It is useful to learn how much sacrifice such a life represents. The life of a great scientist in his laboratory is not, as many may think, a peaceful idyll. More often it is a bitter battle with things, with one's surroundings, and above all with oneself. A great discovery does not leap completely achieved from the brain of the scientist, as Minerva sprang, all panoplied, from the head of Jupiter; it is the fruit of accumulated preliminary work. Between the days of fecund productivity are inserted days of uncertainty when nothing seems to succeed, and when even matter itself seems hostile; and it is then that one must hold out against discouragement. Thus without ever forsaking his inexhaustible patience, Pierre Curie used sometimes to say to me: "It is nevertheless hard, this life that we have chosen."
For the admirable gift of himself, and for the magnificent service he renders humanity, what reward does our society offer the scientist? Have these servants of an idea the necessary means of work? Have they an assured existence, sheltered from care? The example of Pierre Curie, and of others, shows that they have none of these things; and that more often, before they can secure possible working conditions, they have to exhaust their youth and their powers in daily anxieties. Our society, in which reigns an eager desire for riches and luxury, does not understand the value of science. It does not realize that science is a most precious part of its moral patrimony. Nor does it take sufficient cognizance of the fact that science is at the base of all the progress that lightens the burden of life and lessens its suffering. Neither public powers nor private generosity actually accord to science and to scientists the support and the subsidies indispensable to fully effective work.
I invoke, in closing, the admirable pleading of Pasteur:
"If the conquests useful for humanity touch your heart, if you are overwhelmed before the astonishing results of electric telegraphy, of the daguerrotype, of anesthesia, and of other wonderful discoveries, if you are jealous of the part your country may claim in the spreading of these marvelous things, take an interest, I beg of you, in those sacred places to which we give the expressive name of laboratories. Demand that they be multiplied and ornamented, for these are the temples of the future, of wealth, and of well-being. It is in them that humanity grows, fortifies itself, and becomes better. There it may learn to read in the works of nature the story of progress and of universal harmony, even while its own creations are too often those of barbarism, fanaticism, and destruction."
May this truth be widely spread, and deeply penetrate public opinion, that the future may be less hard for the pioneers who must open up new domains for the general good of humanity.
Extracts from Published Appreciations
I have chosen certain extracts from various published appreciations of Pierre Curie in order to complete my account by a few moving testimonies from eminent men of science.
Henri Poincaré:
"Curie was one of those on whom Science and France believed they had the right to count. His age permitted far-reaching hopes; what he had already given seemed a promise, and we knew that, living, he would not have failed. On the night preceding his death (pardon this personal memory) I sat next to him and he talked with me of his plans and his ideas. I admired the fecundity and the depth of his thought, the new aspect which physical phenomena took on when looked at through that original and lucid mind. I felt that I better understood the grandeur of human intelligence—and the following day, in an instant, all was annihilated. A stupid accident brutally reminded us how little place thought holds in the face of the thousand blind forces that hurl themselves across the world without knowing whither they go, crushing all in their passage.
"His friends, his colleagues understood at once the import of the loss they suffered, but the grief extended far beyond them. In foreign countries the most illustrious scientists joined in trying to show the esteem in which they held our compatriot, while in our own land there was no Frenchman, however ignorant, who did not feel more or less vaguely what a force his nation and humanity had lost.