WOMEN IN CHEMISTRY
The first woman deserving special mention in the history of chemistry is
the wife of the immortal Lavoisier, the most famous of the founders of
modern chemical science. While yet in her teens, this remarkable woman
gave evidence of exceptional intelligence and will power. She was
thoroughly devoted to her husband, and had the greatest admiration for
his genius. Her highest ambition was to prove herself worthy of him and
to render herself competent to assist him in those investigations that
have given him such imperishable renown. With this end in view, she
learned Latin and English, and she thus became an accomplished
translator from these languages of any chemical works which might aid
her spouse in his epoch-making researches. It was she who translated for
him the chemical memoirs of Cavendish, Henry, Kirwan, Priestly and other
noted English scientific investigators.
Arthur Young, well known in his day as a traveler and author, who in
1787 made the acquaintance of Madame Lavoisier, describes her as a woman
full of animation, good sense and knowledge. In referring to a breakfast
she had given him, he declares that "unquestionably the best part of the
repast was her conversation on Kirwan's _Essay on Phlogiston_, which she
was then translating, and on other subjects which a woman of sense,
working in the laboratory of her husband, knows so well how to make
interesting."
She was an ardent co-worker with her husband in his laboratory and
materially aided him in his labors. Under his direction she wrote the
results of the experiments that were made, as is evidenced by the
records of his work. As a pupil of the illustrious painter, David, she
was naturally skillful in drawing. Besides this, she was a good
engraver, and it is to her that are due the illustrations in Lavoisier's
great _Traite de Chimie_, which contributed so much toward
revolutionizing the science of chemistry. It was, indeed, the first work
that deserved to be regarded as a textbook of modern chemistry. Among
her drawings are two of special interest. They represent her as seated
at a table in the laboratory, taking notes, while her husband and his
assistant, Seguin, are making an experiment on the phenomena of
respiration.[158]
All Mme. Lavoisier's writings testify to her great admiration of the
genius of her husband. Intimately associated with him in his work, she
combatted for the triumph of his ideas and sought to make converts to
them. One of her most notable converts was the Swiss chemist, de
Saussure. "You have, Madame," he writes her, "triumphed over my doubts,
at least in the matter of phlogiston, which is the principal object of
the interesting work of which you have done me the honor of sending me a
copy."
After Lavoisier's tragic death on the guillotine, it was his devoted
wife who edited his _Memoirs on Chemistry_, of which Lavoisier had
himself projected the publication. The two volumes constituting this
work were not for sale, but were gratuitously distributed by the
bereaved widow among the most eminent scientific men of the epoch.
Cuvier, in acknowledging the receipt of these precious memoirs,
declares: "All the friends of science are under obligations to you for
your sorrowful determination to publish this collection of papers and to
publish them as they were written--a melancholy monument of your loss
and theirs--a loss which humanity will feel for centuries."
To realize the importance of the work in which Mme. Lavoisier
participated, it suffices to recall the fact that her husband, as one of
the creators of modern chemistry, was the first to demonstrate the
existence of the law of the conservation of matter, which declares that
in all chemical changes nothing is lost and nothing is created. The
co-discoverer with Scheele and Priestly of oxygen, he was the first one
to exhibit the role of this important element in the phenomena of
combustion and respiration and the first, also, to lay the foundations
of a chemical nomenclature. We are not, then, surprised to learn that
Mme. Lavoisier's salon, even long after her lamented husband's death,
was frequented by the most eminent savants of the time. For here were
gathered such scientific luminaries as Cuvier, Laplace, Arago, Lagrange,
Prony, Berthollet, Delambre, Biot, Humboldt, and others scarcely less
brilliant.
After the conclusion of Mme. Lavoisier's work in the laboratory of her
husband, little was accomplished by women in chemistry for more than
half a century. The reason was simple. Chemistry was not a part of the
curriculum of studies for girls either in Europe or America. Even
"during the sixties," writes a teacher of one of the prominent female
seminaries of the United States, "the study of chemistry was mostly
confined to the textbook, supplemented once a year by a course of
lectures from an itinerant expert, who with his tanks of various gases
produced highly spectacular effects."
When one recollects that the first institution in America--Vassar--for
the higher education of women was not opened until 1865, one will
understand that there were previously to this date few opportunities for
women to study either chemistry or any of the other sciences.
The first scientific institution to open its doors to women was the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This was on May 11, 1876, when
the governing board of the institute decided that "hereafter special
students in chemistry shall be admitted without regard to sex." In less
than a year after this event every department of this institution was
open to women, and any one who could pass the requisite examination was
admitted as a student.
Five years, however, before women were formally admitted to the courses
of chemistry an energetic young graduate from Vassar, eager to devote
her life to the pursuit of science, had, as an exceptional favor, been
allowed to enter the Institute as a special student in chemistry. As she
was the first woman in the United States to enter a strictly
professional scientific school, her entrance marks the beginning of a
new epoch in the history of female education. The name of this ardent
votary of science was Miss Ellen Swallow, better known to the world as
Mrs. Ellen H. Richards.
Mrs. Richards had not devoted herself long to the study of her favorite
science before she resolved to apply the knowledge thus gained to the
problems of daily life. She saw, among other things, the necessity of a
complete reform in domestic economy, and resolutely set to work to have
her views adopted and put in practice. She was, in consequence, one of
the first leaders of the crusade in behalf of pure food, and her
lectures and books on this all-important subject contributed greatly
toward the diffusion of exact knowledge respecting the dangers lurking
in unwholesome food.
She was likewise one of the first to apply the science of chemistry to
an exhaustive study of the science of nutrition--to the study of food
and the proper preparation of food materials. In this she was eminently
successful, and was able to achieve for home economics what the
illustrious Liebig had many years before accomplished for agricultural
chemistry--put it on a firm and lasting basis. To her the kitchen was
the center and source of political economy.
The facts of science, indeed, were to Mrs. Richards more than mere
uncorrelated facts. They are potential agencies of service, and their
chief value consists in their enabling us to control our environment in
such wise as to secure the maximum of physical well being. Hence her
constant insistence on personal cleanliness, on the cleanliness of food,
of the house we live in, and, above all, of the kitchen. Hence, also,
her preaching, in season and out of season, on the necessity of pure
air, pure water and abundance of vitalizing sunshine.
We cannot, then, wonder that sanitary chemistry eventually became the
life work of Mrs. Richards, and that, when the course of sanitary
engineering was inaugurated in the Institute of Technology--the first
course of its kind in the world--she became an important agent in its
development and contributed immensely to its popularity and prestige.
She held the position of instructor of sanitary chemistry in the
institute for twenty-seven years. During this time she trained a large
number of young men in her chosen specialty, and these, after
graduating, engaged in similar work in various parts of the New and the
Old World.
The branch of sanitary chemistry to which Mrs. Richards devoted most
attention was air, water and sewage analysis. In this she was a
recognized expert, and her advice and services were sought in all parts
of the country. During the last three years of her life she acted,
according to her own testimony, as general sanitary adviser to no fewer
than two score corporations and schools. In addition to this she was
also during this brief period consulted on the subject of foods by
nearly two hundred educational and other institutions.
What, however, constituted the greatest contribution of Mrs. Richards to
the public health was the part she took in the great sanitary survey of
the waters of the State of Massachusetts. During this long and
laborious investigation she analyzed more than forty thousand samples of
water. These analyses exhibited the condition of the water from all
parts of the state during all seasons of the year and were of the
greatest value in solving a number of important problems in state
sanitation.
But notwithstanding the drafts made on her time and energy by her
classwork in the laboratory and her occupation as sanitary engineer for
scores of public and private institutions, she still found leisure to
engage in many important movements which had in view the public health
and the betterment of sanitary conditions in city and country. It is
safe to say that no one ever put her knowledge of chemical science to
more practical use or made it more perfectly subserve the public weal
than did Mrs. Richards. To spread among the masses a knowledge of the
principles of sanitation, to make them realize how indispensable to
health are pure food, pure water, pure air and life-giving sunshine was
her great mission in life, and in this she displayed an energy and a
tireless zeal which were an inspiration to all with whom she came into
contact.
This indefatigable woman, it is proper to record here, might have
distinguished herself as a discoverer in chemical science had she
elected to devote her life to original research rather than to utilizing
the knowledge already available for the welfare of her fellows. Thus,
after a careful analysis of the rare mineral samarskite, she found an
insoluble residue which led her to believe might contain unknown
elements. This view she repeatedly expressed to her co-workers in the
laboratory. But she was unwilling to take from what she regarded more
important work the time necessary for making investigations which might
have given her undying fame as a discoverer. For not long afterward this
insoluble residue, in the hands of two French chemists, yielded the
exceedingly rare elements, samarium and gadolinium.
Another chemist of a less altruistic nature than Mrs. Richards would not
have resisted the temptation to achieve distinction in the domain of
original research. But where there was so much suffering to be relieved
and so much ignorance to be removed regarding the most fundamental
principles of sanitation, this philanthropic woman preferred to put to
practical use what she called "the considerable body of useful knowledge
now lying on our shelves."
Her duty, as she conceived it, is well indicated in the following
paragraph, taken from a thoughtful discussion by her of the subject of
home economics a short time before her death in 1911. "The sanitary
research worker in laboratory and field," she declares, "has gone nearly
to the limit of his value. He will soon be smothered in his own work, if
no one takes it. Meanwhile children die by the thousands; contagious
diseases take toll of hundreds; back alleys remain foul and the streets
are unswept; school-houses are unwashed and danger lurks in the drinking
cups and about the towels. Dust is stirred up each morning with the
feather duster to greet the warm, moist noses and throats of the
children. To the watchful expert it seems like the old cities dancing
and making merry on the eve of a volcanic outbreak."[159]
From the day in 1873 when Mrs. Richards received from the Institute of
Technology the degree of Bachelor of Science--a degree which made her
not only the first woman graduate of this institution, but also the
first graduate in the United States of a strictly scientific seat of
learning--the number of women who have devoted themselves to chemical
pursuits is legion. They are now found in every civilized country in
both hemispheres and their number is daily increasing. They are
everywhere doing excellent work as teachers in classrooms and
laboratories and holding their own with men as chemical experts in
manufacturing establishments and government institutions. Many of them
have done original work of a high order, and distinguished themselves by
their valuable contributions to contemporary chemical literature. Space,
however, precludes more than a general reference to their achievements,
for the names only of those who have done meritorious work in chemistry
would make a very long list.
Passing over, then, all the lesser feminine lights in chemistry who, in
various fields of activity, have rendered such distinct service during
the past generation, we come to one who for nearly two decades has stood
in the forefront of the great chemists of the world. This is that
renowned daughter of Poland, Mme. Marie Klodowska Curie, whose name will
always be identified with some of the most remarkable discoveries which
have ever been made in the long-continued study of the material
universe.
Marie Klodowska was born in Warsaw, in 1868. Her father was a professor
of chemistry in the university of the former Polish capital; and it is
undoubtedly from him that his brilliantly dowered daughter has inherited
her love of chemistry and her extraordinary genius for scientific
research. Owing to the paltry salary he received, Professor Klodowska
was obliged to make little Marie his laboratory assistant while she was
quite a young girl. Instead, then, of playing with tops and dolls, her
time was occupied in cleaning evaporating dishes and test tubes and in
assisting her father to prepare for his lectures and experiments. And it
was thus that, at an early age, she acquired a taste for that science in
which she was subsequently to achieve such world-wide fame.
While still a young woman, her love of science drew her to Paris, where
she arrived with only fifty francs in her purse. But, possessed of
dauntless courage and unfaltering perseverance, she was prepared to make
any sacrifice in the pursuit of knowledge.
Her first home in the gay French metropolis was a poorly furnished
garret in an obscure part of the city, and her diet was for so long a
time restricted to black bread and skimmed milk that she afterward
avowed that she had to cultivate a taste for wine and meat. And so
intensely cold was her cheerless room in winter that the little bottle
of milk which was daily left at her door was speedily congealed. At this
time the poor girl was living on less than ten cents a day, but still
cherishing all the while the fond hope that she might eventually secure
a position as a student assistant in some good chemical laboratory.
After a long struggle with poverty and after countless disappointments
in quest of a position where she could gratify her ambition as a student
of chemistry, she finally found occupation as a poorly paid assistant in
the laboratory conducted by Professor Lipmann. She was not, however, at
work a week before this distinguished investigator recognized in the
young woman one whose knowledge of chemistry and faculty for original
research were far above the average. She was accordingly transferred
without delay from the menial employment in which she had been engaged
and given every possible facility for prosecuting work as an original
investigator.
It was shortly after this event that Marie Klodowska met the noted
savant, Pierre Curie. He was not long in discovering in her a kindred
spirit--one who, besides having exceptional talent in experimental
chemistry, was actuated by an ardent love of science. It was then that
he determined to make her his wife. A single sentence in a letter he
wrote at this time to the object of his admiration and affection
reveals, better than anything else, the devotion of this matchless pair
in the cause of science. "What a great thing it would be," he exclaims,
"to unite our lives and work together for the sake of science and
humanity." These simple words were the keynote to the ideal life led by
this incomparable couple during the eleven years they worked together
in perfect unity of thought and aspiration before the sudden and
premature extinction of the husband's life gave such a shock to the
entire scientific world.
After her marriage the gifted young Polish woman had reached the goal of
her ambition. She was able to devote herself exclusively to what was
henceforth to constitute her life work in one of the best laboratories
of Paris, that of the Ecole de Physique et de Chimie, and that, too, in
collaboration with her husband, from whom she was never separated during
the entire period of their married life for even a single day.
It was about this time that Mme. Curie had her interest aroused by the
brilliant discoveries of Roentgen and Becquerel regarding radiant matter.
After a long series of carefully conducted experiments on the compounds
of uranium and thorium, she, with the intuition of genius, opened up to
the world of science an entirely new field of research. But she soon
realized that the labor involved in the investigations which she had
planned was entirely beyond the capacity of any one person. It was then
that she succeeded in enlisting her husband's interest in the
undertaking which was to lead to such marvelous results.
Confining their work to a careful analytical study of the residue of the
famous Bohemian pitchblend--an extremely complex mineral, largely
composed of oxide of uranium--they soon found themselves confronted by
most extraordinary radio-active phenomena. Continuing their researches,
their labor was rewarded by the discovery of a new element which Mme.
Curie, in her enthusiasm, named in honor of the land of her birth,
polonium.
As their investigations progressed, they became correspondingly
difficult. They were dealing with substances which exist in pitchblend
residue only in infinitesimal quantities--not more than three troy grams
to the ton. The difficulties they had to contend with were enough to
discourage the stoutest heart. Few believed in their theories, while
the majority of those who had some intimation of the character of their
work were persuaded that they were pursuing a phantom. But the
indefatigable pair toiled on day and night and continued their
experiments through long years of poverty and deferred hopes.
Considering the herculean task in which they were engaged for so many
years, we scarcely know which to admire most, their clearness of vision,
which made them divine success; their profound knowledge, which guided
them in the choice of reagents; or the indomitable perseverance which
characterized them in their laborious task and in the countless
sacrifices which they were obliged to make before their efforts were
crowned with success.
During this long search into the inner heart of nature, Pierre Curie was
often so discouraged and depressed that, had he not been sustained by
his more sanguine wife, he would time and again have given up his
investigations in despair. But Marie Curie never faltered. She never
lost faith in their theories or confidence in the outcome of their great
undertaking. Before her deft hands and fertile brain difficulties
vanished as if under the magic wand of Prospero.
At length, after countless experiments of the most delicate character,
after bringing to bear on the solution of the problem before them the
most refined methods of chemical analysis, they were rewarded by one of
the most extraordinary discoveries recorded in the annals of science.
With the announcement of the discovery of radium, the Curies sprang into
world-wide fame, and the name of the wonderful woman who had been the
prime mover in the supreme achievement was on every lip. Pierre Curie
himself declared that more than half of the epochal discovery belonged
to his wife. It was she who began the work. It was she who, after her
marriage, enlisted in it the cooperation of her husband. It was she
whose invincible patience and persistence--typical of the noblest
representatives of her race--supported him during periods of doubt and
despondency and fanned his flagging spirits to new endeavor. It can
indeed be truthfully asserted that had it not been for her penetrating
intelligence, her tenacity of purpose and her keenness of vision, which
were never at fault, the great victory which crowned their efforts would
never have been achieved.[160]
Compare their work with that which was accomplished by their illustrious
predecessors, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, and his wife, a century
earlier. The latter, by their discovery of and experiments with oxygen,
were able to explain the until then mysterious phenomena of combustion
and respiration and to coordinate numberless facts which had before
stood isolated and enigmatic. But the reverse was the case in the
discovery of that extraordinary and uncanny element, radium. It
completely subverted many long-established theories and necessitated an
entirely new view of the nature of energy and of the constitution of
matter. A substance that seemed capable of emitting light and heat
indefinitely, with little or no appreciable change or transformation,
appeared to sap the very foundations of the fundamental principle of the
conservation of energy.
Subsequent investigations seemed only to render "confusion worse
confounded." They appeared to justify the dreams of the alchemists of
old, not only regarding the transmutation of metals but also respecting
the elixir of life. For was not this apparently absurd idea vindicated
by the observed curative properties--bordering almost on the
miraculous--this marvelous element was reputed to possess! Its virtues,
it was averred, transcended the fabled properties of the famous red
tincture and the philosopher's stone combined, and many were prepared to
find in it a panacea for the most distressing of human ailments, from
lupus and rodent ulcer to cancer and other frightful forms of morbid
degeneration.[161]
And the end is not yet. Continued investigations, made in all parts of
the world since the discovery of radium by the Curies, have but
emphasized its mysterious properties, and compelled a revision of many
of our most cherished theories in chemistry, physics and astronomy. No
one single discovery, not even Pasteur's far-reaching discovery of
microbic life, it may safely be asserted, has ever been more subversive
of long-accepted views in certain domains of science, or given rise to
more perplexing problems regarding matters which were previously thought
to be thoroughly understood.
Never in the entire history of science have the results of a woman's
scientific researches been so stupendous or so revolutionary. And never
has any one achievement in science reflected more glory on womankind
than that which is so largely due to the genius and the perseverance of
Mme. Curie.
After their startling discovery, honors and tributes to their genius
came in rapid succession to the gifted couple. On the recommendation of
the venerable British savant, Lord Kelvin, they were awarded the Davy
gold medal by the Royal Society. Shortly after this they shared with M.
H. Becquerel in the Nobel prize for physics bestowed on them by Sweden.
Then came laggard France with its decoration of the Legion of Honor. But
it was offered only to the man. There was nothing for the woman. Pierre
Curie showed his spirit and chivalry by declining to accept the
proffered honor unless his wife could share it with him. His answer was
simple, but its meaning could not be mistaken. "This decoration," he
said, "has no bearing on my work."[162]
Shortly after her husband's death Mme. Curie was appointed as his
successor as special lecturer in the Sorbonne. This was the first time
that this conservative old university ever invited a woman to a full
professorship. But she soon showed that she was thoroughly competent to
fill the position with honor and eclat. She has the elite of society and
the world's most noted men of science among her auditors. The crowned
heads of the Old World eagerly seek an opportunity to witness her
experiments and hear her discourse on what is by all odds the most
marvelous element in nature.
Mme. Curie has not allowed her lectures in the Sorbonne to interfere
with the continuation of the researches which have won for her such
world-wide renown. Since the sudden taking off of her husband by a
passing truck on a Paris bridge, she has succeeded in isolating both
radium and polonium--only the chlorides and bromides of these elements
were previously known--besides doing other work scarcely less
remarkable. And besides all this, she has also found time to write a
connected account of her investigations under the title of _Traite de
Radio-Activite_--a work that reflects as much honor on her sex as did
_Le Instituzioni Analitiche_ of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, which won for her,
through that celebrated patron of learning, Benedict XIV, the chair of
higher mathematics in the University of Bologna.
The list of learned societies to which Mme. Curie belongs is an extended
one. To mention only a few, she is an honorary or foreign member of the
London Chemical Society, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the
Royal Swedish Academy, the American Chemical Society, the American
Philosophical Society, and the Imperial Academy of Sciences of St.
Petersburg. From the universities of Geneva and Edinburgh she has
received the honorary degree of doctor.
In 1898 she received the Gegner prize from the French Academy of
Sciences for her elaborate researches on the magnetic properties of iron
and steel, as also for her investigations relating to radio-activity.
The same prize was again awarded to her in 1900, and still again in
1903. With her husband she received in 1901 the La Caze prize of ten
thousand francs; and in 1903 she received a part of the Osiris prize of
sixty thousand francs. Since her husband's death in 1906 Mme. Curie has
been awarded the coveted Nobel prize in chemistry, which was placed in
her hand by the King of Sweden on December 11, 1911--a prize which
increased the exchequer of the fair recipient by nearly two hundred
thousand francs. Having before been the beneficiary of the Nobel prize
for physics, in conjunction with her husband and M. H. Becquerel, Mme.
Curie is thus the first person to be twice singled out for the world 's
highest financial recognition of scientific research.
It would take too long to enumerate all the medals and prizes and honors
which have come to this remarkable woman from foreign countries. But she
has doubtless been the recipient of more trophies of undying fame
during the last decade and a half than any other one person during the
same brief period of intellectual activity. And all these tokens of
recognition of genius were showered upon her not because she was a
woman, but in spite of this fact. Had she been a man, she would have
been honored with the other distinctions which tradition and prejudice
still persist in denying to one of the proscribed sex, no matter how
great her merit or how signal her achievements.
At a recent scientific congress, held in Brussels, it was decided to
prepare a standard of measurement of radium emanations. It was the
unanimous opinion of the congress that Mme. Curie was better equipped
than any other person for establishing such a standard; and she was
accordingly requested to undertake the delicate and difficult task--a
commission which she executed to the satisfaction of all concerned.
This unit of measurement, it is gratifying to learn, will be known as
the curie--a word which will enter the same category as the volt, the
ohm, the ampere, the farad, and a few others which will perpetuate the
names of the world's greatest geniuses in the domain of experimental
science.
When, not long since, there was a vacancy among the immortals of the
French Academy, there was a generally expressed desire that it should be
filled by one who was universally recognized as among the foremost of
living scientists. The name of Mme. Curie trembled on every lip; and the
hope was entertained that the Academy would honor itself by admitting
the world-famed savante among its members. Considering her achievements,
she had no competitor, and was, in the estimation of all outside of the
Academy, the one person in France who was most deserving of the coveted
honor.
But no. She was a woman; and for that reason alone she was excluded from
an institution the sole object of whose establishment was the reward of
merit and the advancement of learning. The age-old prejudice against
women who devote themselves to the study of science, or who contribute
to the progress of knowledge, was still as dominant as it was in the
days of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, a century and a half before. Mme. Curie,
like her famous sister in Italy, might win the plaudits of the world for
her achievements; but she could have no recognition from the one
institution, above all others, that was specially founded to foster the
development of science and literature, and to crown the efforts of those
who had proven themselves worthy of the Academy's highest honor. The
attitude of the French institution toward Mme. Curie was exactly like
that of the Royal Society of Great Britain when Mrs. Ayrton's name was
up for membership. The answer to both applicants was in effect, if not
in words, "No woman need apply."
When one reads of the sad experiences of Mme. Curie and Mrs. Ayrton with
the learned societies of Paris and London, one instinctively asks, "When
will the day come when women, in every part of the civilized world,
shall enjoy all the rights and privileges in every field of intellectual
effort which have so long been theirs in the favored land of Dante and
Beatrice--the motherland of learned societies and universities?" For not
until the advent of the day when such exclusive organizations as
the Royal Society and the French Academy of Sciences, such
ultra-conservative universities as Oxford and Cambridge shall admit
women on the same footing as men, will these institutions be more than
half serving the best interests of humanity.[163]
Women, it is true, are now eligible to many literary and scientific
associations from which they were formerly debarred, and are, in most
countries, admitted to colleges and universities whose portals were
closed to them until only a few years ago; but until they shall be
welcomed to all universities and all societies whose objects are the
advancement of knowledge, until they shall participate in the
advantages and prestige accruing from connection with these
organizations, they will have reason to feel that they are not yet in
the full possession of the intellectual advantages for which they have
so long yearned--that they have been but partially liberated from that
educational disqualification in which they have been held during so many
long centuries of deferred hopes and fruitless struggles.
FOOTNOTES:
[158] _Lavoisier 1743-1794, d'apres sa Correspondence, Ses Manuscrits,
Ses Papiers de Famille et d'Autres Documents Inedits_, p. 42 et seq.,
par E. Grimaux, Paris, 1896.
[159] _The Life of Ellen H. Richards_, p. 273 et seq., by Caroline L.
Hunt, Boston, 1912.
[160] Mme. Curie, in an article which she wrote shortly after her
discovery of radium, shows that she possesses a genius for inductive
science of the highest type. "It was at the close of the year 1897," she
writes, "that I began to study the compounds of uranium, the properties
of which had greatly attracted my interest. Here was a substance
emitting spontaneously and continually radiations similar to Roentgen
rays, whereas ordinarily, Roentgen rays can be produced only in a vacuum
tube with the expenditure of electrical energy. By what process can
uranium furnish the same rays without expenditure of energy and without
undergoing apparent modification? Is uranium the only body whose
compounds emit similar rays? Such were the questions I asked myself; and
it was while seeking to answer them that I entered into the researches
which have led to the discovery of radium." _Radium and Radio-Activity
in The Century Magazine_, for January, 1904.
[161] _Notice sur Pierre Curie_, p. 20 et seq., by M. D. Gernez, Paris,
1907, and _Le Radium, Son Origine et ses Transformations_, by M. L.
Houllerigue, in _La Revue de Paris_, May 1, 1911.
[162] The day following Pierre Curie's refusal of the decoration offered
by the Government, the elder of his two daughters, little Irene, climbed
upon her father's knee and put a red geranium in the lapel of his coat.
"Now, papa," she gravely remarked, "you are decorated with the Legion of
Honor." "In this case," the fond father replied, "I make no objection."
[163] A few days before Mme. Curie's name was to come before the Academy
of Sciences as a candidate for membership, the French Institute in its
quarterly plenary meeting of the five academies, of which the Institute
is composed, decided by a vote of ninety to fifty-two against the
eligibility of women to membership, and put itself on record in favor of
the "immutable tradition against the election of women, which it seemed
eminently wise to respect."
Commenting on this decision of The Immortals, a writer in the well-known
English magazine, _Nature_, under date of January 12, 1911, penned the
following pertinent paragraph:
"It remains to be seen what the Academy of Sciences will do in the face
of such an expression of opinion. Mme. Curie is deservedly popular in
French scientific circles. It is everywhere recognized that her work is
of transcendent merit, and that it has contributed enormously to the
prestige of France as a home of experimental inquiry. Indeed, it is not
too much to say that the discovery and isolation of the radio-active
elements are among the most striking and fruitful results of a field of
investigation preeminently French. If any prophet is to have honour in
his own country--even if the country be only the land of his
adoption--surely, that honour ought to belong to Mme. Curie. At this
moment, Mme. Curie is without doubt, in the eyes of the world, the
dominant figure in French chemistry. There is no question that any man
who had contributed to the sum of human knowledge what she has made
known, would years ago have gained that recognition at the hands of his
colleagues, which Mme. Curie's friends are now desirous of securing for
her. It is incomprehensible, therefore, on any ethical principles of
right and justice that, because she happens to be a woman, she should be
denied the laurels which her preeminent scientific achievement has
earned for her."
Compare this frank and honest statement with that of a contributor,
about the same date, to _La Revue du Monde_, of Paris. Guided by his
myopic vision and diseased imagination, this writer discerns in the
admittance of women into the grand old institution of Richelieu and
Napoleon the imminent triumph of what Prudhon called pornocracy and the
eventual opening of the portals of the Palais Mazarin to representatives
of the type of Lais and Phryne, on the Hellenic pretext that "Beauty is
the supreme merit."
It is gratifying, however, to the friends of woman's cause to learn that
Mme. Curie's candidacy was defeated by only two votes. Her competitor,
M. Branly, received thirty votes against the Polish woman's
twenty-eight. She thus fared far better than did Mme. Pauline Savari,
who aspired to the fauteuil made vacant by the death of Renan, regarding
whose candidature the Academy curtly declared, "Considering that its
traditions do not permit it to examine this question, the Academy passes
to the order of the day." Thus, it will be seen that, in spite of the
long-continued opposition to women members, the French Academy is more
than likely to offer its next vacant chair to the pride and glory of
Poland,--the immortal discoverer of radium and polonium.