Nuclear Installation Safety Papers

Tribute to Mme Curie

Annick Carnino, former director
Division of Nuclear Installation Safety
International Atomic Energy Agency

Excellency, distinguished guests, American Nuclear Society members and friends, I really feel very honoured to have been asked to pay tribute to Marie Curie, a pioneer of our nuclear industry at the time of the century of the discovery of natural radioactivity polonium and radium in 1895.

This is a difficult task:

How to summarize the life of such a remarkable and famous woman scientist - I would need hours to address all her accomplishments, all her awards and titles.
She is a role model to all scientists in the world and especially to female scientists.
All of you know her scientific career and her discoveries recognized by a first Nobel prize in Physics in 1903 together with her husband, Pierre Curie, and Henri Becquerel; and a second Nobel prize in Chemistry in 1911 for radium atomic weight determination.

So let me rather tell you what as a nuclear engineer, I myself admire most in her as a scientist and as a woman:

Her whole life devotion to science and research in complete disinterest for self gain, Pierre and Marie Curie refused to file a patent application on their discovery of radioactivity in order to let the whole world benefit from its applications.
Her complete symbiosis with her husband Pierre Curie, which led them to a marvellous complementary synergy in their research work and a happy life although full of materialistic difficulties. Is it not remarkable that Pierre managed for her to receive credit for her work at a time when women scientists were not recognized in the scientific community in France or in the world!
Her fight against a sexist scientific community, in order to be able to continue her passionate research after Pierre’s death. She became the first woman in France to be a Professor at the Sorbonne, she was refused access to the French Academy of Science, but was elected later at the Academy of Medicine. She found the Radium Institute both in Paris and in Warsaw. She succeeded in breaking quite a number of taboos against women scientists and she showed us the way forward.
She never forgot her native country, Poland, and showed it in giving the second gramme of radium she received from the USA and which led to the founding of the Radium Institute in Warsaw.
She had a humanitarian dream in easing human suffering, which came true through the application of radium for cancer treatment. She also took action during the 1914-1918 war by creating X-ray vans, training female nurses manipulators and saved thousands of wounded soldiers’ lives. The Radium Institute also was the key in fulfilling this dream in the biological applications, always with the same disinterest in self-gain.
Her faculties of adaptation were also remarkable: it was during a two month visit to USA, where she received numerous awards that she discovered, she was so famous and that all American women supported her in her quest for buying 1gr of Radium for continuing her research. Fund raising was also successful when she came back a second time to the USA and that 1gr of radium she gave to Poland. She came back from these trips with a feeling of gratitude and affection to the American women.
She actively participated as a peer in Brussels, Solvay congresses in discussions on discoveries and new theories with the most prestigious scientists of our century and became a member of the International Committee on Intellectual Co-operation in Geneva and served again the science.
Finally, is it not also remarkable that she could be a wonderful mother and raise her two daughters at the same time as her career - and Irene followed in her mother’s footsteps in physics which led her to discover artificial radioactivity with her husband Frederic Joliot, for which they received a Nobel prize.

I have to stop here since I will not be able to cover all her accomplishments. She will always be a role model for us for her fantastic charisma, her tenacity and will power and her devotion to her humanitarian ideas.

Nuclear science, engineering research and applications have undergone tremendous developments in the last 50 years. Marie Curie showed us the way forward and we should continue to defend the value of nuclear science, even in a period where it is not yet fully recognized for its benefits to human kind.