He gave much thought to his teaching, which constantly improved, and which suggested to him ideas on the general orientation of studies and on methods of teaching, which he believed should be based on contact with experience and nature. He hoped to see his views adopted by the Association of Professors as soon as it was formed, and to obtain the declaration "that the teaching of the sciences must be the dominant teaching of both the boys' and girls' lycées."
"But," he said, "such a notion would have little chance of success."
But this last period of his life, so fecund, was, alas, soon to end. His admirable scientific career was to be suddenly broken at the very moment when he could hope that the years of work to come would be less hard than those which had preceded.
In 1906, quite ill and tired, he went with me and the children to spend Easter in the Chevreuse Valley. Those were two sweet days under a mild sun, and Pierre Curie felt the weight of weariness lighten in a healing repose near to those who were dear to him. He amused himself in the meadows with his little girls, and talked with me of their present and their future.
He returned to Paris for a reunion and dinner of the Physics Society. There he sat beside Henri Poincaré and had a long conversation with him on methods of teaching. As we were returning on foot to our house, he continued to develop his ideas on the culture that he dreamed of, happy in the consciousness that I shared his views.
The following day, the 19th of April, 1906, he attended a reunion of the Association of Professors of the Faculties of the Sciences, where he talked with them very cordially about the aims which the Association might adopt. As he went out from this reunion and was crossing the rue Dauphine, he was struck by a truck coming from the Pont Neuf, and fell under its wheels. A concussion of the brain brought instantaneous death.
So perished the hope founded on the wonderful being who thus ceased to he. In the study room to which he was never to return, the water buttercups he had brought from the country were still fresh.
[9]During my recent visit to America, where a gramme of radium was generously offered me by American women, the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences presented me, as a souvenir, with a publication reviewing the development of the radium industry in the United States. This included photographic reproductions of letters from Pierre Curie in which he replied in as complete a manner as possible to the questions asked by American engineers. (1902 and 1903.)
[10]The price of a milligramme of the element of radium was then fixed at about 750 francs.
[11]These physicians were aided by the manufacturer, Armet de Lisle, who placed at their disposition the radium needed for their first undertakings. He founded, besides, in 1906, a laboratory for clinical study, provided with a supply of radium. And he subventioned the first special publication devoted to radioactivity and its applications, as a journal under the name Radium, edited by J. Danne. This is an example of generous support of science by industry, in reality still very rare but which one wishes might become general, in the common interest of these two branches of human activity.