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ALS in French, signed “M. Curie,” three pages on two adjoining sheets, 4.5 x 7, May 10, 1912, roughly six months after becoming the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice. Addressed from Paris, an untranslated handwritten letter from Marie Curie to a “Monsieur Prevost,” a pharmacist in Sceaux, France, relating to the rental contract for her home and discussing some necessary repairs or work on the property. In fine condition. Accompanied by the original mailing envelope hand-addressed by Curie.
After winning a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903, Marie Curie became the first person to ever win the award twice when she received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in December 1911. She received it ‘in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium, and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element.’
Her reception of the award was, unfortunately, saddled with controversy. Around the same time, newspapers exposed her romantic relationship with physicist Paul Langevin, who was married but estranged from his wife. The affair became a public scandal in France, and Curie was harshly criticized in the press, with some members of the Swedish Academy even suggesting she should not travel to Stockholm to accept the prize. Determined not to let her personal life overshadow her scientific achievements, Curie went to Stockholm anyway to receive her award and deliver her Nobel lecture.
A month after accepting her 1911 Nobel Prize, Curie was hospitalized with depression and a kidney ailment. She withdrew from public life for much of 1912, though she spent time in England with her friend and fellow physicist Hertha Ayrton. Curie did not return to her laboratory until December, following an absence of nearly fourteen months.
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