The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-06-23
STORY OF PIERRE CURTIS LIFE.
The Scientist as an Intimate Friend Saw Him in His Laboratory.

works on physics, although numerous and important, never reached the gen. eral public. Then all of sudden, the discovery of radium became a sensa- tion in Paris, yes, and more, for it in- volved the reawakening of science,
 Curie was then laborator assistant in the school of physics and chemistry. He had published some excellent ttea- tises regarding the phenomena of crys- talization. but as he had no gift for wire-pulling, he remained in his mod est position; indeed, seemed not to de- sire better.
 called upon him one December af- ternoon and found him al work in the laboratory in the Rue Lhonond He impressed me as a sort of overgrown boy, timid, silent and gentle with face so thoughtful as almost to be sad. He seemed a little disconcerted by all the uproar that his researches had oc- casloned; he had not desired so much glory; all he asked was the necessary quiet for his study. scrupulous and prudent, he had terror of the nasty or too broad conclusions which might be drawn here and there from the facts he had brought to light. He always guarded himself against venturing upon too large hypothesis. His spirit was by no means daring.
 A sort of shed, passably lighted Ta- bles, furnaces, glass, fagons, test tubes ia very succinct apparatus, Such was Pierre Curies laboratory behind the Pantheon in that almost monastic quarter. A poor street badly laid out- almost zigzag shion-resembling some drowsy nook in the provinces. Science is not proud; she is perfectly content in such quarters. But she ennobles her surroundings, and that shed is a facred spot, for it has seen the birth of ra- dium.
 There I found blond young woman. A big apron covered her gown. She was very busy before her little stove, cooking in tiny cups certain precious liquids which must not come to boil, but must reach a definite temperature and maintain it without once rising above it. This was Madame Sklowows- ka-Curie, who isinow the widow of that l kOllldl COiliIduG 4lu ltllpW
 Pierre Curie met Mile. SklodowsKa while attending lectures at the Sor- bonne and working in the laboratories. She was the daughter of q professor of 1 physics in a Warsaw school, and, hav- ing already passed nearly all her exam nations, was still continuing her work. A common devotion to science brought them together, and they were married Mlle Sklodowska was the first scientist to study the phenomena of radio-activ- ity In certain substances. Together they pursued their discoveries, noted the results of their experiments and made new testss one day they discov- cred radium.
 This task cost them astonishing labor. After months of continual exertion they possessed only deci-gramme of that strange metal. As yet they had not seen it; they had too little of 1t to be able to isolate it, and the substance they employed in their researches was a chloride of radiUm. These few deci- grammes they had obtained by treating whole tone of a sort of earth first found III bOiEiiii1i tulS pdsoSQ tlluuSH tiS shop and was submitted to extraordna- ry manipulations before the chemists succeeded in securing an infinitely pre- cious little bit of metal at the bottom of a tiny crucible Even in it's mixed state radium revealed its astonishing quail ties; 1t gave off heat, light and electric ity-all this without loss of size or maiphf at net in onpaaropna
 And then problem arose. Could 1t be possible that the first laws of phys ics and the very axioms of science were to be overturned by this strange dis covery? The principle of the identity of matter throughout its modihcations was called in doubt, Nothing perish- es, nothing is created" science has said; matter transforms itself into mo- ton, heat, light, etc.; 1t transforms it. sell, but the sum total of matter re- mains the same. No radium, when it becomes heat, light and motion, doesn't stir and doesn't diminish. Then some thing must have been created, some- thing not obtained by the transforma- ton of a substance, but added to that substance by it's own activity without in the least impoverishing that sub- stance. Then the old aviom could no longer survive!
 These conclusions Pierre Curie was in Inc haste to formulate. Others formula ted them for him and he was distressed by them. The philosophers didn't fol low the example of his scientific reti- cence, so the most daring theories null tiplied day by day, The believers in spontaneous generation and the more audacious of our cergymen thought to utilize radium to show that things could be created out of nothing; and even to bring the Bible into line with modern science. Pierre Curie continued to record his observations with perfect precision, to check each of them by ref erenee to the others, and ia. classify them-but he never jumped at-conclu- sions.
 To-day 1t is probable that the physi- cal phenomena of which radium is the source don't manifest themselves with out altering that substance. But the impoverishment of the substance is SC amazingly slight that, to explain sucf disproportion between the cause anC effect, we must have recourse to new theory of the atom. The scientists were thus made to seek in atom itself { ~ primary activity, and the atom wa! therefore no longer the ultimate ele
 ment arrived at by analysis, but be- came a word-a prodigious and comple1 1 world.