Historical profile

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Rutherford noted that Pierre’s fingertips were raw and inflamed, as indeed were Marie’s. Others had observed that both Curies had burns, which must have arisen from their handling of radium. This and inhaling radon formed from radium’s decay almost certainly adversely affected their general health. After the first world war in particular there were increasing reports of illness and sometimes deaths amongst those who had worked with radium salts for cancer therapy, as paints for luminous watches, and in quack ‘cures’ for a host of ailments.

In November 1903 the Curies and Becquerel were awarded the physics Nobel prize for their work on radioactivity. Becquerel attended the Stockholm ceremony, but neither of the Curies went: Pierre was ill and overwhelmed with teaching duties and Marie was recovering from a miscarriage. It was a mixed blessing – financially helpful (70 000 francs), but it exposed them to international acclaim and scrutiny. Marie later wrote that ‘the overturn of our voluntary isolation was a cause of real suffering for us’.

A professorship was created for Pierre at the Sorbonne with an accompanying post for Marie; that year Pierre was elected to the

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Academy of Sciences and in June he gave his Nobel lecture in Stockholm. In December 1905 their second daughter, Eve Denise, was born.

Troubled times On 19 April 1906, Marie left the Sorbonne to give the children their lunch; Pierre walked in the rain to meet his publishers. When crossing

Outside of the laboratory, Pierre and Marie were keen cyclists

Marie’s mobile x-ray vans brought radiology to the front lines in the first world war the cobbled Rue Dauphine he was run over by a horse dray and instantly killed. Marie was devastated. He was buried in Sceaux and later Marie and her children moved there. Marie was given Pierre’s Sorbonne chair, thereby becoming the first female professor in France. That year Lord Kelvin wrote to The Times newspaper suggesting that radium was a compound of lead containing five helium atoms, but Rutherford robustly disagreed, saying that radium fulfilled every test required of an element. Marie resolved to prove that this was so. In 1907 she made 0.4g of RaCl2 and re-determined the atomic weight as 226.45. In 1910 she isolated radium as a shiny-white metal by electrolysing RaCl2 in mercury and distilling off the latter from the amalgam.3

Paul Langevin, a pioneer in magnetochemistry, one-time student of Pierre and long a friend of the Curies, succeeded Pierre as professor of physics and chemistry at the EPCI. Although married with four children he was separated and had a small apartment near Marie’s laboratory where they sometimes met. In 1911 his study was burgled, letters from Marie stolen and published. They were mainly domestic in nature, Marie advising him about how to deal with his marital problems,

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