Director of an Institute
This probably saved her career in physics. In the following years she
was very bitter about the way she was treated. She made a point of hiring
people at her lab who also had suffered discrimination by the male science
establishment. She also hired several women at her lab and gave them their
start in physics. One was Marguerite Perey who began as a test tube washer
and, a few years later, discovered the radioactive element Francium. Ellen
Gleditsch came to the lab from Norway. At home, Marie was training Irene
to become a physicist. Irene reminded her of Pierre; she had the same temperment
and the same dislike of school.
* * 
Because of her service to soldiers during the war, the French public
began to think of Marie less as a foreigner and more as a patriotic French
woman. She also toured America twice after the war and raised money for
her Radium Institute. During these years, she controlled the largest supply
of radioactive substances used in scientific research. She shared these
with other physics labs engaged in studying the structure of the atom.
Marie had the constitution of a horse, but even she eventually succumbed
to the lethal effects of radiation exposure. In the last decade of her life,
she suffered from severe pains and aches like Pierre had. She also had cataracts
in her eyes and constant ringing in her ears. In 1934, Marie's bold adventure
into the atomic universe came to an end. She died in Paris of leukemia,
a cancer of the blood.
The Curie Tradition Lives On
In 1997, Marie's remains were moved to the Pantheon, France's monument
to its heros. She is the first woman to be so honored. Marie Curie was a
great Polish patriot, but she had won a place in the heart of the French
people.
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