Free The Age of Radiance by Craig Nelson

of the Science Faculties, of which he was vice president, at the Hôtel des Sociétés des Savants on rue Danton. Paul Langevin was there, as was Joseph Kowalski, the friend in common who had introduced Pierre to Marie twelve years before. Pierre was in such a good spirit that he invited everyone at the luncheon to his house that night.
    He then headed out to Gauthier-Villars, publisher of the leading Parisian science journal, Comptes rendus . There, he would read proofs and, after, would do a little research in the library of the Institut de France.
    He arrived at the publisher to discover that the offices were closed, due to a strike. So, he headed off to the library. A block away, he approached the Pont Neuf and the rue Dauphine and began to cross. It was raining, and foggy. Onetime milkman Louis Manin was driving two Percheron stallions hauling a thirty-foot wagon loaded with six thousand kilos of military uniforms and supplies. Manin started to rein his animals to allow a tram to pass, but the tram conductor signed for him to proceed. As he did so, Manin passed a carriage, and right behind it, Pierre appeared, rushing by foot across the street. He bumped into one of Manin’s horses, tripped, and grabbed it to keep from falling to the pavement. Both horses reared. Pierre fell. Manin jerked left to keep the horses from trampling M. Curie and succeeded in keeping the hooves and his wagon’s front wheels from striking the physicist. Daughter Ève:“His body passed between the feet of the horses without even being touched, and then between the two front wheels of the wagon. A miracle was possible. But the enormous mass, dragged on by its weight of six tons, continued for several yards more. The left back wheel encountered a feeble obstacle which it crushed in passing: a human head. The cranium was shattered and a red, viscous matter trickled in all directions in the mud: the brain of Pierre Curie.”
    Parisians surrounded the cart and began threatening the driver; the police arrived to protect him from a growing and enraged mob. Officials decided the tragedy was a result of bad weather, visibility, and the victim’s not paying attention to what he was doing. Famously absentminded and distracted, Pierre Curie was in a weakened state from his poor health and likely did not see the wagon from under his large umbrella. Manin was acquitted of blame.
    As no ambulance could reach through the mob, the officers carried the dying man on a stretcher to a pharmacy, where a druggist reported there was nothing anyone could do. The police then carried him to the station in the Hôtel des Monnaies, where a doctor pronounced him dead, and went to theSorbonne, where the dean of the science faculty, Paul Appell, was informed. Appell then went with Curie friend and neighbor Jean Perrin to boulevard Kellermann to tell Marie. But, she and Irène had gone to spend the afternoon in the countryside, at Fontenay-aux-Roses. The two scientists did not want to reveal the terrible news to the elderly Dr. Curie, but after learning who they were, he took one look at their drawn faces and announced,“My son is dead.”
    When the thirty-eight-year-old Marie returned that evening at seven, Pierre’s father told her what had happened:“I enter the room. Someone says: ‘He is dead.’ Can one comprehend such words? Pierre is dead, he who I had seen leave looking fine this morning, he who I expected to press in my arms this evening. I will only see him dead and it’s over forever. I repeat your name again and always ‘Pierre, Pierre, Pierre, my Pierre,’ alas that doesn’t make him come back, he is gone forever, leaving me nothing but desolation and despair.”
    The notably tough Marie Curie became unmoored at this loss. “Crushed by the blow, I did not feel able to face the future [as] an incurably and wretchedly lonely person.” She felt she couldn’t go on, either as a person or as a scientist. Her Mourning Journal is a testimony to the horror of