"In the event of my death I give to the Institut du Radium, of Paris, for exclusive use in the Laboratoire Curie, the gramme of radium which was given to me by the Executive Committee of Women of the Marie Curie Radium Fund, pursuant to an agreement dated the 19th day of May, 1921."
This act was consistent with the whole life of the discoverer of radium; with the answer she had made to my question a year before:
"Radium is not to enrich any one. It is an element; it is for all people."
During her American travels, I repeatedly requested Madame Curie to write the story of her life. I urged its importance to history and its influence among students preparing to consecrate their lives to science.
Finally she consented. "But it will not be much of a book," she said. "It is such an uneventful, simple little story. I was born in Warsaw of a family of teachers. I married Pierre Curie and had two children. I have done my work in France."
A simple statement, but fraught with what meaning! When most of us shall have been forgotten, when even the Great World War shall have dwindled to a few pages in the history books, when Governments shall have fallen and risen and fallen again, the work of Marie Curie will be remembered.
Of her work and her husband's, volumes—veritable libraries—have been written since that spring morning in 1898, when after an all night vigil in a shack on the outskirts of Paris, she came forth with the great gift of radium to mankind. Scientists will go on adding to the bibliography of the marvelous element. But of Marie Curie herself, the woman, it is unlikely that the world will ever read more than the brief notes which compose this small book.
It is her conviction, her philosophy, that "In science we should be interested in things, not persons."
CHAPTER I
THE CURIE FAMILY. INFANCY AND FIRST STUDIES OF PIERRE CURIE
Pierre Curie's parents, who were educated and intelligent, formed a part of the petite bourgeoisie of small means. They did not frequent fashionable society, but confined themselves entirely to the companionship of their relatives and a few intimate friends.