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fame and, from 1922, a member of the Academy of Medicine, researched the chemistry of radioactive
substances and their medical applications.
In 1921, accompanied by her two daughters, Marie Curie made a triumphant journey to the United States to
raise funds for research on radium. Women there presented her with a gram of radium for her campaign. Marie
also gave lectures in Belgium, Brazil, Spain and Czechoslovakia and, in addition, had the satisfaction of seeing
the development of the Curie Foundation in Paris, and the inauguration in 1932 in Warsaw of the
Radium Institute, where her sister Bronia became director.
One of Marie Curie's outstanding achievements was to have understood the need
to accumulateintense radioactive sources, not only to treat illness but also to maintain an abundant supply
for research. The existence in Paris at the Radium Institute of a stock of 1.5 grams of radium made a decisive
contribution to the success of the experiments undertaken in the years around 1930. This work prepared the
way for the discovery of the neutron by Sir James Chadwick and, above all, for the discovery in 1934 by Irène
and Frédéric Joliot-Curie of artificial radioactivity. A few months after this discovery, Marie Curie died as a
result of leukaemia caused by exposure to radiation. She had often carried test tubes containing radioactive
isotopes in her pocket, remarking on the pretty blue-green light they gave off.
Her contribution to physics had been immense, not only in her own work, the importance of which had been
demonstrated by her two Nobel Prizes, but because of her influence on subsequent generations
of nuclear physicists and chemists.