Signed Marie Curie Typed DS Regarding Radium Content of Mesothorium 1923

When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

Signed Marie Curie Typed DS Regarding Radium Content of Mesothorium 1923:
$8800.00

MARIE (SKLODOWSKA) CURIE. (1867-1934). Polish-born French physicist; winner of the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics, along with her husband Pierre, for researching the process of radiation, and winner of the 1911 prize in chemistry for discovering the elements radium and polonium. TDS. (“M. Curie”). 1p. Small folio. Paris, June 15, 1923. “Certificat no. 2954,” in French, on printed letterhead of the Institute du Radium specifying the radium content of a sample of mesothorium signed by Marie Curie in her role as director of the Institute du Radium.

It was Marie who coined the term “radioactivity,” and her ongoing research into radioactive elements and their medical applications led to her founding the Curie Institutes in Paris and Warsaw. With her 1911 Nobel Prize in chemistry, Curie became the first person and only woman to win the prize twice as well as the first of two individuals (Linus Pauling being the other) to win a Nobel Prize in two different areas.

In addition to her two Nobel Prizes awarded, daughter Iréne and son-in-law Joliot-Curie, both received Nobel Prizes as did her other son-in-law, Henry Labouisse, who accepted the 1965 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of that year’s winner, UNICEF. As such, the Curie family is the most lauded family in the history of the Nobel Prize.

Curie was the director of the Radium Institute (Institut du radium) from 1914 until 1934, and the institution became a center for research in chemistry, physics and medicine. Today’s Curie Institute was later built on the site of the Radium Institute. Our “Certificat” from the Institute du Radium records the radioactivity of a sample of mesothorium, one of two radioactive decay products of thorium, an isotope of radium or actinium and often used to treat cancer at the time. Two years before the signing of our document, a committee appointed by the French Academy had declared that fears about the “danger of penetrating rays” were unjustified,” (Marie Curie: A Life, Quinn). But in 1925, the French scientific community began to sound the alarm about exposure to mesothorium and radium after an increasing number of deaths were attributed to radiation exposure. Curie insisted that no one at the Institute suffered from serious health effects and “by the standards of the day, Marie Curie’s laboratory does seem to have been quite careful. Most of the methods of protection which are currently recommended in dealing with radioactive materials were in place in her lab, albeit in much less stringent form,” (ioffer.). Her dedication to research in the field of radioactivity never wavered, yet her exposure to radiation caused her decades of illness and her death in 1934 from leukemia.

Unlike most other certificates signed by Curie that have appeared on the market, our form is typed and not printed. Answers have been recorded in the hand of an unidentified assistant. Bearing two ink stamps, from the Anglo-South American Bank in Mexico and in Paris. Folded with pin holes in the upper left corner and normal wear. In very good condition. Scarce. [Science & Medical]Ships to US only.