful house was set between the curves of two shining rivers.  In eight weeks the Comtesse arranged three balls, at which there was dancing, two garden parties, excusions and boating trips for Hela and Manya and youths of the area.

“I have attempted to show Manya Slodovska, child and adolescent, in her studies and at play. She was healthy, honest, sensitive and gay. She had a loving heart. She was, as her teachers said, “remarkably gifted”; she was a brilliant student. But on the whole no startling characteristic distinguished her from the children who grew up with her; nothing had yet indicated her genius.”

It was true that M, Sklodovski knew everything, or nearly everything. In what country of Europe nowadays could one find an obscure schoolmaster with such erudition?  The poor man, father of a family, balancing his budget with the greatest difficulty, had found leisure to develop his scientific knowledge by going through publications which he   procured by considerable effort. It seemed quite natural to keep up with the progress of chemistry and physics, just as it was natural to know Greek and Latin and to speak English, French and German (as well as, of course, Polish and Russian).” 

“Every Saturday for years past M. Sklodovski, his son and his three daughters had passed the whole evening together in the pursuit of literature.  In the old days that voice had told fairy tales, read stories of travel, or initiated her into David Copperfield, which  Mr. Sklodoviski translated into Polish without a hitch as he read from the English text.  He interpreted for the four attentive young people those romantic authors who were poets of servitude and revolt in Poland.”

Manya was never to forget those evenings.  Thanks to her father she lived in an intellectual atmosphere of rare quality known to few girls of her age.  There was one dream common to all the youths; the dream of nationhood. In their projects for the future, the desire to serve Poland took precedence of personal ambition, of marriage and of love. One would dream of violence and would organize conspiracies at the risk of life; another would dream of action by means of controversy; still another would take refuge in mystic dreaming—for the Catholic religion as also a resource, a force of resistance against the Orthodox oppressor.

”I have a lively memory of the sympathetic atmosphere of social and intellectual comradeship,” Marie Curie was to write forty years later.  “The means of action were poor and the results obtained could not be very considerable, and yet I persist in believing that the ideas that then guided us are the only ones which can lead to true social progress. We cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individual.  Toward this end each of us must work toward his own highest development, accepting at the same time his share of responsibility in the general life of humanity, our particular duty being to help those to whom we fear; we can be most useful.” 

M. Sklodovski, had transmitted his passionate curiosity and interest in science to his daughter.   But that was not enough for this impetuous girl of seventeen.  She was to give lessons to women of the poor.  She began by reading aloud to the employees of a dressmaking establishment and got together a little library of books in Polish, volume by volume, for the use of the working women.

She plunged eagerly into other sections of the world’s knowledge. She grasped at August Comte and social evolution, she dreamed no longer of mathematics or chemistry alone, but wished to reform the established order and enlighten the masses of the people.  She did not know that the time would come when she must choose between those dreams. 

The university in Warsaw was closed to women.  Many dreamed of going to Paris to the Sorbonne but she did not have the means.  Then there was Bronya who wanted to go to Paris to study.  One day when Bronya was scribbling away at a piece of paper, counting how much money she had – or rather—how much she lacked—Manya made a direct attack.  “I have reflected a lot lately. I have also talked to Father. And I think I have found out a way.”

“Away--?”

Manya came nearer to her sister.  What she had to say and get accepted was delicate; she would have to weigh her words with prudence.  “Let’s see.  With what you have saved, how many months could you live in Paris?”

“I have enough to pay my journey and one year’s expense at the Faculty,” Bronya answered quickly, “But the medical course lasts five years, you know very well.”

“Yes, but you understand, Bronya, that with lessons at half a ruble a time we shall never be able to do it.”

“Well?”

“Well. we could make an alliance. If we keep on struggling separately, each on her own account, neither of us can ever get away. Whereas on my system you can take the train in the autumn—in a few months.”

“Manya, you are mad!”

“No. To start with you will spend your own money. After that I’ll arrange to send you some; Father too.  And at the same time I’ll be piling up money for my own future studies.  When you are a doctor it will be my turn to go.  And then you will help me.”

And so it was arranged.

Manya did indeed get a job as governess for different families over a period of three years.  She noted forty years later that during those years, “Literature interested me as much as sociology and science.       Still, during these years of work, as I tried gradually to discover my true preferences, I finally turned toward mathematics and physics.  These solitary studies were encompassed with difficulty. The scientific education I received at school was vey incomplete—much inferior to the program for baccalaureate in France.  I tried to complete it in my own way, with the help of books got together by sheer chance.” 

She had become enamored with a son of one of her employers, but when he was not resolute in overcoming his parent’s objections, she abandoned him.

When she had almost given up hope of going to France Bronya, who was now married, offered to take her in, and she took a fourth class railway carriage  to go there.  “How young one felt in Paris, how powerful, trembling and swelling with hope!  And for a little Polish girl, what a wonderful feeling of liberation!” Marie, as she was to sign her name for the Sorbonne, received notice that classes would start there on November 2, 1891.  Meanwhile, she had also become quite pretty.

FACULTY OF SCIENCES-FIRST QUARTER November 3, 1891

“The magic sparkling words!”

With the small amount or money she had amassed, ruble by ruble, the girl had won the right to such lessons, among the numerable ones listed in the complicated poster, as it would please her to choose.  She had her place in the experimental laboratories, where, guided and advised, she could handle apparatus without fumbling and succeed in some simple experiments. Manya was now—oh, delight!--a student in the Faculty of Science”.  “The boys eyes would follow her graceful outline as it disappeared down the corridor, and then they would conclude “Fine air!”. The ash-blonde hair and the little Slavic head were for a long time to come the only identification the students at the Sorbonne had for their timid comrade.  But young men were what interested this girl least at the moment.  She was entirely fascinated by certain grave gentlemen from whom she wished to extract their secrets.

On the day before it was M. Lioppmann’s course, weighty and logical. Yesterday she had heard M. Bouty, whose extraordinary simian head concealed treasures of science.  Unforeseen obstacles had suddenly raised themselves before her the first few weeks. She believed herself to know French perfectly; she had been wrong.  In mathematics and physics Marie discovered enormous holes in her “culture”.  How she would have to work to win the enviable, magnificent title, which she  coveted every instant: Master of Science.

“Paul Appell was lecturing today.  He developed the exposition in his calm voice. Weighted by his slight Alsatian accent, which articulated each syllable so well, his demonstrations were always so clear and elegant that they seemed to juggle perils away and put the world at his mercy. Powerful and tranquil, he ventured into the most tenuous regions of knowledge, he played with numbers, with the stars; and as he was not afraid of imagery he pronounced in the most natural tones, accompanying his words with easy gesture of a great property owner; “I take the sun, and I throw it…”  The Polish girl on her bench smiled with ecstasy.  Marie was perfectly happy.” 

Casimir Dluski, who was married to Bronya and in whose house Marie lived, loved amusements.  One evening when Marie, bent over a book in her little room at the end of the apartment, was preparing to work in solitude for part of the night, her brother-in-law made an interruption.  “Your coat and hat quick! I have free tickets, we’re all three going to a concert.”  A little later, seated in the Salle Erard, -- which was three  quarters empty – Marie saw a long, thin young man appear on the platform, his hair in a halo of red and copper colors, full of flames,  about his extraordinary face. The girl listened with intoxication as this strange performer who seemed not at all a poor artist making his first appearance, but an emperor or a god.  The musician was to come to the Rue Allemagne .  She was entirely fascinated.   

Sometimes in the evening, accompanied by the exquisite young woman, Mme. Gorska, who he had fallen in love with and afterwards was to marry, he spoke without bitterness of his miserable life, of his disappointments, of his struggles.  Seized by a hunger for music, the young man with the fiery mane would interrupt all talk to strike some chords. Then by a stroke of magic, the poor upright piano at the Dluski’s instantly turned into a sublime instrument.  He was to be a virtuoso of genius and prime minister of a Poland reconstructed and set free. His name was Ignace Paderewski.

Marie flung herself ardently into whatever her new existence offered. She worked as if in a fever. She also discovered the joys of comradeship, of that solidarity which university work creates. But, still too shy to make friends with the French, she took refuge among her compatriots: mathematicians Miles Kraskovska and Dydynska, the biologist Danyska, Stanislav Szlay, who would enter the family later by marrying Hela, the young Wojciechovski—a future president of the Polish Republic—all became her friends in that colony which formed a little island of free Poland in the Latin Quarter.

Was it M.Sklodovski’s firm authority, or was it rather Manya’s good sense that rebelled against such sterile agitation? The girl very soon observed that these harmless diversions kept her from working in peace. She drew away from them. She had not come to France to figure in living pictures, and every minute she did not consecrate to studies was a minute lost.  Another problem presented itself. Life was charming and sweet at Rue Allemagne. She could not stop constant interruptions by Casimir playing the piano or intruding to talk with her while she was working on a difficult equation, or interruptions by Casimir or Bronya’s patients, and it was an hour’s journey to the Sorbonne.  After a family council it was decided that she should move to the Latin Quarter.  It was not without regret that she left, for she and Bronya had developed a mutual love and respect based upon the romance of sacrifice and devotion, and of mutual help. 

Now the girl sank slowly into solitude.  For more than three solid years she was to lead a life devoted to study alone; a life in conformity with her dreams, a “perfect” life in the sense in which that of the monk or the missionary is perfect.  “Her life had to be of monastic simplicity in any case: for since Marie had voluntarily deprived herself of the board and lodging she had at the Dluskis’, she had to meet her expenses herself. And her income—made up by her own savings, divided into slices and the small sums her father would send her—resolved itself into forty rubles a month.”  Such was the problem the young student had urgently to resolve. But Marie never failed to find the solution of a problem.”

Marie never learned to cook or to keep house.  “By deliberate intention she had suppressed diversions from her schedule, as well as friendly meetings and contact with human beings. In the same way she decided that material life had no importance; that it did not exist.  And, fortified by this principle, she made for herself a Spartan existence, strange and inhuman.  For fifteen or twenty francs a month, she found a tiny nook which obtained light from a loophole on the slope of the roof. Through this skylight there appeared a small square of the sky. There was no heat, no lighting, no water.” 

On her skimpy diet she became anaemic. Marie fainted in front of her comrades. He went to contact Casimir who came to Marie’s lodging, After questioning and examining her he realized that she was starving. He took her to his house where he and Bronya fed and cared for her until she regained her strength.

Work! Work! Plunged altogether into study, intoxicated by her progress, Marie felt herself equal to learning everything mankind had ever discovered. She attended courses in mathematics, physics, and chemistry.  In the physics laboratory of the Sorbonne Marie Sklodovska timidly tried her strength.  One master’s degree was not enough; Marie decided to obtain two: one in physics and one in mathematics. 

However shy she might be, Marie could not avoid meeting human beings every day. Some of the students were cordial and friendly with her. Foreign women were highly regarded at the Sorbonne.  They were usually gifted and inspired sympathy among the Frenchmen.  She had distant comradeships with some future leaders of French science. 

“Marie had no time to give to friendship or to love. She loved mathematics and physics.  Her brain was so precise, her intelligence so marvelously clear, that no ‘Slavic’ disorder intruded to corrupt her effort. She was supported by a will of iron, by a maniacal taste for perfection, and by an incredible stubbornness.  Systematically, patiently, she attained each of the ends she had set for herself: she passed first in the master’s examination in physics in 1893, and second in the master’s in mathematics in 1894.  The little peasant of the other days was not dead; lost in the great city; she lay in wait for the birth of the leaves, as soon as she had a little time and money she hurried to the woods.”

In July thirty students met in the examination hall where they were handed the important document of “questions on the course”.  Marie was nervous. Then came days of waiting for the results. A large crowd, consisting of the contestants and their families, came to the amphitheater, where Maria slipped into a seat. The names were to be read in order of merit. The examiner came into the hall.  The first name he read was Marie Sklodovska. 

Then she went home to Poland until autumn.  But each time the autumn returned the same anxiety assailed Marie: how could she go back to Paris?

In 1893 the situation seemed desperate and the girl was on the point of giving up the journey when a miracle took place. That same Mlle Dydynski who had defended  her with an umbrella the year before when she was being harassed by some overeager young Frenchmen extended even more opportune protection. Certain that Marie was destined to a great future, she moved heaven and earth in Warsaw to have the “Alexandrovitch Scholarship” assigned to her—a scholarship for students of merit who wished to pursue their efforts abroad.  Six hundred rubles!  Enough to live on for fifteen months! 

Marie was dazzled and enchanted. She took flight for France.  She rented a room on a clean and decent street.  She studied mathematics unceasingly, so as to be up to date when the classes began.  She wrote to her brother, ”We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.” 

She became the humble unknown companion of those great scientists of the past, who were, like her, shut into their ill-lighted hells, like her detached from their time, and, like her, spurred their minds to pass beyond the sum of acquired knowledge.

Enter Pierre Curie

Marie had ruled love and marriage out of her life’s program.  The poor girl, disappointed and humiliated in the failure of her first idyll, swore to love no more; still more, the Slavic student exalted by intellectual ambitions easily decided to renounce the things that make the servitude, happiness and unhappiness of other women, in order to follow her vocation. 

Pierre Curie was at the Sorbonne and had already made important discoveries in physics. He was devoting his body and soul to scientific research. He had married none of the insignificant or nice little girls who had come his way. He was thirty-five years old. He loved nobody. 

Marie used these words to describe their first meeting:  “When I came in, Pierre Curie was standing in the window recess near a door leading to the balcony.  He seemed very young to me, although he was then aged thirty-five. I was struck by the expression of his clear gaze and by a slight appearance of carelessness in his lofty stature. His rather slow, reflective words, his simplicity and his smile, at once grave and young, inspired confidence. A conversation began between us and became friendly; its object was some questions of science upon which I was happy to ask his opinion.” 

A Pole, M. Kovalski, professor of physics at the University of Fribourg, with his young wife. Both of them knew Marie and inquired about her upon their arrival in Paris. They met and Marie told him that The Society for the Encouragement of National Industry had ordered a study from her on the magnetic properties of various steels.  She had begun the researches in Professor Lippmann’s laboratory, but it was too small.  M. Kovalski, aware that the meritorious scientist Pierre Curie might have a larger workroom available, arranged for a meeting the next day. 

“Pierre Curie had a very individual charm made up of gravity and careless grace.  Although this man maintained a constant reserve and never lifted his voice, it was impossible not to notice his expression of rare intelligence and distinction. In a civilization in which intellectual superiority is seldom allied to moral worth, Pierre Curie was an almost unique specimen of humanity: his mind was both powerful and noble.”

The attraction he felt from the first moment for the foreign girl who spoke so little was doubled by intense curiosity. This Mlle. Sklodovska was truly a rather astonishing person.  The conversation, at first general, was soon reduced to scientific dialogue between Pierre and Marie. Pierre explained his plans, and described the phenomena of crystallography which fascinated him and upon which he was now engaged in research.  When he asked her whether she was going to remain in France, she replied that her Duty demanded that she should return to Poland.  He could not understand this, but he wanted to see her again. 

Pierre Curie  was the son of a physician whose father had been a doctor. The family was  of Alsatian origin and Protestant. The Curies, once of the lower bourgeoisie, had, through generations, become intellectuals and scientists.  While growing up, Pierre had an independent and dreamy mind.  Dr. Curie, understanding that he was too original to adapt in school, at first instructed him himself. Then he confided him to a remarkable teacher, M. Bazille. Pierre obtained a Bachelor of Science at sixteen and a degree in physics at eighteen.  He then became engaged with his brother Jacques, as lab workers at the Sorbonne. They soon announced the discovery of “piezoelectricity” which led to the invention of new apparatus to measure small quantities of electricity with precision.

Pierre did theoretical work on crystalline structure which led to the formulation of the principal of symmetry, which was to become one of the bases of modern science.  Again, taking up his studies, he invented and built the ultra-sensitive “Curie Scale”. Then he undertook research on magnetism and obtained the discovery of the fundamental law “Curie’s law”.  When Lord Kelvin planned to come to Paris he wrote to Pierre to ask him if he could meet with him in his laboratory. They met and had a lengthy and amiable discussion.

Pierre had written, “One must make of life a dream, and of that dream a reality.” He was captivated by Marie. He saw her again two or three times at sessions of the Physics Society. He had seen her in Lippman’s laboratory and asked her if he could visit her.  Friendly but reserved, she received him in her little room.  In an almost empty attic, with her threadbare dress and her ardent, stubborn features, Marie had never seemed more beautiful to him. 

When Marie returned to Poland for the summer break, he pursued her with letters.  October came. Pierre’s heart swelled with happiness. Marie, according to her promise, had returned to Paris. She was to be seen again at the lectures in the Sorbonne and at Lippmann’s laboratory. Pierre asked if Marie would marry him and move to Poland if he accepted a position there.

Pierre visited Bronya, whom he had met previously, and won her over completely.  He asked her and Marie to visit his parent’s home at Sceaux.  Dr. Curies’ wife took Bronya aside and in a gentle, touching voice asked her to speak to her younger sister.  “There isn’t a soul on earth equal to my Pierre,” Mme Curie insisted. “Don’t let your sister hesitate. She will be happier with him than with anybody.”  Ten more months had to pass before the obdurate Pole accepted the idea of marriage. 

“It was a wonderful wedding indeed!  At the city hall in Sceaux and in thelittle garden at Pierre’s parents house in the Rue des Sablons there would be Bronya and Casmir, a few very close friends –university people—and Professor Sklodovski, who had come from Warsaw with Hela.  The professor made it a point of honor to talk to old Doctor Curie in the most correct and careful French; but first of all he would say, in his lowest tone, very moved, these words straight from his good heart: “You will have a daughter worthy of affection in Marie. Since she came into the world she has never caused me pain.”

Marie always succeeded in her undertakings. It was thus with her marriage.  She had hesitated for more than a year before marrying Pierre Curie.  Now that she was his wife, she organized their conjugal life with such farsighted tenderness that she was to make a wonderful thing of it.  The first days of their life together were picturesque: Pierre and Marie roamed the roads of Ile-de-France on their famous bicycles.  The summer’s tramping in 1895, “a wedding tramp,” was sweeter still; love exalted it and made it beautiful. At the cost of some thousands of pedal strokes and a few francs for village lodgings, the young couple attained the luxury of solitude shared between them for long enchanted days and nights. 

Caught up again by the haunting thought of work, Pierre Curie had suddenly forgotten woods and skies, frog and pool. He mused upon the tenuous, immense difficulty of his research, the troubled mystery of the growth of crystals. He described the apparatus he was going to construct for a new experiment; and again he heard Maries ’faithful voice, her lucid questions and reflective answers.”

During these happy days was formed one of the finest bonds that ever united man woman. Two hearts beat together, two bodies were united, and two minds of genius learned to think together. Marie could have married none other than this great physicist, than this wise and noble man. Pierre could have married no woman other than the fair, tender Polish girl, who could be childish or transcendent within the same few moments; for she was a friend and a wife, a lover and a scientist.”

Toward the middle of August the young couple settled down at a farm near Gentilly. There Marie and Pierre rejoined old Mme Dluska, Casimir, Bronya and their daughter Heken, Professor Sklodovski and Hela. This holiday was to become a precious and dazzling memory to that group of people who were destined seldom to meet again. 

Pierre Curie made a permanent conquest of his new family.  His marriage to a poor foreign girl found in a garret in the Latin Quarter, had neither shocked nor surprised his parents; theirs were gifted minds and they admired Marie from the first moment. Marie was surprised by the political passions of her father-in-law and his friends. Pierre was little inclined to take an active role in politics.

Pierre earned four hundred francs a month at the School of Physics. Marie knew how to be economical. She made it a point of honor to learn how to cook, and she produced wholesome meals for Pierre.  Eight hours of scientific research and two or three hours of housekeeping were not enough. In the evening, after writing down the details of the daily expenses in the account book, Marie sat down at one end of the white-wood table and became absorbed in preparing for the fellowship competition. On the other side of the lamp Pierre was drawing up the program of his new course at the School of Physics. Often, when she felt her husband’s fine eyes upon her, she lifted her own eyes to receive a message of love and admiration, and a little smile was exchanged between the man and woman who loved each other. There was a light at the window of their room until two or three in the morning , and the ardent pianissimo of the turning page, the running pen, could be heard in their office with its two chairs.

At the beginning of August Pierre ran away to Port Blanc. It would be supposed that he would be so softened by Marie’s condition, in her eighth month of pregnancy, as to pass a quiet summer with her; not so. With the thoughtlessness of the insane—or rather of the scientist—the pair went off to Brest on their bicycles, covering stages as long as they usually did. Marie declared that she felt no fatigue, and Pierre was quite willing to believe her. He had a vague feeling that she was a supernatural being, who escaped from human laws.  This time, just the same, the young wife’s body had to beg for mercy. Marie was forced to cut short the trip and go back to Paris, where she gave birth to a daughter on September 12: Irene, a beautiful baby and a future Nobel prize winner. Dr. Curie took charge of the delivery, which Mme. Curie endured without a cry, her teeth clenched. 

The idea of choosing between family life and the scientific career did not even cross Marie’s mind. While a young wife kept house, washed her baby daughter and put pans on the fire, in a wretched laboratory at the School of Physics, a woman physicist was making the most important discovery of modern science.

The next stage in the logical development of her career was the doctor’s degree…Marie, reviewing the most recent work in physics with Pierre, was in search of a subject for a thesis. At this critical moment Pierre’s advice had an importance which cannot be neglected. But without a doubt Marie’s character, her intimate nature, had a great part in this all important choice. From childhood the Polish girl had carried the curiosity and daring of an explorer within her.  In her walks in the woods she always chose the wild trail or the unfrequented road. 

So Marie going through the reports of the last experimental studies was attracted by the publication of the French scientist Henri Becquerel of the preceding year. She and Pierre already knew this work; she read it over again and studied it with her usual care.  “After Roentgen’s discovery of X rays, Henri Poincare’ conceived the idea of determining whether rays like the X ray were emitted by “fluorescent” bodies under the action of light. Attracted by the same problem, Henri Becquerel examined the salts of a “rare metal,” uranium. Instead of finding the phenomenon he had expected, he observed another, altogether different and incomprehensible: he found that uranium salts spontaneously emitted, without exposure to light, some rays of unknown nature. A compound of uranium, placed on a photographic plate surrounded by black paper, made an impression on the plate through the paper. And, like the X ray these astonishing “uranic” salts discharged an electroscope by rendering the surrounding air a conductor.

Henri Becquerel made sure that these surprising properties were not caused by a preliminary exposure to the sun and that they persisted when the uranium compound had been maintained in darkness for several months. For the first time, a physicist had observed the phenomenon to which Marie Curie was later to give the name of radioactivity. But the nature of the radiation and its origin remained an enigma. Becquerel’s discovery fascinated the Curies.  What was the nature of this radiation? Here was an engrossing subject of research, a doctor’s thesis! The subject tempted Marie most because it was a virgin field. It was a leap into great adventure, into an unknown realm. Marie set about her investigation. The more Marie penetrated into intimacy with uranium rays, the more they seemed without precedent, essentially unknown. They were like nothing else. Nothing affected them. In spite of their very feeble power, they had an extraordinary individuality.  Turning this mystery over and over in her head, and pointing toward the truth, Marie felt and could soon affirm that the incomprehensible radiation was an atomic property. She questioned; even though the phenomenon had only been observed with uranium, nothing proved that uranium was the only chemical element capable of emitting such radiation. Why should other bodies possess the same power? Perhaps it was only by chance that this radiation had been observed in uranium first, and had remained attached to uranium in the minds of physicists. Now it must be sought for elsewhere. No sooner said than done. Abandoning the study of uranium, Marie undertook to examine all known chemical bodies, either in the pure state or in compounds. And the result was not long in appearing: compounds of another element, thorium, also emitted spontaneous rays like those of uranium and of similar intensity. The physicist had been right: the surprising phenomenon was by no means the property of uranium alone, and it became necessary to give it a distinct name. Mme Curie suggested the name of radioactivity.  Radioactivity so fascinated the young scientist that she never tired of examining the most diverse forms of matter, always by the same method. Curiosity, a marvelous feminine curiosity, the first virtue of a scientist, was developed in Marie. To the highest degree, instead of limiting her observation to simple compounds, salts and oxides, she had the desire to assemble samples of minerals from the collection at the School of Physics.  Pierre approved and helped her select them. Marie’s idea was simple—simple as the stroke of genius.  Now she turned toward the unplumbed and unknown.  Rejecting the inactive minerals, Marie applied herself to the others and measured their radioactivity. Then came a dramatic revelation: the radioactivity was a great deal stronger that could have been normally foreseen by the quantity of uranium or thorium contained in the products examined! Where did this excessive and abnormal radiation come from?  Only one explanation was possible: minerals must contain in small quantity, a much more powerful radioactive substance than uranium and thorium. But what substance?

The scientist replied to the question with the sure logic and the magnificent audaciousness of a great mind. The minerals certainly contained a radioactive substance, which was at the same time a chemical element unknown until this day: a new element. The moment of discovery does not always exist.  But it must have been an exultant moment when, convinced by the rigorous reasoning of her brain that she was on the trail of new matter, she confided the secret to her elder sister, her ally always.

It was barely four years before that Marie had written, “Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.  That “something” was to throw science upon a path hitherto unsuspected.

In a first communication to the Academy, presented by Prof. Lippmann and published in the proceedings of April 12, 1898, Marie Sklodovska Curie announced the probable presence in pitchblende ores of a new element endowed with powerful radioactivity. This was the first stage of the discovery of radium.  By the force of her own intuition the physicist had shown that this wonderful substance must exist. She decreed its existence.  Now, she would have to verify hypothesis by experiment, isolate this material and see it. She must be able to announce with certainty: “It is there.”

Pierre Curie had followed the rapid progress of his wife’s experiments with passionate interest.  In view of the stupefying character of her results, he did not hesitate to abandon his study of crystals for the time being in order to join his efforts to hers in the search for the new substance.  The available force was now doubled. Two brains, four hands now sought the unknown element in the damp little workroom in the Rue Lhomond. 

We know that after the examination of minerals she was able to announce the existence of a new chemical element, powerfully radioactive.  His wife’s genius appears to us in the first intuition of discovery, the brilliant start; and it was to reappear to us again, solitary, when Marie Curie the widow unflinchingly carried the weight of a new science and conducted it, through research, step by step, to its harmonious expansion.The personal genius is known to us by the original work he had accomplished before this collaboration. The following publication occurred:

“Certain minerals containing uranium and   (pitchblende, chalocite, uranite) are very active from the point of view of the emission of B ecquerel rays . In a preceding publication, one of us showed that their activity was even greater than that of uranium and thorium, and stated the opinion that this effect was due to some other very active substance contained in small quantity in these minerals. (Pierre and Marie Curie, Proceedings of the Academy of Science, July 18, 1898.)

But there was more than one malefactor here: the radioactivity was concentrated principally in two different fractions of the pitchblende. For M. and Mme. Curie it indicated the existence of two new elements instead of one. By July 1898 they were able to announce the discovery of one of these substances with certainty. 

In the Proceedings of the Academy for July 1898 we read: “We believe the substance we have extracted from pitchblende contains a metal not yet observed, related to bismuth by its analytical properties. If the existence of this new element is confirmed, we propose to call it polonium. From the name of the original country of one of us.”

In the Proceedings of the Academy for the session of December 28, 1898 there was published a communication from Pierre and Marie Curie, with a collaborator, G. Be’mont, which included the following, “The various reasons we have just enumerated lead us to believe that the new radioactive substance contains a new element to which we propose to give the name of RADIUM.  The new radioactive substance certainly contains a very strong proportion of barium; in spite of that its radioactivity is considerable. The radioactivity of radium therefore must be enormous.”

The physicist colleagues of the Curies received the news in slightly different fashion. The special properties of polonium and radium upset fundamental theories in which scientists had believed for centuries. How was one to explain the spontaneous radiation of the radioactive bodies? The discovery upset a world of acquired knowledge and contradicted the most firmly established ideas on the composition of matter.  The physicists awaited the acquisition of decisive results.  The attitude of the chemist was even more downright. By definition, a chemist only believes in the existence of a new substance when he has seen the substance, touched it, weighed and examined it, confronted it with acids, bottled it, and when he has determined its “atomic weight”.

To show polonium and radium to the incredulous, to prove to the world the existence of their “children”, and to complete their own conviction, M. and Mme Curie were now to labor for four years.   

Marie and Pierre Curie could not get a decent laboratory. Up to the present nobody had seen radium. Nobody knew the atomic weight of radium.  And the chemists, faithful to their principles, concluded:  “No atomic weight, no radium. Show us some radium and we will believe you.”  The aim was to obtain pure radium and polonium.

Pierre and Marie already knew the method by which they could hope to isolate the new metals, but the separation could not be made except by treating large quantities of crude material. 

How were they to get a sufficient quantity of ore?  What premises could they use to effect their treatment?  What money was there to pay the inevitable cost of the work?  Pitchblende, in which polonium and radium were hidden, was a costly ore.  Ingenuity was to make up for wealth.

According to the expectation of the two scientists, the extraction of uranium should leave, intact in the ore, such traces of polonium and radium as the ore contains. There was no reason why these traces should not be found in the residue. And whereas crude pitchblende was costly, its residue after treatment had very slight value.  It was simple enough: but somebody had to think of it. It was necessary, of course, to buy this crude material and pay for its transportation to Paris. Pierre and Marie appropriated the required sum from their very slight savings.  If two physicists on the scent of an immense discovery had asked the University of Paris or the French government for a grant to buy pitchblende residue they would have been laughed at. 

But at least could there not be found, in the numerous buildings attached to the Sorbonne, some kind of suitable workroom to lend to the Curie couple? Apparently not. After vain attempts, Pierre and Marie staggered back to their point of departure …to the little room where Marie had done her first experiments.  It was an abandoned shack, a wooden shed with a skylight roof in such bad condition that it admitted the rain. The shed was stifling in the summer and frigid in the winter. The stove barely worked. When a shower came the physicists hastily moved their apparatus inside: to keep on working without being suffocated they set up draughts between the open doors and windows. Because the shed possessed no chimneys to carry off noxious gases the greater part of their work had to be carried on in the open air, in the courtyard. Such were the conditions under which the Curies worked for four years from 1898 to 1902.

Pierre was so tired of the interminable struggle that he would have been quite ready to abandon it.  He counted without his wife’s character. Marie wanted to isolate radium and she would isolate it. She scorned fatigue and difficulties, and even the gaps in her own knowledge which complicated her task.

In 1902, forty-five months after the day on which the Curies announced the probable existence of radium, Marie finally carried off the victory in this war of attrition: she succeeded in preparing a decigram of pure radium, and made a first determination of the atomic weight of the new substance, which was 225.

“Pierre walked slowly about the room. Marie sat down and made some stiches on the hem of Irenes’s new apron. One of her principles was never to  buy ready-made clothes for the child; she thought them too fancy and impractical.  But this evening she could not fix her attention. Nervous, she got up; then, suddenly: “Suppose we go down there for a moment?” There was a note of supplication in her voice, altogether superfluous, for Pierre , like herself, longed to go back to the shed they had left two hours before. 

As soon as they had put on their coats and told Dr. Curie of their flight, they were in the street . Pierre put the key in the lock.  “Don’t light the lamps!” Marie said in the darkness. Then she added with a little laugh:  “Do you remember the day when you said to me ‘I should like radium to have a beautiful color’?

 The reality was more entrancing than the simple wish of long ago. Radium is something better than “a beautiful color”: it was spontaneously luminous. And in the somber shed where, in the absence of cupboards, the precious particles in their tiny glass receivers were placed on tables or on shelves nailed to the wall, their phosphorescent bluish outlines gleamed, suspended in the night.

 “Look…Look! the young woman murmured. She went forward cautiously, looked forward and found a straw-bottomed chair. She sat down in the darkness and silence. Their two faces turned toward the pale glimmering, the mysterious sources of radiation, toward radium—their radium.  Her body leaning forward, her head eager, Marie took up again the attitude which had been hers an hour earlier at the bedside of her sleeping child .  Her companion’s hand lightly touched her hair. “She was to remember forever this evening of glowworms, this magic.”

Pierre was overloaded and had a too sparse income. He applied for a post of professor at the Sorbonne. If he could obtain that and be furnished a laboratory, his needs would have been met. He was rejected and another person appointed.

 “The discovery of radium, without having reached the general public was known by physicists.”

The University of Geneva made a generous offer to the Curies including a professorship for Pierre, a position for Marie and a laboratory.  Pierre accepted the offer, but after consideration, declined it because it would delay their work on radium.

Pierre accepted a post at an annex of the Sorbonne in the Rue Cuvier and Marie obtained a post teaching at the Higher Normal School for Girls, near Versailles. The budget was now balanced but required an enormous amount of work. Pierre tried to get a laboratory but was unsuccessful. There was another vacancy at the Sorbonne but Pierre’s competitor got the job.  The Curies were approaching physical exhaustion, particularly Pierre.

“From 1899 to 1904 the Curies published, sometimes together and sometimes separately, or sometimes in collaboration with one of their colleagues, thirty-two scientific communications. The titles of their notes are grim, and their text bristles with diagrams and formulae which frighten the layman. Each of them, nevertheless, represents a victory. In reading the dry enumeration of the most important reports, let us think of how much curiosity, obstinacy and genius lie within them…”

Radioactivity, generation of heat, production of helium gas and emanation, spontaneous self-destruction—how far we had traveled from the old theories on inert matter, on the immovable atom! Not more than five years before, scientists had believed our universe to be composed of defined substances, elements fixed  forever.  The residue of this tiny, terrifying explosion, which Marie was to call “the cataclysm of atomic transformation,” was a gaseous emanation which itself was transformed into another radioactive body which was transformed in its turn. Thus the radio elements formed  strange and cruel families in which each member was created by the  spontaneous transformation of the mother substance: radium was a “descendant” of uranium, polonium a descendant of radium. These bodies, created at every instant, destroyed themselves according to eternal laws: each radio element lost half its substance in a time which was always the same, which was to be called its “period”.

To diminish itself by one half, uranium requires several thousand mllion years, radium sixteen hundred years, the emanation of radium four days and the descendants of emanation only a few seconds; such were the facts which the discovery of radioactivity revealed. Philosophers had only to begin their philosophy all over again and physicists their physics.”

The last and most moving miracle was that radium could do something for the happiness of human beings. It was to become their ally against an atrocious disease, cancer.

The German scientists Walkhoff and Giesel announced in 1900 that the new substance had certain physiological effects; Pierre Curie at once applied the technique which seemed to him most practical. Indifferent to danger, he exposed his arm to the action of radium. To his joy, a lesion appeared. He watched over it, followed its evolution and, in a report to the Academy, phlegmatically described the symptoms observed.

Radium was useful---magnificently useful.  The immediate consequence of such relations can be guessed. The extraction of the new element no longer had merely experimental interest. It had become indispensable, salutary. A radium industry was about to be born. 

“By purifying pitchblende and isolating radium Marie had invented a technique and created a process for manufacture.  Since the therapeutic effects of radium had become known, radioactive ores were sought for everywhere. Plans for exploitation had been made in several countries, particularly in Belgium and in America. But these factories could only produce the “fabulous metal” if their engineers knew the secret of the delicate operations involved in preparing pure radium.

Pierre explained these things to his wife one Sunday morning in the little house in the Boulevard Kellermann. The postman had just brought a letter from the United States. The scientist had read it attentively, had folded it up again and placed it on his desk.

 “We must speak a little about our radium”, he said in peaceful tones. “The industry is going to be greatly extended; that is certain now. The recent cures of malignant tumors have been conclusive; in a few years the whole world will be wanting radium. Just now, in fact, this letter has come in from Buffalo—some technicians who want to exploit radium in America ask me to give them information.”

“Well, then?” Marie said, taking no vivid interest in the conversation.

 “Well, then we have a choice between two solutions. We can describe the results of our research without reserve, including the processes of purification.”

Marie made mechanical gesture of approval and murmured: “Yes, naturally.”

 “Or else,” Pierre went on, “We can consider ourselves to be the proprietors, the ‘inventors’ of radium.  In this case it would be necessary, before publishing exactly how you worked to treat pitchblende, to patent the technique and assure ourselves in that way of rights over the manufacture of radium throughout the world.

Marie reflected a few seconds. Then she said, “It is impossible. It would be contrary to the scientific spirit.” Pierre’s serious face lightened. To settle his conscience, he dwelt upon it.

 “I think so too…” He mentioned too, with a little laugh, “We could have a fine laboratory too.”

Marie’s gaze grew fixed. She steadily considered this idea of gain, of material compensation. Almost at once she rejected it. “Physicists always publish their researches completely. If our discovery has a commercial future, that is an accident by which we must not profit.  And radium is going to be of use in treating disease. It seems to me impossible to take advantage of that.”

A quarter of an hour this little Sunday morning talk, Pierre and Marie passed the Gentilly gate on their beloved bicycles, and pedaling at a good pace, headed for the woods of Clamart. They had chosen forever between poverty and fortune. In the evening they came back exhausted, their arms filled with leaves and bunches of field flowers.

With the coming of fame after the years of struggling, one would have thought that there would also arrive contentment, but that was not the case. That is because the Curies were seeking something that is not easily obtainable, that is a better world attained by the use of human intellectual power.

France had given them some scientific awards. Their first big prize was when the Royal Institution of England invited Pierre to give a lecture on radium. On the evening of the lecture Lord Kelvin was seated beside Marie who was the first woman ever been admitted to a session of the Institution. “The enthusiasm aroused by that meeting had its repercussion on the morrow: All London wanted to see the parents of radium.”

At these brilliant receptions, they listened to the toasts given in their honor.  At one Marie’s dress was dark, only slightly cut out at the neck, her hands, ruined by acids, were bare. There was not even a wedding ring, “Near her, over bare throats, there gleamed the finest diamonds in the empire.” She looked at the diamonds with pleasure and noted, with surprise, that Pierre was also admiring them. Her told her later he was calculating how many laboratories could be built by their sale.

On December 10, 1903, the Academy of Science in Stockholm announced that the Nobel prize in physics was to be awarded half to Henri Becquerel and half to the Curies. They were to be sent a check for seventy thousand francs. An award from a scientific society was different from industrial profits. They had renounced a fortune, but now could live in comfort. Marie used part of the funds to aid members of her family and other acquaintances who were in need.

The Curies were “at an age where genius, served by experience, could give its maximum. They had successfully accomplished, in a barrack sodden with rain, the discovery of radium which astonished the world. But the mission was not finished: their brains contained the possibility of other unknown riches. They wanted to work; they had to work.”

In 1902 Marie wrote to her cousin Henrietta, “Our peaceful and laborious existence is completely disorganized: I do not know if it will ever regain its equilibrium.”

The Curies were united in how they reacted to the hubbub surrounding their fame. “They were richer in money, less rich in happy moments”. “The hubbub which celebrating radium and the Nobel prize irritated her without distracting her for an instant from the care which was poisoning her life: Pierre’s illness.”

“The weather was fine, Pierre felt stronger, and Marie was in better spirits. “On June 6, 1995, in the name of his wife and himself, Pierre Curie spoke on radium before the Academy of Sciences of Stockholm. He evoked the consequences of the discovery of radium. In physics it profoundly modified the fundamental principals of mechanics. In chemistry it stirred up bold hypotheses on the source of energy which supplied the radioactive phenomena. In geology, in meteorology, it was the key to phenomena which had never been explained before. In biology, last of all, the action of radium on cancerous cells had proved efficacious.

Radium had enriched Knowledge and served the Good. But could it also serve Evil? One may also imagine (Pierre said in conclusion) that in criminal hands radium might become very dangerous, and here we may ask ourselves if humanity had anything to gain by learning the secrets of nature, if it is ripe enough to profit by them, or if this knowledge is not harmful. The example of Nobel’s discoveries is characteristic: powerful explosives have permitted men to perform admirable work. They are also a terrible means of destruction in the hands of the great criminals who lead the peoples toward war.

I am among those who think, with Nobel, that humanity will obtain more good than evil from the new discoveries.

The Curies were to be seen at exhibitions of paintings and seven or eight times a year they permitted themselves two hours at a concert or the theater. There were wonderful actors and actresses in Paris at the beginning of the last century.

On April 19.1906, at the Hotel des Societe Sante’ Pierre chatted amicably with colleagues. “Toward half past two, smiling he got up, said good-by to his comrades, and shook hands with Jean Perrin, whom he was supposed to meet again that evening. On the threshold he looked up into the air mechanically and made a face at the clouded sky. Opening his big umbrella, he went out into the downpour and walked toward the Seine.”  He had been treading the asphalt for several minutes behind a closed cab. Then cutting across his route, a heavy wagon drawn by two horses emerge from the bridge and entered the Rue Dauphine at a trot. Pierre wanted to cross the street. With the sudden movement of an absent minded man, he made a sudden movement and fell beneath the feet of the powerful horses. His body  on the ground and the left back wheel of the wagon crushed his head.

 From the moment when those three words, “Pierre is dead” reached her consciousness, a cope of solitude and secrecy fell upon Marie’s shoulders forever.”

Marie’s diary: I have been offered the post of successor to you, my Pierre; your course and the direction of your laboratory. I have accepted.

May 7, 1906:

My Pierre, I think of you without end, my head is bursting with it and my reason is troubled.  I do not understand that I am to live henceforth without seeing you, without  smiling at the sweet companion of my life.

When war came Marie wanted to do something. She sent apparatuses to the hospitals in Paris.

She wrote a book, Radiology in War. She obtained twenty cars by cajoling generous women and others to lend their limousines for the duration.

She immediately transformed them into radiological Stations. She kept one for her personal use.

 “A telegram or a telephone call would notify Mme Curie that an ambulance laden with wounded demanded a radiological post in a hurry. Marie would immediately verify the equipment of her car and attach her apparatus and dynamo…

Upon reaching the hospital where the wounded were located, she would select a room, and aided by the chauffer, unpack all of the radiological equipment, reassemble it and test it. Then the surgeon would appear and with Marie enter the darkened area into which the wounded soldier was brought.

 “One after another the stretchers laden with suffering bodies were brought in. The man would be extended on the radiological table. Marie regulated the apparatus focused on the torn flesh so as to obtain a clear view. The bones and organs showed their precise outlines, and in the midst of them appeared a thick dark fragment: the shot or piece of shell.

 “Aside from the twenty motor cars she equipped, Marie thus installed two hundred radiological rooms. The total number of wounded men examined by these 220 posts, fixed or  mobile—posts created and started going by Mme Curie personally---went above a million.”

If she were not ill, she was at Suippes, at Reims, Calais, Popiainghe— in one of the three or four hundred French and Belgian hospitals that she was to visit while the hostilities endured. France’s allies called upon her.

She visited Belgium many times. She went to northern Italy.

“The lack of trained manipulators worried her.  “She proposed to found and conduct a course of instruction in radiology. Before long about twenty nurses gathered at the Radium Institute for the first course.”

 “The guns of the armistice surprised her in her laboratory.  For Marie there were two victories instead of one: Poland was born again from the ashes, and after a century of slavery became a free country once more.”

She wrote to her brother Joseph. One phrase from the letter was, “Like you, I have faith in the future.”  “She was asked to write a book Radiology in War. In it she exalted the good work of scientific discovery, eternal research, and its human value.

She had drawn from her tragic experience new reasons for adoring science.” “Whether it was that her health had grown better after the exhausting years of the war, or that the appeasement of age was beginning, Marie became more serene after her fiftieth year…”

“One morning in May 1920 a lady was ushered into the tiny waiting room of the Institute of Radium.” She was Mrs. William Brown Meloney who edited a magazine in New York. She was a great admirer of Marie but had never met her.

She wrote: “The door opened and I saw a pale, timid little woman in a black cotton Dress, with the saddest face I ever looked upon. Her kind, patient, beautiful face had the detached expression of a scholar. Suddenly I felt like an intruder.” They began to talk about America.

Marie knew the grams of radium held by various American cities. Mrs. Meloney learned that The Radium Institute did not have sufficient equipment in its laboratory.  Mrs. Meloney suggested royalties on her patents which would have made her  a very rich woman.

Marie replied: “Radium was not to enrich anyone. Radium is an element. It belongs to all people.”  Mrs. Meloney organized a committee that raised money from all over the new world. She contacted Marie and told her the money had been raised.

“The generous American women offered Marie Curie help; but in exchange they asked her gently, amicably: why should not come to see us? We want to know you.”

Some days later Marie Curie was on board the Olympia with her two daughters. Then followed a tour of the United State in which she was much honored. On May 23 she went to the White House, where with many people present at four o’clock a double door opened for the entrance of the procession: Mrs. Harding on the arm of M. Jusserand, the French ambassador; Mme Curie on President Harding’s arm; then Mrs Meloney, Irene and Eve Curie, and the ladies of the “Marie Curie Committee”. Then the guests filed into the Blue Room to pass in front of and greet the scientist.

President Harding had presented her with the gram of radium purchased by the Committee. The guests would have been surprised to know that when Mrs. Meloney had presented to Marie the papers of the gift of radium Marie had asked that a lawyer should be called to draw up an instrument to modify it to provide that in the event of her death the radium would belong to the laboratory, which was done.

She got to see Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon. She received honorary degrees and warm receptions in many parts of the country.

She wrote in her diary , “A large number of my friends affirm, not without valid reasons, that if Pierre Curie and I had guaranteed our rights, we should have acquired the financial means necessary to the creation of a satisfactory radium institute, without encountering the obstacles which were a handicap to both of us, and which are still a handicap for me.

Nevertheless, I am still convinced that we were right.  Humanity certainly needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. Without the slightest doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely concentrated to research.”

Eve Curies’ book continues: “Marie was responsible for a new science and a new system of therapeutics. The prestige of her name was such that by a simple gesture, by the mere fact of being present, she could assure the success of some project of general interest that was dear to her.

I shall not describe all Maries’ journeys: they were much alike. Scientific congresses, lectures,  university ceremonies and visits to laboratories called Mme Curie to a large number of capitals.

She was feted and acclaimed in them all. Usually such sojourns ended with a dinner or a visit with the sovereigns: King Albert and Queen Elizabeth, whom Marie had known on the Belgian front, honored her with their charming friendship…

 On May15, 1922, by unanimous vote, the Council of the League of Nations named Marie a member of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation.  Marie accepted and was named Vice President. The committee was composed of brilliant personalities, including Einstein.

She was struggling against what she called the “anarchy of scientific work” in the world, and tried to obtain an agreement among her confreres on a certain number of precise questions including the international co-ordination of bibliography, the unification of scientific symbols and terminology, of the format of scientific publications, and of the accounts of research works published in reviews, and the creation of a Table of Constants.

Instruction in universities and laboratories claimed her attention for a long time. Once only in 1933, she abandoned these practical questions and went to Madrid to preside over a debate on “The Future of Culture” in which writers and authors of all countries took part: “Don Quixotes of the spirit, who are fighting their windmills,” Paul Valery, the initiator of the meeting, called them.

Marie Curie to Eve Curie, July 1929: “I believe international work is a heavy task, but that it is nevertheless indispensable to go through an apprenticeship in it, at the cost of many efforts and also a spirit of real sacrifice: however imperfect it may be, the work of Geneva has a grandeur which deserves support.”

She went to the laboratory at The Radium Institute daily. She sojourned at her villa near the sea in which she would swim several hundred meters.

In 1934 she became ill. The best doctors came to see her. They were uncertain of her ailment but recommended that she go to a sanatorium. She was sent to Saint-Gervais  to the Sancellemoz sanatorium, where she was installed in the best room and was under care  of very attentive doctors.

 “At Sancellemoz De. Tobe’ drew up the following report: Mme Pierre Curie died at Sancellemoz on July 4, 1934. The disease was an aplastic, pernicious anaemia of rapid, feverish development. The bone marrow did not react, probably because it had been injured by a long accumulation of radiations.”

Thus Marie Curie ended her mission and her marvelous mind seek to function. The dichotomy of good and evil that she and Pierre foresaw has manifested itself in the recent occurrence in Japan of radiological emanations at a nuclear plant, arising from disruptions caused by a terremoto and tsunami.

It will be recalled that one of the most sought after goals of Marie Curie was the development of new bright scientific minds, including women and men and affluent and non affluent persons, who could solve some of the problems that inevitably were going to arise.