PIERRE CURIE - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED 05/29/1904 - HFSID 350478
Price: $6,000.00
PIERRE CURIE
The Nobel Peace Prize winning physicist apologizes for a missed appointment due to
having been in his lab.
Rare ALS: "P. Curie", 1½p, 5¾x4¼, front and verso. Faculté des Sciences de Paris,
Cours de Physique, Paris, 1904 May 29. To an unnamed woman. Written from the Curie
home at 108 Boulevard Kellerman. In French, translated. In full: "We sincerely regret
Mme Curie and I having missed your appointment yesterday, which you granted us. I was
in the laboratory yesterday at 5:30 in the evening. I found your letter but it was already
too late and Mme Curie does not go to the laboratory at this time. Please excuse us and
accept our sincerest best wishes." Five months earlier, Pierre and Marie Curie shared
the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Antoine Henri Becquerel for discovering
radioactivity and studying uranium. The Curies continued their work on radioactivity, but
Marie did not go to the laboratory as often as before. She was then three months pregnant
and radioactive material was not something of which to be in contact. The Nobel Prize
brought the Curies overwhelming public popularity, to their dislike. The volume of visitors made
it impossible for them to work with the reclusiveness they so much enjoyed. The demands of
correspondence to be answered filled their evenings at their home on Boulevard
Kellerman, from which this letter was written. A few months earlier, the French
Parliament created Pierre Curie's position as Professor at the Sorbonne especially for
him. In 1905, he was elected to the Academy of Sciences. In 1906, Pierre was run over and
instantly killed on a Paris street; he was 46. Madame Curie continued her life in science
and was awarded the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her isolation of radium and her
studies of its chemistry. In spite of this, the Academy of Sciences refused to abandon its
prejudice against women, and she failed by one vote to be elected to membership. The Curies
had two daughters. Irène, the eldest, became a nuclear physicist. Eve, born December 6,
1904, six months after this letter, became a well-known musician and writer who wrote
her mother's biography. Pierre Curie's autograph is extremely rare in any form. This
letter is extremely desirable in that he mentions his wife twice and talks about being in
his laboratory. Minor smudges at 2 words. Fine condition. Framed to an overall size of
35¾x21½.
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