Mme. Curie has not allowed her lectures in the Sorbonne to interfere with the continuation of the researches which have won for her such world-wide renown. Since the sudden taking off of her husband by a passing truck on a Paris bridge, she has succeeded in isolating both radium and polonium—only the chlorides and bromides of these elements were previously known—besides doing other work scarcely less remarkable. And besides all this, she has also found time to write a connected account of her investigations under the title of Traité de Radio-Activité—a work that reflects as much honor on her sex as did Le Instituzioni Analitiche of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, which won for her, through that celebrated patron of learning, Benedict XIV, the chair of higher mathematics in the University of Bologna.
The list of learned societies to which Mme. Curie belongs is an extended one. To mention only a few, she is an honorary or foreign member of the London Chemical Society, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the Royal Swedish Academy, the American Chemical Society, the American Philosophical Society, and the Imperial Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg. From the universities of Geneva and Edinburgh she has received the honorary degree of doctor.
In 1898 she received the Gegner prize from the French Academy of Sciences for her elaborate researches on the magnetic properties of iron and steel, as also for her investigations relating to radio-activity. The same prize was again awarded to her in 1900, and still again in 1903. With her husband she received in 1901 the La Caze prize of ten thousand francs; and in 1903 she received a part of the Osiris prize of sixty thousand francs. Since her husband's death in 1906 Mme. Curie has been awarded the coveted Nobel prize in chemistry, which was placed in her hand by the King of Sweden on December 11, 1911—a prize which increased the exchequer of the fair recipient by nearly two hundred thousand francs. Having before been the beneficiary of the Nobel prize for physics, in conjunction with her husband and M. H. Becquerel, Mme. Curie is thus the first person to be twice singled out for the world 's highest financial recognition of scientific research.
It would take too long to enumerate all the medals and prizes and honors which have come to this remarkable woman from foreign countries. But she has doubtless been the recipient of more trophies of undying fame during the last decade and a half than any other one person during the same brief period of intellectual activity. And all these tokens of recognition of genius were showered upon her not because she was a woman, but in spite of this fact. Had she been a man, she would have been honored with the other distinctions which tradition and prejudice still persist in denying to one of the proscribed sex, no matter how great her merit or how signal her achievements.
At a recent scientific congress, held in Brussels, it was decided to prepare a standard of measurement of radium emanations. It was the unanimous opinion of the congress that Mme. Curie was better equipped than any other person for establishing such a standard; and she was accordingly requested to undertake the delicate and difficult task—a commission which she executed to the satisfaction of all concerned.
This unit of measurement, it is gratifying to learn, will be known as the curie—a word which will enter the same category as the volt, the ohm, the ampère, the farad, and a few others which will perpetuate the names of the world's greatest geniuses in the domain of experimental science.
When, not long since, there was a vacancy among the immortals of the French Academy, there was a generally expressed desire that it should be filled by one who was universally recognized as among the foremost of living scientists. The name of Mme. Curie trembled on every lip; and the hope was entertained that the Academy would honor itself by admitting the world-famed savante among its members. Considering her achievements, she had no competitor, and was, in the estimation of all outside of the Academy, the one person in France who was most deserving of the coveted honor.
But no. She was a woman; and for that reason alone she was excluded from an institution the sole object of whose establishment was the reward of merit and the advancement of learning. The age-old prejudice against women who devote themselves to the study of science, or who contribute to the progress of knowledge, was still as dominant as it was in the days of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, a century and a half before. Mme. Curie, like her famous sister in Italy, might win the plaudits of the world for her achievements; but she could have no recognition from the one institution, above all others, that was specially founded to foster the development of science and literature, and to crown the efforts of those who had proven themselves worthy of the Academy's highest honor. The attitude of the French institution toward Mme. Curie was exactly like that of the Royal Society of Great Britain when Mrs. Ayrton's name was up for membership. The answer to both applicants was in effect, if not in words, "No woman need apply."
When one reads of the sad experiences of Mme. Curie and Mrs. Ayrton with the learned societies of Paris and London, one instinctively asks, "When will the day come when women, in every part of the civilized world, shall enjoy all the rights and privileges in every field of intellectual effort which have so long been theirs in the favored land of Dante and Beatrice—the motherland of learned societies and universities?" For not until the advent of the day when such exclusive organizations as the Royal Society and the French Academy of Sciences, such ultra-conservative universities as Oxford and Cambridge shall admit women on the same footing as men, will these institutions be more than half serving the best interests of humanity.[163]
Women, it is true, are now eligible to many literary and scientific associations from which they were formerly debarred, and are, in most countries, admitted to colleges and universities whose portals were closed to them until only a few years ago; but until they shall be welcomed to all universities and all societies whose objects are the advancement of knowledge, until they shall participate in the advantages and prestige accruing from connection with these organizations, they will have reason to feel that they are not yet in the full possession of the intellectual advantages for which they have so long yearned—that they have been but partially liberated from that educational disqualification in which they have been held during so many long centuries of deferred hopes and fruitless struggles.