The Marie Curie Correspondence
with Marie Mattingly Meloney

EDITH H. QUIMBY
 

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NE DAY in May 1920, a well-known American woman
journalist went to visit Marie Curie in her laboratory
at the Radium Institute of the Sorbonne, in Paris; this
was a visit which was to affect profoundly the lives of both
women. Mrs. William Brown Meloney, editor of the Delineator,
an important women's magazine, had venerated Mme. Curie for
years; this interview was for her a long-hoped-for experience.
She found a shy, retiring scientist in a small and under-equipped
laboratory. The discoverer of radium had no radium of her own
with which to carry on her researches, and little money for needed
equipment. She had never patented any of her discoveries, nor in
anv other way realized financial gain from them. Now she needed
and wanted, above everything else, a gram of radium for her
studies.

Mrs. Meloney went away with the idea that in the wealthy
United States she could interest women in collecting the money
to buy a gram of radium for a gift to this outstanding (and needy)
woman. In less than a year the Marie Curie Radium Fund had
passed the hundred thousand dollar mark, and Mrs. Meloney
« rote to .Mme. Curie, "The money has been found. The radium
is yours."

The 182 items in the Marie Mattingly Meloney papers in the
Columbia University Libraries contain apparently every letter,
card, or cable from Aline. Curie to Mrs. iMcloney, a few to and
 

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