EVERY little while a man or a woman is born to serve in some big way. Such a one surely is Marie Curie. The discovery of radium has advanced science, relieved human suffering and enriched the world. The spirit in which she has done her work has challenged the minds and souls of men.
One morning in the spring of 1898, when the United States was going to war with Spain, Madame Curie stepped forth from a crude shack on the outskirts of Paris, with the greatest secret of the century literally in the palm of her hand.
It was one of the silent, unheralded great moments in the world's history.
The discovery which had become a fact that morning was no accident. It was a triumph over hardship and doubting men. It represented years of patient labor. Madame Curie and her husband, Pierre Curie, had wrested from Mother Earth one of her most priceless secrets.
I have been asked to tell why I undertook the Marie Curie Radium Campaign and how I persuaded Madame Curie to write this book.
Madame Curie is the most modest of women. It was only after long persuasion that she consented to record the autobiographical notes contained in this book, but so much has been left unsaid, uninterpreted, that I feel an obligation to say a word toward the fuller understanding of this great and noble character.
In May, 1919, St�phane Lauzanne, Editor-in-Chief of Le Matin, who has followed Madame Curie's life and work for many years and to whom I went when I sought her, said: "She will see no one. She does nothing but work.
"Few things in life are more distasteful to
her than publicity. Her mind is as exact and logical as science itself. She cannot understand why scientists, rather than science, should be discussed in the press. There are but two things for her -- her little family and her work.
"After the death of Pierre Curie, the faculty and officials of the University of Paris decided to depart from all precedent and appoint a woman to a full professorship at the Sorbonne. Madame Curie accepted the appointment and the date was set for her installation.
"It was the history-making afternoon of October 5th, 1906. The members of the class which had formerly been instructed by Professor Pierre Curie were seated in one group.
"There was present a large crowd -- celebrities, statesmen, academicians, all the faculty. Suddenly through a small side door entered a woman all in black, with pale hands and high arched forehead. The magnificent forehead won notice first. It was not merely a woman who stood before us, but a brain -- a living thought. Her appearance was enthusiastically applauded
for five minutes. When the applause died down, Madame Curie bent forward with slightly trembling lips. We wondered what she was about to say. It was important. It was history, whatever she said.
"In the foreground sat a stenographer, ready to record her words. Would she speak of her husband? Would she thank the Minister and the public? No, she began quite simply as follows:
" `When we consider the progress made by the theories of radio-activity since the beginning of the Nineteenth Century -- ' The important thing to this great woman is work. Time should not be wasted in idle words. And so, dispensing with all superficial formality, with no betrayal of the tremendous emotion which all but overcame her -- except by the extreme pallor of her face and the trembling of her lips -- she continued her lecture in clear, well-modulated tones."
It was typical of this great soul that she should carry on their work courageously and without faltering.
However, an interview was arranged for me. I had been in Mr. Edison's laboratory a few weeks before sailing from home. Edison is rich in the material things -- as he should be. Every kind of equipment is at his command. He is a power in the financial as well as the scientific world. In my childhood I had lived near Alexander Graham Bell; had admired his great house and his fine horses. A short time before, I had been in Pittsburgh, where the sky is plumed by the tall smokestacks of the greatest radium reduction plants in the world.
I remembered that millions of dollars had been spent on radium watches and radium gun sights. Several millions of dollars' worth of radium was even then stored in various parts of the United States. I had been prepared to meet a woman of the world, enriched by her own efforts and established in one of the white palaces of the Champs d'Elys�es or some other beautiful boulevard of Paris.
I found a simple woman, working in an inadequate laboratory and living in an inexpensive
apartment, on the meager pay of a French professor.
As I entered the new building at Number One Rue Pierre Curie, which stands out conspicuously among the old walls of the University of Paris, I had already formed a picture of the laboratory of the discoverer of radium.
I waited a few minutes in the small bare office which might have been furnished from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Then the door opened and I saw a pale, timid little woman in a black cotton dress, with the saddest face I had ever looked upon.
Her well-formed hands were rough. I noticed a characteristic, nervous little habit of rubbing the tips of her fingers over the pad of her thumb in quick succession. I learned later that working with radium had made them numb. Her kind, patient, beautiful face had the detached expression of a scholar.
Madame Curie began to talk about America. She had for many years wanted to visit this
country, but she could not be separated from her children.
"America," she said, "has about fifty grammes of radium. Four of these are in Baltimore, six in Denver, seven in New York." She went on naming the location of every grain.
"And in France?" I asked.
"My laboratory," she replied simply, "has hardly more than a gramme."
"You have only a gramme?" Iexclaimed.
"I? Oh, I have none," she corrected. "It belongs to my laboratory."
I suggested royalties on her patents. Surely she had protected her right to the processes by which radium is produced. The revenue from such patents should have made her a very rich woman.
Quietly, and without any seeming consciousness of the tremendous renunciation, she said, "There were no patents. We were working in the interests of science. Radium was not to enrich anyone. Radium is an element. It belongs to all people."
She had contributed to the progress of science and the relief of human suffering, and yet, in the prime of her life she was without the tools which would enable her to make further contribution of her genius.
At that time the market price of a gramme of radium was one hundred thousand dollars. Madame Curie's laboratory, although practically a new building, was without sufficient equipment; the radium held there was used only for extracting emanations for hospital use in cancer treatment.
Madame Curie had no protest against life except to regret that lack of equipment interfered with the important research work she and her daughter, Ir�ne, should have been doing.
It was my hope when I arrived in New York, a few weeks afterwards, to find ten women to subscribe ten thousand dollars each for the purchase of a gramme of radium, and in this way to enable Madame Curie to go on with her work, without the publicity of a general campaign.
There were not ten to buy that gramme of
radium but there were a hundred thousand women and a group of men to help, who determined the money must be raised.
The first direct and substantial support came from Mrs. William Vaughn Moody, widow of the American poet and playwright, and the next from Herbert Hoover.
When we found it would be necessary to launch a national campaign, Mrs. Robert G. Mead, a doctor's daughter, and one who had been a standby in cancer prevention work, became secretary, and Mrs. Nicholas F. Brady, a member of the executive committee. Behind these women stood a group of scientific men, who knew what radium had meant to humanity, among them Dr. Robert Abbe, the first American surgeon to use radium, and Dr. Francis Carter Wood, Director of the Crocker Memorial Cancer Research Laboratory.
In less than a year the fund had been raised.
The scientists appointed a committee under the chairmanship of Dr. Wood, to purchase the radium. All American producers of the element
were called upon to submit sealed bids, and at public meeting the lowest bidder received the order. The Committee of Scientists were: -- Dr. Robert Abbe -- Dr. Russell H. Chittenden -- Dr. Hugh Cumming -- Dr. D. B. Delavan -- Dr. William Duane -- Dr. James Ewing -- Dr. Livingston Farrand -- Dr. John Finney -- Dr. H. R. Gaylord -- Dr. W. J. Holland -- Dr. Vernon Kellogg -- Dr. Howard Kelly -- Dr. George F. Kunz -- Dr. W. Lee Lewis -- Dr. Theodore Lyman -- Dr. Will J. Mayo -- Dr. John C. Merriam -- Dr. George B. Pegram -- Dr. Charles Powers -- Dr. C. A. L. Reed -- Dr. Theodore Richards -- Dr. Edgar F. Smith -- Dr. S. W. Stratton -- Dr. Howard Taylor -- Dr. William Taylor -- Dr. Charles D. Walcott -- Dr. Louis B. Wilson -- Dr. William H. Welch -- Dr. Francis Carter Wood.
St�phane Lauzanne describes a second impressive moment in the life of Madame Curie. It was nearly a year after my talk with her. It was fifteen years since that scene at the University of Paris. These years had been spent in her laboratory; she had made no public appearance.
It was in March, 1921, that Monsieur Lauzanne heard her voice again.
"I lifted the telephone receiver," he relates, "and heard these words: `Madame Curie wishes to speak to you.' What extraordinary event -- what tragedy, perhaps, might this not mean? And suddenly, over the wire came the sound of the voice which I had heard only once before, but which had stayed in my memory -- the same voice which had once pronounced the words, `When we consider the progress made by the theories of radio-activity since the beginning of the Nineteenth Century -- -- '
" `I wanted to tell you that I am going to America,' she said. `It was very hard for me to decide to go, because America is so far and so big. If some one did not come for me, I should probably never have made the trip. I should have been too frightened. But to this fear is added a great joy. I have devoted my life to the science of radio-activity and I know all we owe to America in the field of science. I am told you are among those who strongly favor this distant
trip, so I wanted to tell you I have decided to go, but please don't let any one know about it.'
"This great woman -- the greatest woman in France -- was speaking haltingly, tremblingly, almost like a little girl. She, who handles daily a particle of radium more dangerous than lightning, was afraid when confronted by the necessity of appearing before the public."
She had, as I have said, refused opportunities to come to the United States because she could not endure separation from her children. She was, I think, finally persuaded to face the long trip and the terrifying publicity attending it, partly because of her gratitude for the support given her scientific work, but principally because it offered a splendid opportunity for travel to her daughters.
There is in Madame Curie none of the legendary coldness and thoughtlessness attributed to the scientist. During the war, when she ran her own radiological truck and lived on the march from hospital to hospital in the zone of operations,
she washed and dried and pressed her own clothes. Once during our American travels, we stayed in a home where there were several other house guests besides our party of five. I entered Madame Curie's room and found her washing her underclothes.
"It is nothing at all," she said, when I protested. "I know perfectly well how to do it, and with all of these extra guests in the house, the servants have enough to do."
On the night before the reception at the White House, at which President Harding was to present the gramme of radium to Madame Curie, the Deed or gift was taken to her. It was a beautifully engraved scroll, vesting all rights to a gramme of radium, the gift of American women, in Marie Curie.
She read the paper carefully, and then, after a few moments of thought, said: `It is very fine and generous, but it must not be left this way. This gramme of radium represents a great deal of money, but more than that, it represents the women of this country. It is not for me; it
is for science. I am not well; I may die any day. My daughter Eve is not of legal age, and if I should die it would mean that this radium would go to my estate and would be divided between my daughters. It is not for that purpose. This radium must be consecrated for all time to the use of science. Will you have your lawyer draw a paper which will make this very clear?"
"I said that it would be done in a few days.
"It must be done to-night," she said. "Tomorrow I receive the radium, and I might die to-morrow. Too much is at stake."
And so, late as it was on that hot May evening, after some difficulty, we secured the services of a lawyer, who prepared the paper from a draft Madame Curie herself had written. She signed it before starting for Washington. One of the witnesses was Mrs. Calvin Coolidge. This document read:
"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."
One dream that Madame Curie held, and still holds unrealized, is the hope of a quiet little home of her own with a garden and hedge, and flowers and birds. During her American travels, she would frequently glance through the window as the train passed through a small town, and, spying some modest little house with a garden, would say, "I have always wanted such a little home."
But owning a house was secondary in the life of both Pierre and Marie Curie. They simply made a home wherever they lived, for such money as might have gone for the purchase of
her little dream house was always needed in the laboratory. She told me one day, with deep feeling, that one of the regrets of her life was that Pierre Curie had died without ever having had a permanent laboratory.
About the time of her marriage, one of her relatives gave Madame Curie a gift of money to be used for a trousseau. It was not a great sum, but important to the poor student in Paris. To understand the significance of the use to which she put this fund, it is necessary to remember that Marie Sklodowska was young, and possessed physical beauty and charm. She was not without appreciation of the beautiful, and she could not possibly have been utterly unconscious of her own appearance. She had a young girl's natural interest in pretty clothes. She considered the purchase of a wedding gown and other personal belongings, and then, with her characteristic exactness, measured her needs and the future.
She was married in a simple dress she had brought from Poland, and her trousseau fund
was spent on two bicycles, so that she and Pierre Curie might enjoy the beautiful country of France. That was their honeymoon.
During her American travels, Madame Curie was repeatedly requested to write the story of her life. Its importance to history and its influence among students preparing to consecrate their lives to science were emphasized.
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 (it was May 18 or 20; Madame Curie is not sure) 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 contained in this small book.
It is her conviction, her philosophy, that "In science we should be interested in things, not persons."
M. M. M.