The Discovery of Radium

The Discovery of Radium is an address by Madame M. Curie at Vassar College on May 14, 1921. The prefatory note says that in her recent visit to America Madame Curie delivered in the chapel on the evening of May fourteenth the only extended address which she made in this country. In the address, Madame M. Curie says she shall only give a short account of her early work about radium.

The address says to go back to the year 1897, when Professor Curie and the speaker worked at that time in the laboratory of the school of Physics and Chemistry. The address says that we now know there is not even one part of radium in a million parts of good ore, so a huge quantity of ore must be worked up to get a small quantity of pure radium salt. The address describes work done in a hangar where there were no improvements and no good chemical arrangements, with no help and no money. Madame M. Curie states her earnest desire that some of those present should carry on this scientific work and keep for their ambition the determination to make a permanent contribution to science.