The laboratory portraits are only part of the record. These photographs also show a young couple with bicycles, a mother with her daughters and a scientist whose research depended on an international fundraising campaign. Dates belong to the photographs; November 7 marks her birth in 1867.
Topic: Marie Curie
01 / 06
The scientist behind the famous name
This portrait circulated in American publications in 1921, when Curie traveled to the United States to obtain radium for research. The bottle in her hand gives the picture a laboratory setting; its contents cannot be identified from the photograph.
Photo details
Date
Circa 1921
Location
Location not established in the source
Photographer
Wide World Photos / Underwood & Underwood attribution in contemporary publications
Archive / collection
Wikimedia Commons; contemporary American periodicals
Wide World Photos / Underwood & Underwood attribution in contemporary publications / Wikimedia Commons; contemporary American periodicals. Public domain; historical publication and Commons public-domain record
02 / 06
Bicycles at the beginning of a marriage
Marie and Pierre Curie pose with bicycles in a photograph dated to their 1895 honeymoon. It is an unusually informal image of a partnership usually remembered through laboratory equipment and Nobel medals. The archive date identifies the period, not a documented wedding-day exposure.
Unknown photographer / Wikimedia Commons. Public domain; anonymous historical French photograph
03 / 06
Two people, one set of measurements
Pierre and Marie sit with experimental apparatus in their laboratory. The photograph is generally dated around 1904, after their physics Nobel. Its clutter is useful evidence: radioactivity research depended on instruments and comparative measurements, not simply on the visible appearance of a mineral.
Unknown photographer / Wikimedia Commons. Public domain; anonymous historical photograph
04 / 06
Marie, Irène and Ève
This 1908 family portrait was taken two years after Pierre’s death. Marie appears with her daughters, Ève and Irène. The formal arrangement leaves the daily work of caring for children outside the frame, but it belongs in the same chronology as her teaching and research.
Unknown photographer / Wellcome Collection, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 4.0; no changes to the downloaded image
05 / 06
Back in the laboratory
The Commons record dates this photograph of Curie in her Paris laboratory to 1912, the year after her chemistry Nobel. Workbenches and cabinets occupy most of the room. The photograph records a working environment; it does not identify the experiment, if any, being conducted when the shutter opened.
Unattributed photographer / Wikimedia Commons historical photograph. Public domain, as recorded by Wikimedia Commons
06 / 06
A White House ceremony for a gram of radium
Curie stands with President Warren Harding and members of the reception party on May 20, 1921. American donors had financed a gram of radium for her research. The material itself was absent from the ceremony: a key, certificate and replica container represented the gift.
Photo details
Date
May 20, 1921
Location
White House, Washington, D.C., United States
Photographer
National Photo Company
Archive / collection
Library of Congress, National Photo Company Collection
