Pierre Curie

Pierre Curie's parents, who were educated and intelligent, formed a part of the petite bourgeoisie of small means. They did not frequent fashionable society, but confined themselves entirely to the companionship of their relatives and a few intimate friends.

Eugène Curie, Pierre's father, was a physician and the son of a physician. He knew very few kinsmen of his name, and very little about the Curie family, which was of Alsatian (Eugène Curie was born at Mulhouse in 1827) and Protestant origin. Even though his father was established in London, Eugène had been brought up in Paris, where he pursued his studies in the natural sciences and medicine, and worked as preparator under Gratiollet in the laboratories of the Museum.

Doctor Eugène Curie's remarkable personality impressed all who approached him. He was a tall man, who in youth must have been blonde, with beautiful blue eyes of a clearness and brilliancy that were striking even in an advanced old age. These eyes, which had retained a child-like expression, reflected goodness and intelligence. He had indeed unusual intellectual capacities, a very live aptitude for the natural sciences, and the temperament of a scholar.

I met Pierre Curie for the first time in the spring of the year 1894. I was then living in Paris where for three years I[6] had been studying at the Sorbonne. I had passed the examinations for the licentiate in physics, and was preparing for those in mathematics. At the same time I had begun to work in the research laboratory of Professor Lippmann. A Polish physicist whom I knew, and who was a great admirer of Pierre Curie, one day invited us together to spend the evening with himself and his wife.

As I entered the room, Pierre Curie was standing in the recess of a French window opening on a balcony. He seemed to me very young, though he was at that time thirty-five years old. I was struck by the open expression of his face and by the slight suggestion of detachment in his whole attitude. His speech, rather slow and deliberate, his simplicity, and his smile, at once grave and youthful, inspired confidence. We began a conversation which soon became friendly. It first concerned certain scientific matters about which I was very glad to be able to ask his opinion. Then we discussed certain social and humanitarian subjects which interested us both. There was, between his conceptions and mine, despite the difference between our native countries, a surprising kinship, no doubt attributable to a certain likeness in the moral atmosphere in which we were both raised by our families.

During the course of my research, I had had occasion to examine not only simple compounds, salts and oxides, but also a great number of minerals. Certain ones proved radioactive; these were those containing uranium and thorium; but their radioactivity seemed abnormal, for it was much greater than the amount I had found in uranium and thorium had led me to expect.

This abnormality greatly surprised us. When I had assured myself that it was not due to an error in the experiment, it became necessary to find an explanation. I then made the hypothesis that the ores uranium and thorium contain in small quantity a substance much more strongly radioactive than either uranium or thorium. This substance could not be one of the known elements, because these had already been examined; it must, therefore, be a new chemical element.

I had a passionate desire to verify this hypothesis as rapidly as possible. And Pierre Curie, keenly interested in the question, abandoned his work on crystals (provisionally, he thought) to join me in the search for this unknown substance.

Yet it was in this miserable old shed that we passed the best and happiest years of our life, devoting our entire days to our work. Often I had to prepare our lunch in the shed, so as not to interrupt some particularly important operation. Sometimes I had to spend a whole day mixing a boiling mass with a heavy iron rod nearly as large as myself. I would be broken with fatigue at the day's end. Other days, on the contrary, the work would be a most minute and delicate fractional crystallization, in the effort to concentrate the radium. I was then annoyed by the floating dust of iron and coal from which I could not protect my precious products. But I shall never be able to express the joy of the untroubled quietness of this atmosphere of research and the excitement of actual progress with the confident hope of still better results. The feeling of discouragement that sometimes came after some unsuccessful toil did not last long and gave way to renewed activity. We had happy moments devoted to a quiet discussion of our work, walking around our shed.

One of our joys was to go into our workroom at night; we then perceived on all sides the feebly luminous silhouettes of the bottles or capsules containing our products. It was really a lovely sight and one always new to us. The glowing tubes looked like faint, fairy lights.