Faithful to the memory of him who had left us, we wished a simple interment in the family vault in the little cemetery at Sceaux. There was neither official ceremony nor address, and only his friends accompanied him to his last home. As he thought of him who was no more, his brother Jacques said to me: "He had all the gifts; there were not two like him."
In order to assure the continuance of his work, the Faculty of Sciences of Paris paid me the very great honor of asking me to take the place that he had occupied. I accepted this heavy heritage, in the hope that I might build up some day, in his memory, a laboratory worthy of him, which he had never had, but where others would be able to work to develop his idea. This hope is now partly realized, thanks to the common initiative of the University and the Pasteur Institute, which have aimed at the creation of a Radium Institute, composed of two laboratories, the Curie and the Pasteur, destined for the physicochemical and the biological study of radium rays. In touching homage to him who had disappeared the new street leading to the Institute was named rue Pierre Curie.
This Institute is, however, insufficient in view of the considerable development of radioactivity and of its therapeutic applications. The best authorized persons now recognize that France must possess a Radium Institute comparable to those of England and America for the Curie-therapie which has become an efficacious means in the battle against cancer. It is to be hoped that with generous and far-seeing aid, we shall have, in a few years, a Radium Institute complete and enlarged, worthy of our country.
To honor the memory of Pierre Curie, the French Society of Physics decided to issue a complete publication of his works. This publication, arranged by P. Langevin and C. Cheneveau, comprises but a single volume of about pages, which appeared in , and for which I wrote a preface. This unique volume, which includes a work as important as it is varied, is a faithful reflection of the mentality of the author. One finds in it a great richness of ideas and of experimental facts leading to clear and well-established results, but the exposition is limited to the strictly necessary, and is irreproachable, one might even say classical, in form. It is to be regretted that Pierre Curie did not use his gifts as scientist and author in writing extended memoirs or books. It was not the desire that was lacking; he had several cherished projects of this nature. But he could never put them into execution because of the difficulties with which he had to struggle during all his working life.