情色书屋

Chapter II Married Life
书名： 居里夫人自传（名人传记系列） 作者： [法]居里(Curie,M.) 本章字数： 36397 更新时间： 2020-07-30 15:56:20

With my marriage there began for me a new existence entirely different from the solitary life that I had known during the preceding years. My husband and I were so closely united by our affection and our common work that we passed nearly all of our time together. I have only a few letters from him, for we were so little apart. My husband spent all the time he could spare from his teaching at his research work in the laboratory of the school in which he was professor and I obtained authorization to work with him.

Our living apartment was near the school, so we lost little time in going and coming. As our material resources were limited, I was obliged to attend to most of the housekeeping myself, particularly the preparation of meals. It was not easy to reconcile these household duties with my scientific work, yet, with good will, I managed it. The great thing was that we were alone together in the little home which gave us a peace and intimacy that were very enjoyable for us.

At the same time that I was working in the laboratory, I still had to take a few study courses, for I had decided to take part in the examination for a certificate that would allow me to teach young girls. If I succeeded in this, I would be entitled to be named professor. In August, 1896, after having devoted several months to preparation, I came out first in the examination.

Our principal distraction from the close work of the laboratory consisted in walks or bicycle rides in the country. My husband greatly enjoyed the out-of-doors and took great interest in the plants and animals of woods and meadows. Hardly a corner in the vicinity of Paris was unknown to him. I also loved the country and these excursions were a great joy for me as well as to him, relieving our mind from the tension of the scientific work. We used to bring home bunches of flowers. Sometimes we forgot all about the time and got back late at night. We visited regularly my husband’s parents where our room was always ready. In the vacation we went on longer outings by means of our bicycles. In this way we covered much ground in Auvergne and in the Cevennes and visited several regions at the seashore. We took a great delight in these long all-day excursions, arriving at night always in a new place. If we stayed in one place too long, my husband began to wish to get back to the laboratory. It is also in vacation time that we visited once my family in the Carpathian mountains. My husband learned some Polish in view of this journey to Poland.

But first of all in our life was our scientific work. My husband gave much care to the preparation of his courses, and I gave him some assistance in this, which, at the time, helped me in my education. However, most of our time was devoted to our laboratory researches.

My husband did not then have a private laboratory. He could, to some extent, use the laboratory of the school for his own work, but found more freedom by installing himself in some unused corner of the Physics School building. I thus learned from his example that one could work happily even in very insufficient quarters. At this time my husband was occupied with researches on crystals, while I undertook an investigation of the magnetic properties of steel. This work was completed and published in 1897.

In that same year the birth of our first daughter brought a great change in our life. A few weeks later my husband’s mother died and his father came to live with us. We took a small house with a garden at the border of Paris and continued to occupy this house as long as my husband lived.

It became a serious problem how to take care of our little Irene and of our home without giving up my scientific work. Such a renunciation would have been very painful to me, and my husband would not even think of it; he used to say that he had got a wife made expressly for him to share all his preoccupations. Neither of us would contemplate abandoning what was so precious to both.

Of course we had to have a servant, but I personally saw to all the details of the child’s care. While I was in the laboratory, she was in the care of her grandfather, who loved her tenderly and whose own life was made brighter by her. So the close union of our family enabled me to meet my obligations. Things were particularly difficult only in case of more exceptional events, such as a child’s illness, when sleepless nights interrupted the normal course of life.

It can be easily understood that there was no place in our life for worldly relations. We saw but a few friends, scientific workers, like ourselves, with whom we talked in our home or in our garden, while I did some sewing for my little girl. We also maintained affectionate relations with my husband’s brother and his family. But I was separated from all my relatives, as my sister had left Paris with her husband to live in Poland.

It was under this mode of quiet living, organized according to our desires, that we achieved the great work of our lives, work begun about the end of 1897 and lasting for many years.

I had decided on a theme for my doctorate. My attention had been drawn to the interesting experiments of Henri Becquerel on the salts of the rare metal uranium. Becquerel had shown that by placing some uranium salt on a photographic plate, covered with black paper, the plate would be affected as if light had fallen on it. The effect is produced by special rays which are emitted by the uranium salt and are different from ordinary luminous rays as they can pass through black paper. Becquerel also showed that these rays can discharge an electroscope. He at first thought that the uranium rays were produced as a result of exposing the uranium salt to light, but experiment showed that salts kept for several months in the dark continued the peculiar rays.

My husband and I were much excited by this new phenomenon, and I resolved to undertake the special study of it. It seemed to me that the first thing to do was to measure the phenomenon with precision. In this I decided to use that property of the rays which enabled them to discharge an electroscope. However, instead of the usual electroscope, I used a more perfect apparatus. One of the models of the apparatus used by me for these first measurements is now in the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Philadelphia.

I was not long in obtaining interesting results. My determinations showed that the emission of the rays is an atomic property of the uranium, whatever the physical or chemical conditions of the salt were. Any substance containing uranium is as much more active in emitting rays, as it contains more of this element.

I then thought to find out if there were other substances possessing this remarkable property of uranium, and soon found that substances containing thorium behaved in a similar way, and that this behavior depended similarly on an atomic property of thorium. I was now about to undertake a detailed study of the uranium and thorium rays when I discovered a new interesting fact.

I had occasion to examine a certain number of minerals. A few of them showed activity; they were those containing either uranium or thorium. The activity of these minerals would have had nothing astonishing about it, if it had been in proportion to the quantities of uranium or thorium contained in them. But it was not so. Some of these minerals revealed an activity three or four times greater than that of uranium. I verified this surprising fact carefully, and could not doubt its truth. Speculating about the reason for this, there seemed to be but one explanation. There must be, I thought, some unknown substance, very active, in these minerals. My husband agreed with me and I urged that we search at once for this hypothetical substance, thinking that, with joined efforts, a result would be quickly obtained. Neither of us could foresee that in beginning this work we were to enter the path of a new science which we should follow for all our future.

Of course, I did not expect, even at the beginning, to find a new element in any large quantity, as the minerals had already been analyzed with some precision. At least, I thought there might be as much as one percent of the unknown substance in the minerals. But the more we worked, the clearer we realized that the new radioactive element could exist only in quite minute proportion and that, in consequence, its activity must be very great. Would we have insisted, despite the scarcity of our means of research, if we had known the true proportion of what we were searching for, no one can tell; all that can be said now is that the constant progress of our work held us absorbed in a passionate research, while the difficulties were ever increasing. As a matter of fact, it was only after several years of most arduous labor that we finally succeeded in completely separating the new substance, now known to everybody as radium. Here is, briefly, the story of the search and discovery.

As we did not know, at the beginning, any of the chemical properties of the unknown substance, but only that it emits rays, it was by these rays that we had to search. We first undertook the analysis of a pitchblende from St. Joachimsthal. Analyzing this ore by the usual chemical methods, we added an examination of its different parts for radioactivity, by the use of our delicate electrical apparatus. This was the foundation of a new method of chemical analysis which, following our work, has been extended, with the result that a large number of radioactive elements have been discovered.

In a few weeks we could be convinced that our prevision had been right, for the activity was concentrating in a regular way. And, in a few months, we could separate from the pitchblende a substance accompanying the bismuth, much more active than uranium, and having well defined chemical properties. In July, 1898, we announced the existence of this new substance, to which I gave the name of polonium, in memory of my native country.

While engaged in this work on polonium, we had also discovered that, accompanying the barium separated from the pitchblende, there was another new element. After several months more of close work we were able to separate this second new substance, which was afterwards shown to be much more important than polonium. In December, 1898, we could announce the discovery of this new and now famous element, to which we gave the name of radium.

However, the greatest part of the material work had yet to be done. We had, to be sure, discovered the existence of the remarkable new elements, but it was chiefly by their radiant properties that these new substances were distinguished from the bismuth and barium with which they were mixed in minute quantities. We had still to separate them as pure elements. On this work we now started.

We were very poorly equipped with facilities for this purpose. It was necessary to subject large quantities of ore to careful chemical treatment. We had no money, no suitable laboratory, no personal help for our great and difficult undertaking. It was like creating something out of nothing, and if my earlier studying years had once been called by my brother-in-law the heroic period of my life, I can say without exaggeration that the period on which my husband and I now entered was truly the heroic one of our common life.

We knew by our experiments that in the treatment of pitchblende at the uranium plant of St. Joachimsthal, radium must have been left in the residues, and, with the permission of the Austrian government, which owned the plant, we succeeded in securing a certain quantity of these residues, then quite valueless, and used them for extraction of radium. How glad I was when the sacks arrived, with the brown dust mixed with pine needles, and when the activity proved even greater than that of the primitive ore! It was a stroke of luck that the residues had not been thrown far away or disposed of in some way, but left in a heap in the pine wood near the plant. Some time later, the Austrian government, on the proposition of the Academy of Science of Vienna, let us have several tons of similar residues at a low price. With this material was prepared all the radium I had in my laboratory up to the date when I received the precious gift from the American women.

The School of Physics could give us no suitable premises, but for lack of anything better, the Director permitted us to use an abandoned shed which had been in service as a dissecting room of the School of Medicine. Its glass roof did not afford complete shelter against rain; the heat was suffocating in summer, and the bitter cold of winter was only a little lessened by the iron stove, except in its immediate vicinity. There was no question of obtaining the needed proper apparatus in common use by chemists. We simply had some old pine-wood tables with furnaces and gas burners. We had to use the adjoining yard for those of our chemical operations that involved producing irritating gases; even then the gas often filled our shed. With this equipment we entered on our exhausting work.

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.

Thus the months passed, and our efforts, hardly interrupted by short vacations, brought forth more and more complete evidence. Our faith grew ever stronger, and our work being more and more known, we found means to get new quantities of raw material and to carry on some of our crude processes in a factory, allowing me to give more time to the delicate finishing treatment.

At this stage I devoted myself especially to the purification of the radium, my husband being absorbed by the study of the physical properties of the rays emitted by the new substances. It was only after treating one ton of pitchblende residues that I could get definite results. Indeed we know today that even in the best minerals there are not more than a few decigrammes of radium in a ton of raw material.

At last the time came when the isolated substances showed all the characters of a pure chemical body. This body, the radium, gives a characteristic spectrum, and I was able to determine for it an atomic weight much higher than that of the barium. This was achieved in 1902. I then possessed one decigramme of very pure radium chloride. It had taken me almost four years to produce the kind of evidence which chemical science demands, that radium is truly a new element. One year would probably have been enough for the same purpose, if reasonable means had been at my disposal. The demonstration that cost so much effort was the basis of the new science of radioactivity.

In later years I was able to prepare several decigrammes of pure radium salt, to make a more accurate determination of the atomic weight and even to isolate the pure radium metal. However, 1902 was the year in which the existence and character of radium were definitely established.

We had been able to live for several years entirely engrossed in the work of research, but gradually circumstances changed. In 1900 my husband was offered a professorship in the University of Geneva, but almost simultaneously he obtained a position of assistant professor at the Sorbonne, and I was made professor at the Normal Superior School for young girls at Sevres. So we remained in Paris.

I became much interested in my work in the Normal School, and endeavored to develop more fully the practical laboratory exercises of the pupils. These pupils were girls of about twenty years who had entered the school after severe examination and had still to work very seriously to meet the requirements that would enable them to be named professors in the lycees. All these young women worked with great eagerness, and it was a pleasure for me to direct their studies in physics.

But a growing notoriety, because of the announcement of our discoveries, began to trouble our quiet work in the laboratory, and, little by little, life became more difficult. In 1903 I finished my doctor’s thesis and obtained the degree. At the end of the same year the Nobel prize was awarded jointly to Becquerel, my husband and me for the discovery of radioactivity and new radioactive elements. This event greatly increased the publicity of our work. For some time there was no more peace. Visitors and demands for lectures and articles interrupted every day.

The award of the Nobel prize was a great honor. It is also known that the material means provided by this prize was much greater than is usual in prizes for science. This was a great help in the continuation of our researches. Unhappily, we were overtired and had a succession of failures of health for the one or the other of us, so that it was not until 1905 that we were able to go to Stockholm, where my husband gave his Nobel lecture and where we were well received.

The fatigue resulting from the effort exceeding our forces, imposed by the unsatisfactory conditions of our labor, was augmented by the invasion of publicity. The overturn of our voluntary isolation was a cause of real suffering for us and had all the effect of disaster. It was serious trouble brought into the organization of our life, and I have already explained how indispensable was our freedom from external distraction, in order to maintain our family life and our scientific activity. Of course, people who contribute to that kind of trouble generally mean it kindly. It is only that they do not realize the conditions of the problem.

In 1904 our second daughter, Eve Denise, came to us. I had, of course, to interrupt my work in the laboratory for a while. In the same year, because of the awarding of the Nobel prize and the general public recognition, a new chair of physics was created in Sorbonne, and my husband was named as its occupant. At the same time I was named chief of work in the laboratory that was to be created for him. But in reality the laboratory was not constructed then, and only a few rooms taken from other uses were available to us.

In 1906 just as we were definitely giving up the old shed laboratory where we had been so happy, there came the dreadful catastrophe which took my husband away from me and left me alone to bring up our children and, at the same time, to continue our work of research.

It is impossible for me to express the profoundness and importance of the crisis brought into my life by the loss of the one who had been my closest companion and best friend. Crushed by the blow, I did not feel able to face the future. I could not forget, however, what my husband used sometimes to say, that, even deprived of him, I ought to continue my work.

The death of my husband, coming immediately after the general knowledge of the discoveries with which his name is associated, was felt by the public, and especially by the scientific circles, to be a national misfortune. It was largely under the influence of this emotion that the Faculty of Sciences of Paris decided to offer me the chair, as professor, which my husband had occupied only one year and a half in the Sorbonne. It was an exceptional decision, as up to then no woman had held such a position. The University by doing this offered me a precious mark of esteem and gave me opportunity to pursue the researches which otherwise might have had to be abandoned. I had not expected a gift of this kind; I never had any other ambition than to be able to work freely for science. The honor that now came to me was deeply painful under the cruel circumstances of its coming. Besides I wondered whether I would be able to face such a grave responsibility. After much hesitation, I decided that I ought at least to try to meet the task, and so I began in 1906 my teaching in the Sorbonne, as assistant professor, and two years later I was named titular professor.

In my new situation the difficulties of my life were considerably augmented, as I alone had now to carry the burden formerly weighing on my husband and me together. The cares of my young children required close vigilance; in this, my husband’s father, who continued to live with us, willingly took his share. He was happy to be occupied with the little girls, whose company was his chief consolation after his son’s death. By his effort and mine, the children had a bright home, even if we lived with our inner grief, which they were too young to realize. The strong desire of my father-in-law being to live in the country, we took a house with a garden in Sceaux, a suburb of Paris, from which I could reach the city in half an hour.

This country life had great advantages, not only for my father-in-law, who enjoyed his new surroundings, and especially his garden, but also for my girls, who had the benefit of walks in the open country. But they were more separated from me, and it became necessary to have a governess for them. This position was filled first by one of my cousins, and then by a devoted woman who had already brought up the daughter of one of my sisters. Both of them were Polish, and in this way my daughters learned my native tongue. From time to time, some one of my Polish family came to see me in my grief, and we managed to meet in vacation time, at the seashore in France, and once in the mountains of Poland.

In 1910 we suffered the loss of my very dear father-in-law, after a long illness, which brought me many sorrowful days. I used to spend at his bedside as much time as I could, listening to his remembrances of passed years. His death affected deeply my elder daughter, who, at twelve, knew the value of the cheerful hours spent in his company.

There were few resources for the education of my daughters in Sceaux. The youngest one, a small child, needed principally a hygienic life, outdoor walks and quite elementary schooling. She had already shown a vivid intelligence and an unusual disposition for music. Her elder sister resembled her father in the form of her intelligence. She was not quick, but one could already see that she had a gift of reasoning power and that she would like science. She had some training in a private school in Paris, but I had not wanted to keep her in a lycee, as I have always found the class hours in these schools too long for the health of the children.

My view is that in the education of children the requirement of their growth and physical evolution should be respected, and that some time should be left for their artistic culture. In most schools, as they exist today, the time spent in various reading and writing exercises is too great, and the study required to be done at home too much. I also find these schools lacking, in general, in practical exercises to accompany the scientific studies.

With a few friends in the university circle who shared these views, we organized, therefore, a cooperative group for the education of our children, each of us taking charge of the teaching of a particular subject to all of the young people. We were all very busy with other things, and the children varied in age. Nevertheless, the little experiment thus made was very interesting. With a small number of classes we yet succeeded in reuniting the scientific and literary elements of a desirable culture. The courses in science were accompanied by practical exercises in which the children took great interest.

This arrangement, which lasted two years, proved to be very beneficial for most of the children; it was certainly so for my elder daughter. Following this preparation, she was able to enter a higher class in one of the colleges of Paris, and had no difficulty in passing her bachelor’s examination before the usual age, after which she continued her scientific studies in the Sorbonne. My second daughter, although not benefiting by a similar arrangement for her earlier studies, at first followed the classes of a college only partially, and later completely. She showed herself a good pupil, doing satisfactory work in all directions.

I wanted very much to assure for my children a rational physical education. Next to outdoor walks, I attach a great importance to gymnastics and sports. This side of a girl’s education is still rather neglected in France. I took care that my children did gymnastics regularly. I was also careful to have them spend vacations either in the mountains or at the seashore. They can canoe and swim very well and are not afraid of a long walk or a bicycle ride.

But of course the care of my children’s education was only a part of my duties, my professional occupations taking most of my time. I have been frequently questioned, especially by women, how I could reconcile family life with a scientific career. Well, it has not been easy; it required a great deal of decision and of selfsacrifice. However, the family bond has been preserved between me and my now grown-up daughters, and life is made brighter by the mutual affection and understanding in our home, where I could not suffer a harsh word or selfish behavior.

In 1906, when I succeeded my husband at the Sorbonne, I had only a provisional laboratory with little space and most limited equipment. A few scientists and students had already been admitted to work there with my husband and me. With their help, I was able to continue the course of research with good success.

In 1907, I received a precious mark of sympathy from Mr. Andrew Carnegie, who donated to my laboratory an annual income for research fellowships which enabled some advanced students or scientists to devote their whole time to investigation. Such foundations are very encouraging to those whose inclinations and talents are such as to warrant their entire devotion to research work. They ought to be multiplied in the interest of science.

As for myself, I had to devote again a great deal of time to the preparation of several decigrammes of very pure radium chloride. With this I achieved, in 1907, a new determination of the atomic weight of radium, and in 1910 I was able to isolate the metal. The operation, an extremely delicate one, was performed with the assistance of a distinguished chemist belonging to the laboratory staff. It has never been repeated since that time, because it involves a serious danger of loss of radium, which can be avoided only with utmost care. So I saw at last the mysterious white metal, but could not keep it in this state, for it was required for further experiments.

As for the polonium, I have not been able to isolate it, its quantity in the mineral being even much less than the quantity of radium. However, very concentrated polonium has been prepared in my laboratory, and important experiments have been performed with this substance, concerning especially the production of helium by radiation of polonium.

I had to devote special care to the improvement of the measuring methods in the laboratory. I have told how important precise measurements were in the discovery of radium. It is still to be hoped that efficient methods of quantitative determination may lead to new discoveries.

I devised a very satisfactory method for determining the quantity of radium by the means of a radioactive gas produced by it and called “emanation”. This method, frequently used in my laboratory, permits of the measurement of very small quantities of radium (less than a thousandth of a milligramme), with a fair precision. More important quantities are often measured by their penetrating radiation, named Gamma-rays. For this we also possess in my laboratory a suitable equipment. It is easier and more satisfactory to measure the radium by the emitted rays, than to weigh it in a balance. However, these measurements require the disposition of reliable standards. So the question of a radium standard had to be taken into careful consideration.

The measurements of radium had to be established on a solid basis, for the benefit of laboratories and scientific research, which, of course, is in itself an important reason, and moreover, the growing medical utilization of this substance made it necessary to control the relative purity of commercially produced radium.

The first experiments on the biological properties of radium were successfully made in France with samples from our laboratory, while my husband was living. The results were, at once, encouraging, so that the new branch of medical science, called radiumtherapy (in France, Curietherapy), developed rapidly, first in France and later in other countries. To supply the radium wanted for this purpose, a radiumproducing industry was established. The first plant was created in France and worked very successfully, but afterwards manufactures were founded in other countries, the most important of which are now in America, where great quantities of radium ore , named “carnotite”, are available. The radiumtherapy and the radium production developed conjointly, and the results were more and more important, for the treatment of several diseases, and particularly of cancer. As a consequence of this, several institutes have been founded, in the large cities, for the application of the new therapy. Some of these institutes own several grammes of radium, the commercial price of the gramme being now about $70,000, the cost of production depending on the very small proportion of radium in the ore.

It may be easily understood how deeply I appreciated the privilege of realizing that our discovery had become a benefit to mankind, not only through its great scientific importance, but also by its power of efficient action against human suffering and terrible disease. This was indeed a splendid reward for our years of hard toil.

The success of the therapy depends, of course, on the precise knowledge of the quantity of radium which is used, so that the measurements of radium are as important for industry and for medicine as for physicochemical research.

Considering all these needs, a commission of scientific men of different countries was formed who agreed to take as a base an international standard, formed of a carefully weighed quantity of pure radium salt. Secondary standards were then to be prepared for each country, and compared to the basic standard by means of their radiation. I was appointed to prepare the primary standard.

This was a very delicate operation, as the weight of the standard sample, quite small (about 21 milligrammes of chloride), had to be determined with great precision. I performed the preparation in 1911. The standard is a thin glass tube, of a few centimeters in length, containing the pure salt which was used for the determination of atomic weight. It was accepted by the Commission and is deposited in the International Bureau of Weights and Measures at Sevres, near Paris. Several secondary standards, compared with the primary one, have been put into service by the Commission. In France the control of radium tubes, by the measurement of their radiation, takes place in my laboratory, where any one may bring the radium to be tested; in the United States this is done in the Bureau of Standards.

Near the end of the year 1910, I was proposed for the decoration of the Legion of Honor. A similar proposal was made earlier in favor of my husband, who, however, being opposed to all honorary distinctions, did not accept the nomination. As my husband and I were too united in all things for me to act differently from him in this matter, I did not accept the decoration, in spite of the insistence of the Ministry. At that time also, several colleagues persuaded me to be a candidate for election to the Academy of Sciences, of Paris, of which my husband was a member during the last months of his life. I hesitated very much, as such a candidacy requires, by custom, a great number of personal visits to Academy members. However, I consented to offer myself a candidate, because of the advantages an election would have for my laboratory. My candidacy provoked a vivid public interest, especially because it involved the question of the admission of women to the Academy. Many of the Academicians were opposed to this in principle, and when the scrutiny was made, I had a few votes less than necessary. I do not ever wish to renew my candidacy, because of my strong distaste for the personal solicitation required. I believe that all such elections should be based wholly on a spontaneous decision, without any personal efforts involved, as was the case for several Academies and Societies which made me a member without any demand or initiative on my part.

As a result of all the cares devolving on me, I fell seriously ill at the end of 1911, when, for the second time, I received, this time alone, the award of the Nobel prize. This was a very exceptional honor, a high recognition of the discovery of the new elements and of the preparation of pure radium. Suffering though I was, I went to Stockholm to receive the prize. The journey was extremely painful for me. I was accompanied by my eldest sister and my young daughter Irene. The ceremony of delivery of the Nobel prizes is very impressive, having the features of a national solemnity. A most generous reception was accorded me, specially by the women of Sweden. This was a great comfort to me, but I was suffering so much that when I returned I had to stay in bed for several months. This grave illness, as well as the necessities of my children’s education, obliged me to move my home from Sceaux to Paris.

During the year 1912 I had the opportunity of collaborating in the creation of a laboratory of radium at Warsaw. This laboratory was founded by the Scientific Society of Warsaw which offered me its direction. I could not leave France to go back to my native country, but I willingly agreed to occupy myself with the organization of the studies in the new laboratory. In 1913, having improved my health, I was able to attend an inauguration fête in Warsaw, where a touching reception was given, leaving me an unforgettable memory of national sentiment which succeeded in creating useful work under particularly difficult political conditions.

While still only partially recovered from my illness, I renewed my efforts for the construction of a suitable laboratory in Paris. Finally it was arranged for, and work began in 1912. The Pasteur Institute wished to be associated with this laboratory, and, in accord with the University, it was decided to create an Institute of Radium, with two laboratories, one of physics and one of biology, the first to be devoted to studies of the physical and chemical properties of the radioactive elements, the second to the study of their biological and medical applications. But, because of the lack of financial means, the construction work proceeded very slowly, and was not yet entirely finished when the war broke out in 1914.

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