blende; a uranic mineral in which she measured a much more intense activity than is present in uranium alone. She deduced that there were other substances besides uranium that were very radioactive, such as polonium and radium, which she discovered in 1898. In their experiments, Pierre observed the properties of the radiation while Marie, for her part, purified the radioactive elements. Both shared the same, uncanny tenacity, which was all the more admirable given their deplorable living conditions. Their laboratory was nothing more than a miserable apartment, where in winter the temperature dropped to around six degrees. Pierre even tested the radium on his skin, leaving radium to treat malign tumors causing Curietherapy to be born. In 1903, Marie defended her thesis. Together with Becquerel, the Curies were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery of natural radioactivity. Their happiness was short lived, however. In 1906, Pierre, weakened by radiation and overworked, was run over by a car. Marie was forced to continue alone. The founding of the Radium Institute by the University of Paris and the Pasteur Institute in 1914 would enable her to fulfil her wish. Marie ran the research laboratory while Dr. Claudius Regaud headed the applied biology laboratory. Physicists and chemists provided the radium, and physicians treated cancer patients. Marie set about collecting funds and raw materials, the price of which had soared, going as far afield as the United States; but she found it hard to accept that dark economic interests should prevail. Marie died of leukemia in July of 1934, exhausted and almost blinded, her fingers burnt and stigmatized by "her" dear radium. This sixty-seven-year-old woman, who, according to Dr. Claudius Regaud, "under a cold exterior and the utmost reserve concealed in reality an abundance of delicate and generous feelings", had been exposed to incredible levels of radiation. In January, togeth...
