Medicine: New Research

Nobel Prizes of $40,000 cash have gone: 1) to the late Pierre Curie and his wife, Marie Sklodowska Curie, for their discovery of radium and radioactivity; 2) to Mme Curie for her studies of radium’s chemistry; and 3) to their daughter and son-in-law, the Frederic Joliot-Curies for discoveries in artificially radioactive elements. Mme Curie died of pernicious anemia July 4, 1934, but last week when her 70th birthday rolled around the Joliot-Curies received congratulations on her behalf. To them the salutes were ironic. Their salaries from France’s Radium Institute are insufficient for decent living and simple scientific research. Paris newshawks last week discovered that to make ends meet those much-honored scientists are now giving lessons in the science of jujitsu.

Since not only the Curies but most French and German scientists are badly underpaid, U. S. institutions nowadays have little trouble in hiring them. Latest reported snapped up is France’s No. 1 X-ray expert. Henri Coutard, director of the Curie Institute’s X-ray department, who is to work for a newly organized Chicago Tumor Institute.