Mme Curie Is Dead - Wireless To THE NEW YORK TIMES PARIS, July 4

8/4/2014 Mme.
Curie Is Dead; Martyr to Science

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July 5, 1934
OBITUARY
Mme. Curie Is Dead;
Martyr to Science
Wireless to THE NEW YORK TIMES
PARIS, July 4.--Mme. Marie Curie, whose
work alone and with her husband on radium
and radiology has been one of the greatest
glories of modern science, died at 6 o'clock
this morning in a sanitarium near Sallanches in
Upper Savoy. Her death, which was caused
by a form of pernicious anemia, was hastened
by what her physicians termed "a long
accumulation of radiations" which affected the
bones and prevented her from reacting
normally to the disease.
Mme. Curie went to Sallanches last Friday
after having been for five weeks in a Paris
clinic. It was thought at first that she had
suffered a lung ailment and for that reason she
was sent to the mountains. Her death came as
a surprise to all but her family and intimate
friends, for the rare modesty of her character
never deserted her and she did not allow the
public to know how ill she was. Her daughters,
Eve, who is a dramatist and pianist of
considerable talent, and Mme. Jolliot, who with
her husband was carrying on the family
tradition at the radium institute over which her
mother presided, were at the bedside when the
end came.
The funeral Thursday will be strictly private in
accordance with Mme. Curie's expressed
wishes. However, it is possible that the
government will, on the occasion of her burial
8/4/2014 Mme. Curie Is Dead; Martyr to Science
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in Paris Cemetery beside her husband, take
advantage of the opportunity to pay France's
homage to her adopted daughter.
Remained Worker for Science
Few persons contributed more to the general
welfare of mankind and to the advancement of
science than the modest, self-effacing woman
whom the world knew as Mme. Curie. Her
epoch-making discoveries of polonium and
radium, the subsequent honors that were
bestowed upon her--she was the only person
to receive two Nobel prizes--and the fortunes
that could have been hers had she wanted them
did not change her mode of life. She remained
a worker in the cause of science, preferring her
laboratory to a great social place in the sun.
The road which she and her husband had
chosen she followed throughout her life,
disdaining all pomp. And thus she not only
conquered great secrets of science but the
hearts of the people the world over.
Mme. Curie was one of many illustrious
persons who came from Poland to settle
elsewhere, such as Frederic Chopin, the
Potockis and Joseph Conrad. Her father was a
distinguished scientist and from him she
received her early training in Warsaw. She
became involved in the students' revolutionary
organization, however, and found it advisable
to leave the country. Years later she returned
to open the radioactivity laboratory in Warsaw;
she had always had the longing of the nostalgic
for her native land, and she gave the $50,000
which she had received from American
admirers in 1929 for research work in the city
of her birth.
Earnestness of purpose and total disregard of
personal gain were two of her main
characteristics. She summed up her biography
in twenty-one words when interviewed some
years ago.
"I was born in Poland," she said. "I married
Pierre Curie, and I have two daughters. I have
done my work in France."
Mme. Curie was engrossed in her research
work. Her other great interest in life was her
little family. The tragic death of her husband--
he was run over and killed by a heavy dray in
Paris on April 19, 1906--served to make her
even more of a recluse from the world. Their
marriage had been happy and they had shared
the honor and glory of discovering radium after
years of patient research work.
Worked in Old Warehouse
Of those years Paul Appell, president of the
Academy of Paris, wrote as follows:
"M. and Mme. Curie, not being able to pursue
their chemical experiments in a schoolroom
which had been placed at their disposal,
arranged for these in a sort of abandoned
warehouse opposite their atelier. In this place,
with its asphalt floor, its broken and patched
glass roof, hot in Summer, heated by a cast-
iron stove in Winter, they performed their
wonderful work.
"The equipment consisted of some old and
worn deal tables, upon which Mme. Curie
prepared the material for the production of
radium. She was laboratory chief assistant and
handy boy at the same time. In addition to her
intellectual labor it was frequently necessary for
her to perform severe manual toil. On many an
afternoon she stirred in a great caldron with a
heavy iron rod the molten mass of the
radioactive products, reaching home at evening
exhausted by fatigue but delighted to see that
her labors had led to a luminous product of
concentration."
After the discovery of the radioactive
properties of uranium by Henri Becquerel in
1896 M. and Mme. Curie began their
researches into radioactivity, and in 1898
obtained polonium and radium from
pitchblende, which they had subjected to a
very laborious process of fractionation.
The announcement came from that little ill-
equipped laboratory on Dec. 26, 1898. The
Curies informed the Academy of Sciences that
they had discovered a new and remarkable
substance to which they proposed to give the
name of radium.
Today there stands in Paris the Curie
Laboratory at the Radium Institute of the
University of Paris. Today the many uses of
radium are known. Thousands have been
cured of cancer and other diseases by radium.
Five years after their discovery of radium the
Curies received the Nobel Prize for physics,
dividing it with Becquerel. In 1911 Mme. Curie
received the Nobel Prize for chemistry. Honors
were heaped upon her, but she was indifferent
to most. The money she received from her
prizes was immediately used for purposes of
scientific research. In 1919 one gram of
radium, valued at $100,000, was presented to
Mme. Curie as the gift of the people of the
United States. In 1929 she received the money
with which to purchase another gram of the
precious substance, the presentation being
made by President Hoover.
Was Studious as a Child
Mme. Curie continued her frugal and active
life, residing with her two daughters and
shunning notoriety of any form. Already as a
child she had been extremely studious, and was
the chief assistant of her father, Dr. Ladislas
Sklodowski, scientist and teacher at the Lycee
of Warsaw. Her mother, Bronsitawa Boguska,
was principal of a girls' school.
Marie Sklodowska was born on Nov. 7,
1867. As a child she played with test tubes and
crucibles and she was later a brilliant student.
When she became involved in political
differences she went first to Cracow, then
under Austrian rule, and later to Paris, where
she obtained a science degree at the university.
At the Sorbonne she met Pierre Curie, a young
physics instructor. They worked together,
having common interests, and in 1895 they
were married. Mme. Curie became a teacher
of physics at a girls' school at Sevres. The
research work was pursued at night.
So devoted were these two to their work that
they frequently forgot to eat, and as often ate
plain bread and washed it down with coffee in
their laboratory.
The discovery of X-rays by Dr. Roentgen in
1895 started many physicists and chemists on
investigations to see whether phosphorescent
bodies in general would not emit rays of a
similar character. In 1896 Becquerel found that
the salts of uranium emitted radiations affecting
photographic plates and, like the X-ray,
passing through many substances impervious to
ordinary light.
Later Mme. Curie discovered that the salts of
thorium emitted similar rays. Searching for
other radio-active material, M. and Mme.
Curie, after long and tedious, but to them
fascinating, trials, discovered that pitchblende
was much more active than uranium. Mme.
Curie made up her mind to go still further. She
would not stop short of finding out what it was
in pitchblende that produced the radio-active
force that would pass through any substance
except lead and steel.
Reduced Tons of Pitchblende
But at that time pitchblende was to be had only
from a small deposit in Bohemia. Mme. Curie
reduced tons of it and then, first by chemical
separation and then by eliminations, she finally
isolated two fiercely energetic substances. One
she called polonium after her native country,
the other radium.
The old laboratory on Rue Lhomond was
described by Henry Labouchere, editor of The
London Truth, as "a scientific Bethlehem."
How each insisted upon the other's great share
in the discovery was told by M. Curie when he
received the Nobel Prize at Stockholm.
"Mme. Curie," he said on that occasion,
"proved in 1898 that of many of the chemical
substances, those which contained uranium or
thorium alone were capable of emitting in
notable quantities Becquerel rays. * * * Mme.
Curie studied the minerals which had in them
uranium or thorium, and found these minerals
were radio-active. In her experiments she
found that some of them were more active than
they would have been if they had contained
only uranium or thorium. Mme. Curie then
made the hypothesis that these substances
contained radio-active chemicals as yet
unknown. Mme. Curie executed these
experimental works and reached her
momentous conclusion alone."
But in 1911, when she went to Stockholm to
receive her second Nobel Prize, Mme. Curie
said:
"First, I wish to recall that the discovery of
radium was made by Pierre Curie in
conjunction with me. We also owe to Pierre
Curie fundamental experiments in the domain
of radio-activity. The chemical work which had
for its end the isolation of radium was my
special work."
Several years passed, however, before the
general public knew of radium. A watch-case
containing a speck of the rare element was
exhibited a the Paris Exposition in 1900. It was
labeled, "Radium, discovered by Mme. Curie."
In 1901 the French Academy of Sciences
awarded the La Caze Prize of 10,000 francs to
the Curies.
Soon afterward Mme. Curie put chemistry in
possession of a relatively large quantity of
radium, as she had by a crystallization process
obtained a decigram of the pure chlorid, which
allowed her to obtain the atomic weight.
Received Davy Medal in 1903
In 1903 M. and Mme. Curie received the
Davy Medal of the Royal Society. That year
Mme. Curie submitted the results of her
researches in her doctorate thesis presented to
the University of Paris. She then became chef
de travaux in the laboratory at the department
of the Sorbonne created for her husband. M.
Curie was elected to the Academy of Sciences
in 1905. His widow succeeded him as
professor at the University of Paris.
She wrote a good deal, among her works
being "Recherches sur les Proprietes
Magnetiques des Aciers Trempes,"
"Recherches sur les Substances Radioactives,"
"L'Isotropie et les Elements Isotropes" and
"Pierre Curie," the life and work of her
husband. Her most celebrated work, however,
which is regarded as a classic in scientific
literature, was her "Traite de Radioactivite,"
which was published in 1910.
When the World War broke out Mme. Curie
offered her services to the Government of
France. She closed the Institut Curie and with
her elder daughter, Irene, and a few students,
she went to a hospital behind the front,
employing her knowledge of radiography in
aiding the wounded. At her suggestion,
automobiles equipped with radiographic
apparatus were utilized along the front, and by
this means bullets and shell splinters were
located in the heads of dangerously wounded
soldiers.
Mme. Curie arrived in the United States for her
first visit in the Spring of 1921. She was
accompanied by her two daughters, Irene and
Eve, and she visited New York, Washington,
Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Buffalo,
Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon and Boston.
Overwhelmed by Honors Here
The frail little woman was overwhelmed by
honors. She was feted and laudatory speeches
were made everywhere she went. She received
honorary university degrees from Columbia,
the University of Pennsylvania, Woman's
Medical College, University of Pittsburgh,
Yale, Wellesley, Northwestern and Smith.
President Nicholas Murray Butler, in
presenting the Columbia award, said it honored
the woman "to whose skill, scientific might and
trained powers of imagination it has been given
to enrich mankind by the priceless gift of
radium, winning thereby a place on the
immortal list of scientific discoverers."
Dr. William Lyon Phelps of Yale said:
"There is one thing rarer than genius. That is
radium. Mme. Curie illustrates the combination
of both."
On May 20, 1921, President Harding
presented the gift of the people of the United
States, the gram of radium, which had been
purchased for $100,000 and obtained from
500 tons of carnotite ore.
In 1922 Mme. Curie was elected a member of
the Academy of Medicine in Paris, and the
next year the French Government unanimously
voted her an annual pension of 40,000 francs.
That was on the occasion of the twenty-fifth
anniversary of the discovery of radium.
Mme. Curie was never eager to mix in political
or social matters. She did, however, urge
woman suffrage, and she advocated
international scholarships in pure science. This
latter plan was put before the League of
Nations.
As a Christmas present in 1921 a large group
of American women endowed Mme. Irene
Curie-Joliot, the daughter who had always
helped Mme. Curie in her work, enabling her
to pursue her scientific researches, from the
fund of $56,413.54 left over after the gram of
radium had been bought in 1921.
In 1929 Mme. Curie returned to the United
States and received $50,000 with which to
purchase a second gram of radium. The
presentation took place on Oct. 30 at the
Academy of Sciences at Washington,
President Hoover lauding the life and work of
the recipient.
During this visit Mme. Curie received an
honorary degree from St. Lawrence University
and dedicated Hepburn Hall of Chemistry
there. She received the gold medal of the New
York City Federation of Women's Clubs and
many other marks of honor and esteem. As a
guest of Henry Ford, Mme. Curie went to
Dearborn, Mich., for the Edison jubilee.
In 1931 Mme. Curie attended the Congress of
World Physicists at Rome. She was gravely
injured when, in April, 1932, she slipped and
fell in her laboratory, and an operation was
necessary.
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Curie Is Dead; Martyr to Science

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