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Madams Curie and Meloney...

The following is reproduced with the gracious permission of the

The Marie Curie Radium Campaign

HE NEVER OVERCAME STAGE FRIGHT as a professor, though she taught for nearly 30 years. Yet in order to turn the Radium Institute into a world-class institution, Curie shamelessly sought out assistance, just as she had done during the war years to create the radiological service. Throughout her career Curie had benefitted from the subsidies of wealthy French benefactors. Now, thanks to the interest of an American woman, U.S. citizens also became involved in filling the needs of the Radium Institute.

“[Curie], who handles daily a particle of radium more dangerous than lightning, was afraid when confronted by the necessity of appearing before the public.”--Stéphane Lauzanne, editor-in-chief of Le Matin

Despite her distrust of journalists, in May 1920 Curie agreed to give an interview to Mrs. William Brown Meloney, editor of an American women's magazine. In the interview Curie emphasized the needs of her institution, where research was just resuming following the devastating war. Thanks to her alliance with industry, few labs in the world if any were better equipped with radium than Curie's. But Curie succeeded in shocking Meloney by emphasizing the fact that research and therapy centers in the United States together had about 50 times as much radium as the single gram she--the scientist who had discovered the element--had in her laboratory. When Meloney learned that Curie's most fervent wish was for a second gram for her laboratory, the editor organized a “Marie Curie Radium Campaign.”

Meloney, Irène, Marie and Eve shortly after their arrival in the United States, where the press dubbed Eve “the girl with the radium eyes.”

Led by a committee of wealthy American women and distinguished American scientists, the campaign succeeded by soliciting contributions in the United States. Meloney also arranged for Curie to write an autobiographical work for an American publisher. The book would provide royalty income over the years. Equally important, it would capture in simple and moving prose the romantic and heroic image of science that was so helpful for public support and fund-raising.

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While I take certain pride in relating this anecdote I remind myself and you gentle reader that Madam Curie's hardest work, under the worst possible clinical circumstances, was done well before fame and fortune smiled upon her. Moreover, it is noteworthy that for all of Marie Curie's belief in the beneficence of radium as a gift to science and medicine its pursuit most certainly contributed to her general weakness and ill health.

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A fine letter from Curie, written in English, to a major American benefactor, discussing her book – her own autobiography combined with a biography of her husband Pierre, her work at the Radium Institute in Paris, and her association with Indian leader Surendranath Banerjea.

Born Marya Sklodowska in Poland, Marie Curie made her scientific career in Paris, first with her husband Pierre and then on her own after his untimely death. Known for her investigation of radioactivity and the discovery of polonium and of radium, she won two Nobel Prizes, one in physics in 1903 along with Pierre and Henri Becquerel and one in chemistry in 1911. Following World War I, Curie devoted herself to the newly-opened Radium Institute at the University of Paris, and made it an international center for the study of radioactivity. For research there, however, she needed more radium, which had become extremely costly.

That deficiency was remedied through the efforts of Marie Mattingly Meloney (1878-1943), an American journalist and magazine editor who had long admired Curie and who learned of her laboratory’s need for radium during a May 1919 interview with her. Meloney organized a fund-raising campaign among American women to secure the $100,000 needed to purchase a gram of radium for Curie, and arranged for Curie to visit the United States in the spring of 1921 to be officially presented with the gift at a White House ceremony. Meloney also urged Curie to write her autobiography, and after much prodding, Curie agreed to do so, adding it as a supplement to the biography of Pierre Curie that she was then preparing. She discusses both parts of her book in the first half of this letter.

Long and substantive letters by Curie, in any language, are quite scarce, as are letters by her written in English. The combination of the two here makes this letter an exceptional rarity. $15,000.00

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Catherine Barnes

P. O. Box 27782
Philadelphia, PA 19118
USA
Phone: 215-247-9240
Email: mail@barnesautographs.com