GREAT SCIENTIST RAIN IN CANTERBURY

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 98, 27 April 1935, Page 11

GREAT SCIENTIST

RAIN IN CANTERBURY

MME. CURIE'S "TIMIDITY"

DAUGHTER'S SPEECH

Scientists, surgeons, and politicians listened recently to a speech by the younger daughter of Mmc. Curie, the discoverer of radium, at a banquet at Claridge's, Hotel for the funds of the British Memorial to Mme. Curie—the Marie' Curie Hospital at Hampstead, states the "Daily Telegraph." The hospital isappealing for £50,000 for endowment and £5000 a year for maintenance. Mr. Neville Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exchequer, who presided, announced that the result, of the table collection at the banquet was £3875. Mile. Eva Curie, a slim figure in black, began, by apologising for her. "very poor English," and said she was not a brilliant and well-known scientist and did not know more about radium than any other, women. MME. CURIE'S MOTTO. "I lived with my mother until the last hour of her life," she went on, "and there is a sentence in ten words i that she often repeated and which is a striking illustration of her courage and j of her character: 'In Science we should be interested in things, not persons.' V "To my mother this meant that her own self was of no importance compared with things to which she devoted I her life, compared with Science, which she loved, compared with the progress of human knowledge, which she served with all the strength of her intelligence. "Tributes pßid to her personal glory | were a sort of torture for her extreme timidity and her natural reserve. The I burden of celebrity overwhelmed and oppressed her. At the end of her life she used to say, 'I am nothing but a student.'" The Chancellor of the Exchequer described Mme. Curie as "one of the greatest benefactors of the human race." STORY OF A DIAMOND. Mr. Chamberlain described how he first saw radium, at a dinner party at his father's house. Sir Oliver Lodge brought some raflium in his waistcoat pocket. No one had seen it before and it was "a bombardment of a fluorescent screen in a dark room." "There, was a woman there with a particularly fine necklace, and we, watched with admiration one stone after another glow as the radium came into contact with it. But when we got to the.biggest and best of all, it was a black spot, and the lights were turned on as quickly as possible." (Laughter.) ''There are no national frontiers for science. We share Pasteur and Curie," he continued, in his appeal for the Marie Curie Hospital, "staffed by women and run for the benefit ofwomen." Lord Macmillan said that the Marie Curie Hospital suffered from an unbalanced budget. It was a great memorial to a great woman. "There are only 39 beds for the treatment of women suffering from cancer," he said.

(By Telegraph.— Prese Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. Heavy rain is falling today in the back country/ *v^