68 Master Minds of Modern Science 



carry on with the researches which she and Pierre had 

 begun together. Very wonderfully she carried out her 

 promises, and in 1910 she isolated radium — that is, she 

 obtained it in its pure state — and determined its atomic 

 weight. She published her wonderful treatise on radio- 

 activity, and in 191 1, for the second time, she was 

 awarded the Nobel Prize, and made a member of the 

 Swedish Royal Academy. The French Institute, simply 

 because it had never yet admitted a woman, refused to 

 make her a member, but the French Government placed 

 her at the head of its new Radium Institution, and in 

 1914, when the Great War broke out, appointed her as 

 the head of all radiology in the military hospitals. 



When radium was first discovered by the Curies the 

 world at large jumped to the conclusion that this sub- 

 stance was going to work miracles for mankind. It was 

 not only to cure all sorts of skin diseases, but to afford a 

 new source of power. If these expectations have not yet 

 been realized it is largely because the supply of the 

 element is so small and its cost so enormous. It is true 

 that radium exists almost everywhere in all hard rocks, 

 also in sea-water, but the amounts are very small. Even 

 in good pitchblende radium exists only to the extent of 

 one part in two million. Thirty tons of pitchblende yield 

 only one-tenth of an ounce of radium, and the work of 

 extracting it from this ore is very long and very costly. 



Some curious calculations have been made relative to 

 the amount of radium in sea-water. A cubic mile of sea- 

 water contains a little over a tenth of an ounce. A box 

 each side of which measured 1*97 miles filled with water 

 from the Atlantic Ocean would give just one ounce of 

 radium. In all the years that have elapsed since the first 

 discovery of the metal no means have been discovered of 

 greatly increasing the supply of it, and hospital authori- 

 ties all over the world are complaining that they have 

 not nearly enough for use in fighting the dread disease 



