Marie Curie; The Unesco courier: a window ... - unesdoc - Unesco

MARIE CURIE (Continued)
times passed a whole day stirring a
boiling mass of pitchblende, with an
iron rod almost as big as myself. In
the evening I would be broken with
fatigue."
It was in 1902, forty-five months
after the day on which the Curies had
announced the probable existence of
radium, that Marie finally succeeded
in preparing a decigramme of pure
radium. She made a first calculation
as to its atomic weight 225.
Now the sceptics of which there
were still a few could only bow
before the facts, before the super¬
human obstinacy of a woman who had
performed one of the great scientific
feats of the century. Now radium
officially existed.
Marie and Pierre were to have four
more years together, four years during
which radium became an industry, was
used in the field of medicine to cure
growths, tumours and most impor¬
tant
certain forms of cancers: another
daughter, Eve, was born; in 1903 the
Curies received, with Henri Becquerel,
the Nobel Prize for Physics; the name
Curie became world-famous.
Then one rainy morning in the April
of 1906 Pierre was making his way
home up the Rue Dauphme.
Crossing
the street, he was killed when the back
wheel of a
over his skull.
horsedrawn wagon passed
in 1895, after studying at the Sorbonne for four years,
Maria Sklodowska, the Polish student, married Pierre Curie,
the French physicist (left). Until Pierre's deatji In 1906
they pursued, with the same intense passion, what
Pierre once called "our scientific dream". Their eleven
years together, working with only bare necessities, produced
a phenomenal result: the discovery of polonium and
radium. Above, the makeshift laboratory in which Marie
Curie succeeded in producing the first decigrammes
of the mysterious white metal: radium.
YEARS OF HAPPINESS, WORK AND TRIUMPH
Marie Curie at the wheel of one of the radiological cars she put into service
during the First World War. More than one fnillion wounded soldiers were
examined in the 20 cars and 200 fixed posts created by Marie Curie.
On that day in April, Madame Curie
became, not only a widow, but a pitiful
and incurably lonely woman.
hat was to become of her
now? What was to become of the
research Pierre had left in suspense,
and of his teaching at the Sorbonne?
On May 13, 1906, the council of the
Faculty of Science decided, unanim¬
ously, to maintain the chair created for
Pierre Curie and offer it to his wife.
In 1911, Mane Curie was awarded
the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. In 1912,
she was created Member of the Scien¬
tific Society of Warsaw. In 1913 she
became Member Extraordinary of the
Royal Academy of Sciences (Mathe¬
matics and Physics section) Amster¬
dam; Doctor of the University of Birm¬
ingham and Honorary Member of the
Association of Arts and Sciences of
Edinburgh. In the same "year she
attended in Warsaw the opening of the
radioactivity laboratory, dedicated to
her.
In 1921, seated in a chair and
encircled by reporters and
cameramen, Marie Curie
arrives in New York.
retiring woman,
A
she now
underwent the ordeal of being
famous.
To thank the United
States for the gift of a
gramme of radium, she had
conquered her fears and
for the first time in her life she
accepted the obligations of
a great official journey. She
was the discoverer of
radium, but lacked the means
to produce it in the quantity
needed for her research.
18
In the following year, a small white
building was completed in the Rue
Pierre Curie in Pans. Cut into the
stone, above its entrance, were the
words : Institut du Radium, Pavillon
Curie.
This "temple of the future" was
now ready to receive its radium, its
workers and its director.
With the outbreak of the First World
War, Mane Curie foresaw the urgent
need to organize the manufacture of
At the University of Columbia,
in the United States, Marie
Curie advances to receive
the honorary degree of
Doctor of Science. She was
then aged 54. During her
lifetime she was so honoured
twenty times by universities
in the U.S.A., Britain,
Poland and
Switzerland.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 20
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