Marie Curie

The war

X-ray cars

Unfortunately Marie did not manage to start her longed-for work at the institute, becuase in 1914 august 3 the war broke out. Marie had left her children on the country during summer and she asked her relatives if they could stay. She reported for medical duty herself. She gathered all the X-ray machines she could aquire from the laboratory at Sorbonne. In cooperation with technicians and engineers the machines were made portable. She borrowed cars from twenty friends and educated nurses in X-rayology.

Valuable load

She travelled by train to Bordeaux with a portmanteau filled with radium enclosed by led. The portmanteau weighed 20 kilo and its value was over a million in gold! She travelled amongst soldiers and officers, but she never let go of the portmanteau. When it is safely locked up in a bank box she returned to Paris and the girls are also coming home now.

Working together with Irène

Irène was by this time 17 years old and is learning X-ray technology and she graduates in physics and travelles then together with Marie in an X-ray car. After a while Irène got an X-ray car of her own. Many soldiers were saved, since the bullets could be seen with the X-rays and they could have them out. Marie was lending her Nobel Prize (140 000 Swedish crowns) to the French government, wich was received with great joy. Unfortunately it never could be payed back. On november 11 in 1918 the war was over. Irène got a medal from the French army. All that Marie got were injuries from the X-ray beams and one lost Nobel Prize.

Author: Katrin Nilsson