MADAME CURIE

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2338, 7 January 1926, Page 4

MADAME CURIE

DISCOVERER OP RADIUM. A LIFE OF HARD WORK. Twenty-seven years ago In » small laboratory in France radium was discovered by Monsieur and Madame Curie. To-day Madame Curie Is working without her husband’s aid, but he* eldest daughter, Mile. Irene Curie, is there to replace him. A woman of singularly noble char acter and of extraordinary sclentifh attainments, Mme. Curie, whoa inter viewed by M. Raymond de Nys fo' ‘Le Petit Parisien,’ said: “Decembe. 23, IS9B, was the date of the final experiment, which Isolated radium. I* was not very warm that day in tht shed In Rue Lhomond, where we carried on our reseaches.” “Mine. Curie’s look is strangely far away and dreamy,” he whites. “He< eyes are the color of steel and of perl winkle. The pupils are large and extraordinarily dilated, seen behind he. convex binocular glasses.

“ ‘Tell me, will you, madams, o 1 that poor shed which you have now replaced with your well-equipp<*S lab oratory*' “A furtive softness came into Mme Curie’s grave face.

■ “ Tt was a wooden shack, with a pitch floor, and a glass roof. The rain came in. The wind entered as if * were at home. The furniture and ma terials were scanty. We had somold pine tables, a cast-iron stove whicl was much too small, and no plac to keep fuel. Then there was th. blackboard, on which Pierre Curb wrote his figures and equations and did his calculations over and ovo. again.

“Long after we left It I used to g<back to the shed occasionally. On my last visit, after my husband’s death and some weeks before it was torn down, the blackboard was still cover ed with his figures. It was a pov erty stricken workshop for the pre cious products which we handled. Wi were there from early in tlfe mornim and often spent the entire day there eating luncheon on the corner of the table and returning after dinner. At night the shed was.beautiful, with the radiating preparations standing on stools or on the tables. In the darkness they emitted a feeble bluish light which penetrated into the shadows and filled us with ecstasy. We were very peaceful there until the daj when success came, and with h those who “make” it, the autograph hunters and the Journalists.’ “ ‘Have I been indiscreet, mad ame ?” “ ‘No. But Pierre Curie, when wr won the Nobel Prize together in 1903 often had the feeling that your confreres were. He wrote to a friend. “They even reproduced my daughter’s conversation with'her nurse, and told about th black-and-white cat which we have at home.” * “ T shall not do that’ "No. But I shall note, while Mme Curie silently reviews her memories her dress, as simple as a black smock, and the nudity of the room in which she received me. You might call it a nun’s cell. The table Is not wormeaten, like those in the old shed. But the chairs are all of wood ,of hard very hard, wood. “Mme. Curie prefers—at her labo ratory as well as at home—whatevo will wear well. In the vestibule of the Radium Institute a notice which she has signed in her own slow, careful hand, without any flourishes, abjures ”the pupils and assistants to be saving of materials. Now rich, she went for a long time to the school of poverty. If slje had been willing to go to the expense of a motto, she would have chosen this: ‘Work; 'Economise.’ “ ‘As a student,’ she said, T had to content myself, with a tiny room, niggardly furnished, and like so many other women have known what solitude is behind four hostile walls.-1 had my books and my work. Then, after my marriage, we had for four yean the little lodging In the Rue do la Glaoiere, where you have a view over the big gardens. Our furniture was given to us by relatives. I have It still. I kept house and did the cooking.’ “ ‘Did you wash the dishes, carry the coal, and do the marketing?” “ ‘X did everything. But housekeeping .vas not any harder than the work at the laboratory, where, with

the aid of an iron rod, I had to stir in earthen or metal pots the products which we were analysing. As to do* ittg the marketing, there was nothing humiliating that, even when I had to say to the butcher: “You know, I don't care for the best cuts. A good stew wll suit my purse better.” y Mme. Curie was born in Warsaw November 7, 1867, the daughter of an Impecunious college professor. She came to Paris when a young woman and took her first degree from the University of Paris in 1893. She became associated with Professor Pierre Curie in scientific research, and married the professor shortly afterward. Their discovery of radium was given to the world in 1898.

Seven years later the world was shocked to learn one morning that M. Curie had been run over by a Paris dray and killed. Mme. Curie succeeded to his professorslhp of general physics in the University of Paris. Mme. Qjire is now fifty-eight years of age, and has given more than thirty years of her life to the pursuit and study of radium. She lives at the Tnstltut Curie in Paris on the salary of a teacher at the Sorbonne. She has made fifteen millionaires In Am-

erica alone, and It Is estimated that her dlscoverea and work saved the Ives of 50,000 woCnded man during the war.