PREFACE
It is not without hesitation that I have undertaken to write the biography of Pierre Curie. I should have preferred confiding this task to some relative or some friend of his infancy who had followed his whole life intimately and possessed as full a knowledge of his earliest years as of those after his marriage. Jacques Curie, Pierre's brother and the companion of his youth, was bound to him by the tenderest affection. But after his appointment to the University of Montpellier, he lived far from Pierre, and he therefore insisted that I should write the biography, believing that no one else better knew and understood the life of his brother. He communicated to me all his personal memories; and to this important contribution, which I have utilized in full, I have added details related by my husband himself and a few of his friends. Thus I have reconstituted as best I could that part of his existence that I did not know directly. I have, in addition, tried faithfully to express the profound impression his personality made upon me during the years of our life together.
This narrative is, to be sure, neither complete nor perfect. I hope, nevertheless, that the picture it gives of Pierre Curie is not deformed, and that it will help to conserve his memory. I wish, too, that it might remind those who knew him of the reasons for which they loved him.
M. C.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. [The Curie Family. Infancy and First Studies of Pierre Curie]
II. [Dreams of Youth. First Scientific Work. Discovery of Piezo-Electricity]
III. [Life as the Director of Laboratory Work in the School of Physics and Chemistry. Generalization of the Principle of Symmetry. Investigations of Magnetism]
IV. [Marriage and Organization of Family Life. Personality and Character]
V. [The Dream Become a Reality. The Discovery of Radium]
VI. [The Struggle for Means to Work. The Burden of Celebrity. The First Assistance from the State. It Comes Too Late]
VII. [The Nation's Sorrow. The Laboratories: "Sacred Places"]
[Autobiographical Notes—Marie Curie]
ILLUSTRATIONS
[Pierre Curie in 1906.]
[Pierre and Marie Curie in their laboratory, where radium was discovered.]
[A view of the extraction of radium in the old shed where the first radium was obtained.]
[Pierre Curie with the quartz piezo-electroscope he invented, by which rays of radium are measured.]
[A view of the extraction of radium in the old shed where the first radium was obtained.]
[Mme. Curie instructing American soldiers in her Paris laboratory.]
[Madame Curie in her laboratory at the Institut Curie, Paris.]
[Mme. Curie and President Harding at the White House, May 20, 1921, when a gram of radium was presented to its discoverer by the women of America.]