The beauty of it

Words to remember (or borrow) on the business of science

"We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity."

Marie Curie, French (Polish-born) chemist & physicist (1867 – 1934).
Lecture at Vassar College, May 14, 1921

In an age when scientists were rarely public figures, Marie Curie was one of the first celebrities - mostly for her outstanding work (she shared a Nobel Prize in 1903 and won another in her own right in 1911.) But public imagination at the start of the 20th century was also captured by the romantic tale of her arduous labours with her physicist husband Pierre, in the old shed they used as a laboratory for their research on radioactive pitchblende ore. International press attention was intense - much to her consternation, as it distracted her from work. But it was also beneficial: because of it, she and a friendly American journalist, Missy Maloney, were able to organize, on a US tour, one of the first public fund-raising appeals for scientific research.

But generally, as the account of one of her discoveries below indicates, she was uninterested in the financial or business applications of her research - and in fact, she was opposed to patenting her work.

 "Marie discovered that thorium gives off the same rays as uranium. Her continued systematic studies of the various chemical compounds gave the surprising result that the strength of the radiation did not depend on the compound that was being studied. It depended only on the amount of uranium or thorium. Chemical compounds of the same element generally have very different chemical and physical properties: one uranium compound is a dark powder, another is a transparent yellow crystal, but what was decisive for the radiation they gave off was only the amount of uranium they contained. Marie drew the conclusion that the ability to radiate did not depend on the arrangement of the atoms in a molecule, it must be linked to the interior of the atom itself. This discovery was absolutely revolutionary. From a conceptual point of view it is her most important contribution to the development of physics.

"In view of the potential for the use of radium in medicine, factories began to be built in the USA for its large-scale production. The question came up of whether or not Marie and Pierre should apply for a patent for the production process. They were both against doing so. Pure research should be carried out for its own sake and must not become mixed up with industry's profit motive. Researchers should be disinterested and make their findings available to everyone. Marie and Pierre were generous in supplying their fellow researchers, Rutherford included, with the preparations they had so laboriously produced. They furnished industry with descriptions of the production process."

(From "Marie and Pierre Curie and the Discovery of Polonium and Radium," by Nanny Fröman)