History of the Institut Curie and Curie Museum

Its beginnings go back to 1909, the year when the University of Paris and the Institut Pasteur decided to join forces to build a large laboratory for Marie Curie - the Radium Institute. This was erected a few streets away from the "shed" at the School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry where Pierre and Marie Curie had discovered polonium and radium in 1898.

• The Curie Museum occupies the ground floor of the Radium Institute's Curie Pavilion, which was built in 1914. The pavilion housed the Curie Laboratory, which was devoted to the study of radioactivity and run by Marie Curie until her death in 1934. Marie Curie's office and personal chemistry laboratory have been preserved and form the historic heart of the Institut Curie. It was here in this internationally famous research center that Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie discovered artificial radioactivity, work for which they won the 1935 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. The Curie Museum records a rich scientific heritage and, through the personal and professional life of the family with five Nobel Prizes, retraces the history of radioactivity and of the fight against cancer.
• The radiotherapy history is closely tied to the story of the Institut Curie. The work of the Curies led to important advances in physics and chemistry but also in medicine and biology. From 1901, clinical trials with radioactive bodies were undertaken at the Saint-Louis Hospital, just as Wilhelm Roentgen's 1895 discovery of X-rays had given rise to a new cancer treatment: roentgen therapy. In years after, many doctors pursued studies of various diseases, often using radium samples provided by the Curies. The results in dermatological diseases and skin cancer were encouraging. Through use of radiation (X-rays and radioactive elements), a new medical field gradually emerged: radiotherapy.