Curie
Curie names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Curie PIERRE a French scientist
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
PIERRE a French scientist. He was born in Paris in 1859, and received his education in the schools of his native city, showing an early bent toward the study of physics in which he experimented with profitable results. When 36 years old he became professor of physics at the École municipale de chimie et de physique. The investigations of himself and his wife (CURIE, MARIE SKLODOW- SKA, q. v.) in 1898 resulted in the discovery first of polonium and then of radium. This latter discovery brought them worldwide celebrity and they received many prizes and honors. In 1904 M. Curie became professor of physics at the Sorbonne, and in 1905 was elected to the Institute de France. He was run over and killed in a street in Paris in 1906. MME. CURIE
Curie MARIE SKLODOWSKA, a French scientist
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
MARIE SKLODOWSKA, a French scientist. She was born at Warsaw, 1867, and was educated at the Lycée de Varsovie, and later at the Sorbonne, Faculté des Sciences, Paris. She graduated in physical science, and mathematics and received the degree of Licenciée in both departments, as well as that of Docteur des Sciences. In 1910 she received the Albert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts. She has been professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure at Sèvres and since 1919 has been professor of Radiology at Warsaw. During 1920 it was made known that she had made further discoveries in the direction of the use of radium in the treatment of disease. Her works include: "Recherches sur les propriétés magnétiques des aciers trempés"; "Recherches sur les substances radioactives."
Curie MARIE S., visited the United States in 1921 to
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
MARIE S., visited the United States in 1921 to receive a gift of a gram of radium worth $100,000, purchased by American popular subscription.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 caught Marie Curie mid-career, noting her American tour to collect a gram of radium bought by public subscription but not even mentioning her Nobel Prizes of 1903 and 1911, which still make her the only person to win in two different sciences. She went on working with radioactive material until her death in 1934 from aplastic anaemia, almost certainly caused by the exposure the entry treats as harmless; her laboratory notebooks are still radioactive and are kept in lead-lined boxes. In 1935 her daughter Irene Joliot-Curie took a Nobel of her own, and in 1995 Marie's remains were moved to the Pantheon in Paris, the first woman honoured there on her own merits. The radium therapy that made her famous has largely given way to cobalt-60, linear accelerators and other isotopes, though her name survives in the element curium and the curie unit of radioactivity.
Written for this edition, 2026.