Marie Curie arrives
One hundred years ago today … Marie Curie arrived on the ocean liner U.S.S. Olympic and was greeted at the docks by crowds of admirers.
New York Times, 15 May 1921, p. 71. Newspapers.com.
Brooklyn Citizen, 11 May 1921, p.1. Newspapers.com.
America to-day welcomed Madame Marie Curie, who discovered radium. Madame Curie arrived here to-day on the White Star liner Olympic, to receive a gift of one gram of radium from the women of America. A great throng greeted her. All the Polish organizations of New York were present. Cheers and the waving of American and Polish tags welcomed the distinguished scientist, who is a born Pole, although being a resident of Paris and married to a Frenchman.
*The whole civilized world looks up to you with respect and veneration." declared Jan Moszczonski, chairman of the reception committee, in an address of welcome.
(“Mme. Curie, Of Radium Fame, Now In City.” Brooklyn Citizen, 11 May 1921, p.1.)
New York Herald, 17 May 1921, p. 10. Newspapers.com.
Curie would start her tour that week with a trip to Smith College in Massachusetts, where she received an honorary degree, and shook hands so often (this being the US) that she was injured.
Brooklyn newspapers were quite appreciative of Curie. The Standard Union ran an editorial explaining the significance of Curie’s visit.
Mme. Curie, of Polish birth. but educated in France, the wife of Pierre Curie, working in the Paris laboratory after his death in 1906, succeeded in giving radium to civilization.
This visitor is the one America is now ready to shower with honors. But it will be far more than fine words, banquets and sight-seeing expeditions. She is to be presented with a gram of radium, an eighth of an ounce, a small amount, yet almost one-half the total possession of all France. It is to the distinguished adopted daughter of the republic, not to France herself, that this $100,000 gift will be made. Though the discoverer, she has none of this precious substance and therefore is unable to experiment to ascertain new virtues in this radioactive agent.
But radium is extremely scarce, and there are only two regions where pitchblende, from which it is extracted, are to be found in great quantities. One, happily, lies in this country, in Southern Colorado, the other in Europe. As most people know, the smallest bit is obtained only after extraordinary effort and at great cost, so that fact, and the further fact that France has no pitchblende beds worthy of exploitation, partly explain why Americans wish to present some to Mme. Curie, who is not a rich woman. The hope is she will discover some new properties in that gram that will benefit mankind.
(“Mme. Marie Curie.” Standard Union, 11 May, 1921, p.11.)
– Jonathan Goldman, May 11, 2021
TAGS: women’s history, women in science, physics, foreign dignitaries, ships, transatlantic voyages, Polish, French