marrie curie

In 1920, for the 25th anniversary of the discovery of radium, the French government established a stipend for her, its previous recipient was Louis Pasteur (1822 95) In 1921, Marie was welcomed triumphantly when she toured the United States to raise funds for research on radium. Mrs. William Brown Meloney, after interviewing Marie, created a Marie Curie Radium Fund and raised money to buy radium, publicising her trip.In 1921, US President Warren G. Harding received her at the White House to present her with the 1 gram of radium collected in the United States.Before the meeting, recognising her growing fame abroad, and embarrassed by the fact that she had no French official distinctions to wear in public, the French government offered her a Legion of Honour award, but she refused.In 1922 she became a fellow of the French Academy of Medicine. She also travelled to other countries, appearing publicly and giving lectures in Belgium, Brazil, Spain, and Czechoslovakia.Led by Curie, the Institute produced four more Nobel Prize winners, including her daughter Irene Joliot Curie and her son in law, Frederic Joliot Curie.Eventually, it became one of four major radioactivity research laboratories, the others being the Cavendish Laboratory, with Ernest Rutherford, the Institute for Radium Research, Vienna, with Stefan Meyer, and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, with Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner. In August 1922, Marie Curie became a member of the newly created International Commission for Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations.In 1923, she wrote a biography of Pierre, entitled Pierre Curie.In 1925, she visited Poland, to participate in the ceremony that laid foundations for the Radium Institute in Warsaw.Her second American tour, in 1929, succeeded in equipping the Warsaw Radium Institute with radium, it was opened in 1932 and her sister Bronis?awa became its director.These distractions from her scientific labours and the attendant publicity caused her much discomfort but provided resources needed for her work.In 1930, she was elected a member of the International Atomic Weights Committee where she served until her death.

Marie Curie died aged 66 on July 4, 1934, killed by aplastic anemia, a disease of the bone marrow. It is likely that the radioactivity she had been exposed to during her career caused the disease.Scientists are now much more cautious in their handling of radioactive elements and X rays than they were in the first few decades after their discovery. Marie Curies own books and papers are so radioactive that they are now stored in lead boxes, which may only be opened by people wearing protective suits.