History of the Institut Curie

The Curies shared the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics with Henri Becquerel. Pierre Curie was then appointed Professor at the Faculty of Science. They were finally able to leave the shed at the School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry in Paris for their new laboratory where Marie Curie was appointed head of research. When Pierre Curie died in 1906, Marie Curie was appointed junior lecturer and then professor. She was the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne.
Marie Curie wished to set up a large laboratory for the study of radioactivity and its applications in physics and chemistry, biology and medicine. This became the Radium Institute. It had two sections: the Curie Laboratory, headed by Marie Curie and entirely dedicated to research in physics and chemistry, and the Pasteur Laboratory directed by Dr Claudius Regaud and devoted to the study of the biological and medical effects of radioactivity. In 1911, Marie Curie received her second Nobel Prize, this time for chemistry. The First World War broke out just as the Radium Institute was being completed. At this time it was used by Marie Curie who gave nurses courses in radiology, the first of their kind. From the end of the war, the two directors, Marie Curie and Claudius Regaud, put forward a plan for the overall development of their institute, where research and therapeutic application would go hand in hand. Claudius Regaud focused the laboratory's work on the treatment of cancer by radiation, with the scientific and technical help of Marie Curie's laboratory. His aim was to develop the “scientific treatment of cancer” by dovetailing basic research with applied and clinical research.
From 1919 onwards, Dr Regaud had two sites for the hospitalization of patients.

The Curie Foundation

Curie museumThe Curie Museum occupies the Curie Laboratory of the Radium Institute, where Marie Curie, Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie did much of their work. The museum enshrines a rich scientific heritage and gives pride of place to the “family with five Nobel Prizes”: Marie and Pierre Curie, Irène Joliot-Curie and Frédéric Joliot.

The efforts of Marie Curie and Claudius Regaud to procure further funds resulted in a donation from Dr Henri de Rothschild which was used in 1920 to create the Curie Foundation, which was approved by the state the following year. The Foundation's role was to raise funds to support the activities of the Radium Institute and to contribute to the development of its work on cancer treatments.
Among its first achievements was the construction in the rue d'Ulm of a dispensary, just a stone's throw from the Panthéon. The dispensary opened its doors in November 1922. Dr Claudius Regaud and his team developed there innovative treatments combining surgery and radiotherapy in the treatment of cancer. The Curie Foundation was a model for cancer centers around the world. Meanwhile, the research effort continued apace. In 1932, a large anonymous donation allowed the construction of new biology laboratories, behind the dispensary.
The Curie Laboratory continued to play a key part in physics and chemistry research. In 1934, shortly before the death of Marie Curie, her daughter Irène and son-in-law Frédéric Joliot-Curie discovered artificial radioactivity, for which they were awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
The increasing influx of patients at the Curie Foundation now meant that it became indispensable to build a hospital, which saw the light of day thanks to large donations and a state subsidy. This became the Curie Hospital, with its two buildings inaugurated twenty years apart, in 1936 and 1956. In 1965, the Curie Foundation endowed itself with an eight-floor polyclinic on the site of the dispensary. In the same year, Institut Curie laboratories were opened on the Orsay campus, and these became the Raymond-Latarget Laboratories in 1992. The Radium Institute and the Curie Foundation fused in 1970 to form the Institut Curie whose vocation is three-fold: research, teaching and cancer treatment. In 1991, the Claudius-Regaud Hospital opened in the rue d'Ulm. The Constant Burg Laboratories were inaugurated in 1995 and house cell biology labs. In 2000, a renovation program was launched to enlarge the rue d'Ulm hospital.

On January 1st 2010, Institut Curie and Centre René Huguenin are merging to better meet the challenges of the cancerology of tomorrow.