Chemists -- France -- Biography; Curie, Pierre, 1859-1906; Physicists -- France -- Biography
This Institute is, however, insufficient in view of the considerable
development of radioactivity and of its therapeutic applications. The
best authorized persons now recognize that France must possess a Radium
Institute comparable to those of England and America for the
_Curietherapie_ which has become an efficacious means in the battle
against cancer. It is to be hoped that with generous and far-seeing aid,
we shall have, in a few years, a Radium Institute complete and enlarged,
worthy of our country.
To honor the memory of Pierre Curie, the French Society of Physics
decided to issue a complete publication of his works. This publication,
arranged by P. Langevin and C. Cheneveau, comprises but a single volume
of about 600 pages, which appeared in 1908, and for which I wrote a
preface. This unique volume, which includes a work as important as it is
varied, is a faithful reflection of the mentality of the author. One
finds in it a great richness of ideas and of experimental facts leading
to clear and well-established results, but the exposition is limited to
the strictly necessary, and is irreproachable, one might even say
classical, in form. It is to be regretted that Pierre Curie did not use
his gifts as scientist and author in writing extended memoirs or books.
It was not the desire that was lacking; he had several cherished
projects of this nature. But he could never put them into execution
because of the difficulties with which he had to struggle during all his
working life.
And now, let us glance at this narrative as a whole, in which I have
attempted to evoke the image of a man who, inflexibly devoted to the
service of his ideal, honored humanity by an existence lived in silence,
in the simple grandeur of his genius and his character. He had the faith
of those who open new ways. He knew that he had a high mission to fulfil
and the mystic dream of his youth pushed him invincibly beyond the usual
path of life into a way which he called anti-natural because it
signified the renunciation of the pleasures of life. Nevertheless, he
resolutely subordinated his thoughts and desires to this dream, adapting
himself to it and identifying himself with it more and more completely.
Believing only in the pacific might of science and of reason, he lived
for the search of truth. Without prejudice or _parti pris_, he carried
the same loyalty into his study of things that he used in his
understanding of other men and of himself. Detached from every common
passion, seeking neither supremacy nor honors, he had no enemies, even
though the effort he had achieved in the control of himself had made of
him one of those elect whom we find in advance of their time in all the
epochs of civilization. Like them he was able to exercise a profound
influence merely by the radiation of his inner strength.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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