Curie Institute (Paris)

Coordinates: 48°50′36N″2, 20°39′E″ The Curie Institute is one of the leading medical, biological and biophysical research centres in the world. It is a private non-profit foundation operating a research center on biophysics, cell biology and oncology and a hospital specialized in treatment of cancer. It is located in Paris, France.

Additional recommended knowledge

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Essential Laboratory Skills Guide

History

It was founded by Marie Curie and Claudius Regaud and recognised to be of public usefulness in 1921 The Institute Curie had been founded according to the will of Marie Curie, with its mission of medical treatment of cancer. In 1995, the Research Department of the Institut Curie was created. It is focused on fundamental researches in cell and molecular biology, biophysics and performs wide study in oncology and fundamental science.

Research

The institute now operates several research units in cooperation with national research institutions CNRS and INSERM. There are several hundred research staff at the Institute. Institut Curie does not offer undergrduate degrees, but awards Ph.D.s and employs many postdocs alongside its permanent staff.

Hospital

Institut Curie runs the Hôpital Claudius Régaud, a cancer treatment hospital. The Institute also operates the proton therapy center at Orsay, one of the few such facilities in the world.

Curie Museum

The Curie Museum[1] is on the ground floor of the Curie Pavilion, in one of the oldest buildings of the Institut Curie. This laboratory, erected a few streets away from the “shed” where the Curies discovered polonium and radium in 1898, was specially built for Marie Curie by the University of Paris and the Institut Pasteur between 1911 and 1914. Here she pursued her work for nigh on twenty years, and here too her daughter and son-in-law Irène Joliot-Curie and Frédéric Joliot-Curie discovered artificial radioactivity, for which they received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935.

The Curie Museum, the guardian of this institutional heritage, houses Marie Curie’s personal chemistry laboratory and the director's office, which was successively occupied by Marie Curie from 1914 to 1934, by André Debierne until 1946, by Irène Joliot-Curie up to 1956, and lastly by Frédéric Joliot. On the death of Frédéric Joliot in 1958, the directors who succeeded him at the head of the Curie Laboratory wished to preserve unchanged this office. The Museum has a permanent exhibition and a center for historical research^[1].

Nobel Laureates

Five Nobel prizes are attached to the Institute's researchers.

• Marie Curie, Physics, 1903
• Marie Curie. Chemistry, 1911
• Pierre Curie, Physics
• Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Chemistry, 1935
• Pierre-Gilles de Gennes

Famous Alumni

• Claudius Regaud
• Marie Curie, Physics
• Irène Joliot-Curie
• Frédéric Joliot-Curie
• Pierre-Gilles de Gennes

Notes

1. ^ Retrieved and adapted from http://www.curie.fr/fondation/musee/musee.cfm/lang/_gb.htm