Pierre Curie: With Autobiographical Notes by Marie Curie

By Marie Curie

"A delightful book. It marks one of the few instances in which the proverbial humdrum life of the student of physical science, together with the more austere ideals, have been made intelligible." — The New York Times
Nobel laureate Marie Curie offers a memorable portrait of her equally famous husband and lab partner, Pierre Curie. A scientific biography as well as an intimate memoir, this unique narrative recaptures Pierre Curie's youthful research and his first scientific breakthrough, the discovery of piezoelectricity. It further explores his pioneering work in crystallography and magnetism along with the couple's most famous achievement, the discovery of radium.
In addition to firsthand accounts of laboratory work and techniques, Marie Curie offers observations on her husband's personality and character, their family life, and the work of their scientific contemporaries, including Ernest Rutherford, Frederick Soddy, Friedrich Oskar Giesel, and Henri Becquerel. Curie also reconstructs her studies of radiation, discussing equipment, procedures, and results. These rare insights into two of history's great scientific minds will fascinate students of science and all readers interested in scientific discovery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Aug 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9780486320571

Book preview

M.

CHAPTER I

THE CURIE FAMILY. INFANCY AND FIRST STUDIES OF 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 childlike 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.

Although he wished to consecrate his life to scientific work, family responsibilities following his marriage and the birth of two sons forced him to renounce this desire. The necessities of life obliged him to practice his medical profession. He continued, however, such experimental research as his means permitted, in particular undertaking an investigation upon inoculation for tuberculosis at a time when the bacterial nature of this malady was not yet established. His scientific avocations developed in him the habit of making excursions in search of the plants and animals necessary to his experiments, and this habit, as well as his love of Nature, gave him a marked preference for country life. Until the end of his life he conserved his love for science, and, without doubt, also, his regret at not having been able to devote himself exclusively to it.

His medical career remained always a modest one, but it revealed remarkable qualities of devotion and disinterestedness. At the time of the Revolution of 1848, when he was still a student, the Government of the Republic conferred on him a medal, for his honorable and courageous conduct in serving the wounded. He himself had been struck, on February 24th, by a ball which shattered a part of his jaw. A little later, during a cholera epidemic, he installed himself, in order that he might look after the sick, in a quarter of Paris deserted by physicians. During the Commune he established a hospital in his apartment (rue de la Visitation) near which there was a barricade, and there he cared for the wounded. Through this act of civism and because of his advanced convictions he lost a part of his bourgeois patronage. At this time he accepted the position of medical inspector of the organization for the protection of young children. The duties of this post permitted him to live in the suburbs of Paris where health conditions for himself and his family were much better than those of the city.

Doctor Curie had very pronounced political convictions. Temperamentally an idealist, he had embraced with ardor that republican doctrine which inspired the revolutionaries of 1848. He was united in friendship with Henri Brisson and the men of his group. Like them, a free thinker and an anticlerical, he did not have his sons baptized, nor did he have them practice any form of religion.

Pierre’s mother, Claire Depouilly, was the daughter of a prominent manufacturer of Puteaux, near Paris. Her father and brothers distinguished themselves through their numerous inventions connected with the making of dyes and special tissues. The family, which was of Savoy, was caught in the business catastrophe caused by the Revolution of 1848, and ruined. And these reverses of fortune, added to those which Doctor Curie had experienced during his career, meant that he and his family lived always in comparatively straitened circumstances, with the difficulties of existence often renewed. Even though raised for a life of ease, Pierre’s mother accepted with tranquil courage the precarious conditions which life brought her, and gave proof of an extreme devotion as she made life easier for her husband and children by her activity and her good will.

If the circumstances in which Jacques and Pierre grew up were modest and not free from cares, nevertheless there reigned in the family an atmosphere of gentleness and affection. In speaking to me for the first time of his parents, Pierre Curie said that they were exquisite. They were, in truth, that. The father’s spirit was a little authoritative—always awake and active. And he possessed a rare unselfishness. He neither wished nor knew how to profit by personal relations to ameliorate his condition. He loved his wife and sons tenderly, and was ever ready to aid all who needed him. The mother was slight, vivid in character, and, even though her health had suffered through the birth of her sons, was always gay and active in the simple home that she so well knew how to make attractive and hospitable.

When I first knew them they lived at Sceaux, rue des Sablons (today rue Pierre Curie) in a little house of ancient construction half concealed amidst the verdure of a pretty garden. Their life was peaceful. Doctor Curie went where his duties called him, either in Sceaux or in neighboring localities. Beyond this he occupied himself with his garden or his reading. Near relatives and neighbors came to visit on Sundays, when bowling and chess were the favorite amusements. From time to time Henri Brisson sought out his old companion in his tranquil retreat. Great calm and serenity enveloped the garden, the dwelling, and its inhabitants.

Pierre Curie was born the 15th of May, 1859, in a house facing the Jardin des Plantes, rue Cuvier, where his parents lived at the time when his father was working in the Museum laboratories. He was the second son of Doctor Curie and three and a half years younger than his brother Jacques. In after life he retained few particularly characteristic memories of his childhood in Paris; yet he did tell me how vividly present in his mind were the days of the Commune, the battle on the barricade so near the house where he then lived, the hospital established by his father, and the expeditions, on which his brother accompanied him, in search of the wounded.

It was in 1883 that Pierre moved with his parents from the capital to the suburbs of Paris, living first, from 1883 to 1892, at Fontenay-aux-Roses, then at Sceaux from 1892 to 1895, the year of our marriage.

Pierre passed his childhood entirely within the family circle; he never went to the elementary school nor to the lycée. His earliest instruction was given him first by his mother and was then continued by his father and his elder brother, who himself had never followed in any complete way the course of the lycée. Pierre’s intellectual capacities were not those which would permit the rapid assimilation of a prescribed course of studies. His dreamer’s spirit would not submit itself to the ordering of the intellectual effort imposed by the school. The difficulty he experienced in following such a program was usually attributed to a certain slowness of mind. He himself believed that he had this slow mind and often said so. I think, however, that this belief was not entirely justified. It seems to me, rather, that already from his early youth it was necessary for him to concentrate his thought with great intensity upon a certain definite object, in order to obtain a precise result, and that it was impossible for him to interrupt or to modify the course of his reflections to suit exterior circumstances. It is clear that a mind of this kind can hold within itself great future possibilities. But it is no less clear that no system of education has been especially provided by the public school for persons of this intellectual category, which nevertheless includes more representatives than one would believe at first