MME. CURIE’S “TIMIDITY”

Evening Star, Issue 22031, 17 May 1935, Page 12

MME. CURIE’S “TIMIDITY”

DAUGHTER'S SPEECH Scientists, surgeons, and politicians listened recently to a speech by the younger daughter ,of Mme, Curie, the discoverer of radium, at a banquet at Claridge’s Hotel for the funds of the British memorial to Mnie. Curie—the Marie Curie Hospital, at Hampstead —states the ‘ Daily Telegraph.’ The hospital is appealing for £50,000 for endowment and £5,000 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 £3,876. Mile, Eva Curie, a slim figure in black, began by apologising tor 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 woman. MME. CURIE’S MOTTO. ‘‘l lived with my'mother until the last hour of her life,” she went on, “ and there is a sentence in 10 words that she often repeated and which is a striking illustration of her outrage and of her character: ‘ In science we should be interested in things, not persons.’ : “ To ray mother this meant that her own self was of no importance com-, pared with things to which she devoted her life, compared with science, which she loved, compared with the progress of human knowledge, which a*.e served with all the strength of her intelligence. “Tributes paid to her personal glory were a sort of torture for her extreme timidity and her natural reserve. The burden of celebrity overwhelmed and oppressed her. At the end of her life slje 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.” 1 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 radium 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 arc no national frontiers for _ science. We share Pasteur and Curie,” Ife continued,'in his appeal for the Marie Curie Hospital, “ staffed by women and run for thq benefit of women.” 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.