MARIE CURIE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 19, 23 January 1937, Page 6

MARIE CURIE

HER WORK WITH RADIUM

SCIENTIST AND HOUSEWIFE

QUIET SIMPLICITY

"The foremost woman investigator." Thai is how Lord Rutherford described Marie Curie when she passed away a few years ago, says a writer in the Melbourne "Age." Her outlook upon life and duty shone out in her , declaration: "Radium is not to enrich any one. It is an element; it is for all people." If any authority had the right to pronounce dogmatically on the Subject she had earned it by a lifetime devoted to scientific study and made glorjous by self-denial and self-sacrifice. The story as told by herself is a record of triumphs first at her husband's side as a skilled collaborator, and afterwards as his successor in his chair at the University of Paris. We are at the great advantage of having a biography 'of her husband written by herself, and a still more intimate sketch of her career from her own pen. When her American friends urged her to write the story of her life the idea seemed alien to her, but she yielded to persuasion. She was essentially modest and retiring, and the lady who had the chief part in persuading America to honour her felt that the autobiographical notes required considerable addition if justice was to be done to so great and noble a character. The editor of "Le Matin" said that Madame Curie saw no one and did nothing but work, disliked publicity and could not under- ■ stand why scientists rather than science should be discussed in the Press. American persistence had its way, and the greatest woman scientist of our age has told us a story which will never be forgotten. OF POLISH ORIGIN. She was of Polish origin, and her maiden name was Marie Sklodowska. She came from a line of small Polish landed proprietors, a group from which "Poland has drawn her intellectual recruits." Her father was Professor of Physics and Mathematics at Warsaw, and her mother was director of one of the best Warsaw schools for young girls. Born in 1807, Marie was the last of five children. Warsaw, being under Russian rule, suffered from the oppression exerted on the schools. The children were compelled to learn the Russian language almost before they had learned to speak their own. All instruction was given in Russian, and the moral atmosphere was unbearable. One result was the deepening of patriotism in Polish youths. Marie was fifteen when she finished her high school studies, and always held first place in her class. At seventeen she left school to take up work as a governess. It was In 1891 that she arrived in Paris to enter upon the course of study which had been the dream of her life. Living in a garret, she found the cold of winter so keen, and coals so expensive, that water would freeze in a basin, and to be able to sleep she had to pile all her clothes on the bed covers. In 1894 she met Pierre Curie, already a well-known physicist, and the marriage took place a year later. They began life in a little apartment of three rooms furnished by the parents, and a money gift from a friend enabled them ot buy two bicycles, With splendid persistence she did most of her housekeeping, and at the same time continued her studies. BOTH INTERESTED. Both she and her husband became specially interested in Becquerel's_ experiments on the salts of uranium. From that point they began research with radio-activity, and in 1898 obtained polonium and radium, from pitchblende. "The discovery and isolation of radium was of outstanding significance, both theoretical and practical. Its use in the treatment of cancerous growths is proved in the hospitals of the world." "One morning in the spring of 1898 Marie Curie stepped, forth from a crude shack on the outskirts of Paris with the greatest secret of the century literally in the palm of her hand. It was one of the silent; unheralded moments in the world's, history." So wrote Mrs. Meloney, who planned for Marie Curie the appropriate gift of a gramme of radium. It was in 1902 that the existence and character of radium were definitely established. In 1903 she obtained her doctor's degree, and at the enii of. the same year the Nobel Prize, was jointly to Becquerel, her husband, and herself for the discovery of radio-activity and new- radio-active elements. In 1906 she lost her husband. He was run over by a dray in Paris, and killed instantly. She felt unable-to face the future, but. was inspired by remembering how he used to say that even if deprived of him she ought to continue her work. HER HUSBAND'S CHAIRTo her also at this crisis came the exceptional offer of her husband's chair in the university. No woman had ever held such a position. A new j precedent had been created. At her installation a large crowd o£ celebri-! ties, statesmen, and academicians assembled. Suddenly through a small side door entered a woman all in black, with pale hands and high arched forehead. The magnificent forehead won notice first. It was not merely a woman who stood before us, but a brain and living thought."Heir appearance was enthusiastically applauded for five minutes. With trembling lips she began her lecture on the theories of radio-activity since, the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1911 she received for the second time the Nobel Prize, this time alone. During the Great War she was sent by the Government to Bordeaux in charge of all the radium in her laboratory,. and she rendered high service in the field by providing radiological installations in hospitals and also a radiological car. In regions distant from the front she took care of many hospitals and visited ambulance stations at scores of centres. Her wotk was exhaustive and exhausting, and did something to shorten her life. In the year 1921 she was invited to America to receive the gift of a gramme of radium (£20,000) from the women of that great country. The President made the presentation. It was on this occasion she said that radium was not to enrich anyone, and she insisted that a deed should be drawn up stipulating that in the event of her death the. gift was to become ; the property of the Paris Radium Institution for exclusive use in the Laboratoire Curie. She paid another visit to America in 1929, and in her later years she saw her work continued by her daughter, Irene, and her husband. Here was a woman whose brilliant scientific attainments went hand in hand with a quiet dignified simplicity, which impressed all who heard her. She was. in a true sense, a selfless personality. Even during the war," when she ran her own radiological truck from hospital to hospital in the zone of operations, and in constant contact with mud and blood, she washed and dried and pressed her own clothes. During her American travels she

would do this, and when friends remonstrated she made light of it, saying it. was nothing, and the servants had enough to do. She was a conspicuous example of the principle "noblesse oblige." Her name has been perpetuated in thi term "curietherapy" as the French substitue for radiotherapy. When she visited England she was welcomed and acclaimed by the learned bodies, and in Sweden, when receiving the Nobel prize in a setting with the features of a national solemnity, she was made to feel not only the admiration with which the women regarded her, but the honour in which she was held by the whole country. A touching reception was given her on a visit to Warsaw, where she was offered the directorship of the laboratory established ■by the Scientific Society of Warsaw. Her poor little shack where her husband and she laboured in Paris blossomed and bore fruit in the creation of laboratories everywhere. It is not too much to say that her work has brought hope and healing to multitudes of suffering men and women, that she ranks with Simpson and Lister and all the other illuminati whose labours and 1 discoveries have blessed the world, and that her supreme unselfishness shows her to have been as great in the moral sphere as she was in the world of science. She was so great that she never lost the I child heart.