Born in 1867 in Warsaw, Maria Sklodowska from a family of teachers who valued the study and research, manifest from the earliest years of exceptional maturity of mind and a rare gift of concentration. Of the family fortunes forced him to interrupt his studies and to accept a position as governess. It is only enormous sacrifices that Mary was able to save enough money to go to Paris in 1891 to pursue studies at the Sorbonne. Sacrifices rewarded as it is received in the first degree in physics in 1893, then second to that of mathematics the following year.

A couple united by love of science

Pretty blonde with gray eyes, but little interest in coquetry, her friends are meeting Pierre Curie in 1894 she knew the reputation of the researcher. A year later, united by a love of science, they marry in the strictest privacy. Two daughters born of this union: Irene, born in 1897 and Eve in 1904.

Marie nonetheless pursued his research. Peter, interested in the work of his wife, works with her in a makeshift laboratory, they discovered new elements, polonium, referring to his home country, Poland, and radium. In very difficult conditions, they must deal with several tons of pitchblende for less than one gram of radium. Soon, they identify the atom of radium with Marie Curie calculates the weight. The dedication comes to them December 10, 1903 when the Academy of Sciences in Stockholm awarded their Nobel Prize in physics, and Henri Becquerel for the discovery of natural radioactivity.

During the award ceremony, sitting in the audience – we had not thought of him install a chair on the stage! – Mary listens to her husband make their joint discovery.

The press became interested in them. Marie especially attracts attention, described as a “secular saint of science”, an exception in an area previously reserved for men. Peter was appointed professor at the Sorbonne, and Marie head of laboratory work. Their research announce the beginning of molecular biology, genetics, modern nuclear power

Mary the face of adversity

Their happiness is short-lived family. On April 19, 1906, while walking through the Rue Dauphine in Paris, Pierre, hit by a car on horseback, was killed instantly. Collapsed but refusing “the status of a widow of a great man,” Marie shows once again his character and gives a lesson in courage and perseverance.

In November 1906, she obtained the chair occupied by Pierre at the Sorbonne. The audience, stunned, the course intends to resume exactly where it left off. Mary is the first woman to teach in this learned institution. While it takes care of the education of her daughters, she is fighting for a laboratory to continue his research. It was not until 1914 to get it: this is the Radium Institute.

Two Nobel Prize for Mary!

It absorbed a little more in his work, exploring the infinite field opened its first discoveries. She continues to teach radiology, this new part of science and to pursue research that will lead to new therapies, particularly against cancer. Despite the anti-feminism and chauvinism academia at the time, she held the chair of physics in 1908. But in 1911, the Academy of Sciences denied entry! The scandal raised by the connection it has with the scientist Paul Langevin, five years his junior, a former student of Pierre Curie, a married father, is perhaps not unrelated to the refusal of the Academy. As for his scientific work, it is suspected of having just love! Yet soon after, she received a second Nobel Prize in chemistry this time, for isolating pure radium and determined its atomic mass.

When she went to Sweden in December 1911, she and her daughter Irene, who, unlike his sister Eve, artist temperament is already interested in the age of fourteen years in the work of his mother. In Stockholm, Marie knows a true personal triumph. Alone on the stage, she says she does not need anyone to advance his own research. It only needs money and better health. Indeed, exhausted, already ill, it deals with incurable finger injuries from handling radioactive substances, the only protection for the time being a metal screen cloth and gloves.

It wishes to associate Peter in his award: “I think so accurately interpret the thought of the Academy of Sciences, admitting that the high distinction which I am the object is motivated by this common and is also a tribute to the memory Pierre Curie, “said she in the gallery.

Marie is fighting on all fronts

When war broke out in 1914, it is mobilized in the service of France to try to “alleviate human suffering.” Borrowing cars, it is converted into ambulances radiological, she often goes to the front. Accompanied by her daughter Irene, she travels the road driving his “small Curie,” as they affectionately called this car equipped with mobile X-ray equipment that was used to locate fragments of shrapnel and bullets and facilitate surgery, without having to move the injured.

After the war, after four year hiatus, she resumed her research at the Radium Institute and made his laboratory one of the leading institutions in the world. Again, it proves a woman of action ready in all efforts for successful companies. In 1921, with the help of an American journalist, Mrs. WB Meloney, she undertook an exhausting but triumphant journey to the United States, accompanied by her daughters Irene and Eve.

It achieved its goal of collecting, by a national subscription, the sum of $ 100, 000 for the purchase of a gram of pure radium radium factory in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), she brings treasured in France, in a wooden box and lead. In 1927, she will donate to the Radium Institute in Warsaw for the second gram of radium provided by American admirers.

A lifetime of service to humanity

Devoted the most famous French scientist, Marie Curie was elected in 1922 at the Academy of Medicine, but not that of science! However, his popularity extends well beyond the scientific field as shown in the referendum “How modern woman Climb a statue?”, Organized in 1926 by a magazine, where she is at the top of off. In 1938, she was the first contemporary woman to appear on a stamp, posthumously.

Irradiated by radioactive substances to which she devoted all her life, Marie Curie leukemia and died in July 1934 to Sancellemoz sanatorium, in Haute-Savoie.

This woman of seventy-seven years, “under a cold exterior and the largest reserve hides a wealth of delicate and generous sentiments,” as described by an admirer, paid the price of prolonged exposure to radioactive elements. To date, his laboratory notes and books are still radioactive.

Just before he died in January 1934, she had the intense joy of seeing her daughter Irene and her husband, Frederic Joliot-Curie, who worked in the same laboratory that, discovering artificial radioactivity, but did not live for See in turn receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935. Like her mother, Irene was never elected to the Academy of Sciences and as she died of leukemia as a result of manipulation of radioactive substances.

On April 20, 1995, the ashes of Pierre and Marie Curie were transferred to the Pantheon: she had suffered so much sexism of her time, what could she think of rest among “the great men of the fatherland”?

Vincent van Gogh was it really suicide or was he killed?

Vincent van Gogh has really committed suicide in 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise (France) or was he killed? Two American authors question the circumstances of the death of one of the most famous painters of the world in a just published biography.

“The selected version is not credible,” says the writer Gregory White Smith, in an interview published Tuesday by the Dutch newspaper NRC Next, following the publication in the U.S. and the Netherlands’ Van Gogh; of life. ” “Why would he just then ended his days? It did not cross the most difficult period” asks Steven Naifeh in turn, co-author of the book of nearly a thousand pages. “Why would someone paint it as he plans to commit suicide? This is not just.”

According to the two Americans, Vincent van Gogh would not have died by shooting himself in the chest at Auvers-sur-Oise, a village of artists about thirty miles from Paris. But he was killed by two teenagers, the brothers Secretan, one of whom said that the painter had stolen his gun. “It was either an accident or a deliberate act,” had assured Steven Naifeh on the show “60 Minutes” broadcast Sunday by the U.S. television network CBS.

The curator of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Leo Jansen, this theory considers “interesting”. “To believe in this new theory, I would need new evidence but it is very difficult, it’s been so long,” he admits, however, in an interview with AFP. Mr. Jansen has had regular contact with the two American authors, Pulitzer Prize in 1991 for their biography of the painter Jackson Pollock. “They came to read our documents, work on our records, I annotated the manuscript,” he says. Ann Dumas, curator at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and specialist painter, was also consulted, “they even read the novels read Vincent Van Gogh at the time,” she told AFP, together by telephone.

On July 27, 1890, Vincent van Gogh left the inn Ravoux with brushes and easel. He returned five hours later, wounded, and dies in the arms of his brother Theo after thirty hours, according to the official version told by Ms. Dumas. According to the testimony of the daughter of the innkeeper, aged 13 at the time, Vincent van Gogh would have answered “yes” to the doctor who asked if he had committed suicide. “The two authors did not find new facts, they have only interpreted differently,” said Leo Jansen.

According to Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh, the painter would have answered “yes” to protect the brothers Secretan. “But why protect them while they did not stop to annoy, to tease him?” Asks the curator. “If Vincent van Gogh died of old age at age 80 in 1933, swimming in glory and in possession of his ears, he would never have become the myth that it is today,” stressed Tuesday left the Dutch daily De Volkskrant in an editorial.

“His psychoses, his depressions, his mistakes and their manifestations – an ear cut off, suicide – are more a part of history Vincent van Gogh as the cypress and corn fields.”

Since the recent attempt to destroy a Matisse at the National Gallery of Art by a repeat offender, the question is relevant: how to protect museums against theft, damage or vandalism? The problem is not new … In 1998, the theft of a painting by Jean-Baptiste Corot, The Road to Sevres , which occurred in broad daylight in the Cour Carree of the Louvre, had caused a shock wave in the world of art and directors of major museums surveillance .

But what about the disappearance, August 21, 1911, of the Mona Lisa ? A painting on a wooden panel of 77 of 53 centimeters, considerably more difficult to retract the Corot painting (24 x 37 cm). Much has already sunk into this crime (almost) perfect. It will take more than two years to find the table and stop the guilty in December 1913 in Florence. The dawn of the First World War, this mystery captivated the world and certainly contributed to publicize the enigmatic smile of Mona Lisa. Later, the filmmakers exploit the theme as the comedy of Michel Deville, Stolen Mona Lisa . But the mystery about the real reason for this flight and the personality of its author, an Italian glazier who had worked at the Louvre, remains.

The missing piece of the puzzle

It is this gap, “the missing piece”, the director Joe Medeiros wants to fill in his documentary. A poster of U.S. film festivals in September 2011, The Missing Piece aims to provide an answer to the riddle Vincenzo “Leonardo” Peruggia. Result of a lengthy investigative work conducted for thirty-three years by Joe Medeiros and his wife Justine, between France and Italy, the documentary details the day of Vincenzo Perugia, an Italian painter who is 30 years 1911.

Intruding night in the museum he was familiar with a gate, the worker picked up the work before hiding in a stairwell. The time of the paint off of his frame, wrap it in her blouse as a painter and quietly out of the museum. For two years, The Mona Lisa was asleep in his little room in the miserable X th district of Paris, Rue de l’Hôpital Saint-Louis. Until Vincenzo Perugia offers antique Italian table, explaining he wanted to play some sort of bias and to be arrested in Florence, Italy, in December 1913. Found in Italy, sentenced to one year and fifteen days in prison, a sentence which is then reduced to seven months. The thief always claimed to have acted out of patriotism.

Although the author focuses on the theft, The Missing Piece is not stingy with anecdotes. As the eight days incarceration in prison of the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, one time suspected by police of being the robber because he was home at the time a crook Belgian author of a flight in 1907, statuettes Hispano-Roman at the Louvre. Or as involvement in the case of Pablo Picasso who had recovered two of these statuettes, and who, out of fear of being returned to Spain carried them to the Diary on the advice of Apollinaire. The police linked the two cases and was finally imprisoned the poet Apollinaire. He remained eight days in jail and out deeply affected.

The documentary from above to meet the family of the guilty. A Celestina, her daughter who never knew his father died of a heart attack when she was only two years, Joe Medeiros has promised to uncover the truth about the whole thing. A promise due. On August 21, 2011, at the 100 th anniversary of the flight of the Mona Lisa, The Missing Piece was shown in Philadelphia, before a select audience. Joe Medeiros, former television writer for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, now hopes to spread his police investigation told with verve and humor in Paris!

Neanderthals may have been overwhelmed by a wave of their more advanced cousins, the first modern humans, causing their disappearance 40,000 years ago, according to a British study carried out on an archaeological site of Périgord (southern France).

How Neanderthals did he disappear, allowing more advanced populations of Homo sapiens, probably from Africa, to establish itself? The question is the subject of much debate within the scientific community.

The last theory to date, published Thursday in the journal Science, is based on a statistical analysis of elements up to that time and found in the Périgord.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) found that the number of sites likely to have been occupied by early modern humans, which were discovered areas of settlements, tools, animal remains and food, was higher than the sites occupied by Neanderthals.

The sites were the first modern humans had also objects characteristics of Homo sapiens, such as stone tools, jewelry or works of art, more advanced than what were capable Neanderthals.

The arrival of the first modern humans probably pushed them to leave their habitats to places where food and shelter were more difficult to find, hastening their demise, says Paul Mellars of the University of Cambridge, lead author of the the study.

“Faced with this competition, the Neanderthals appear to have withdrawn in less attractive and most remote continent” Europe, he said.

The last traces of the Neanderthals, who lived on the continent for some 300,000 years were discovered in caves in Spain and Gibraltar.

According to Professor Mellars, the coup de grace may have been given by a cold snap. The disappearance of Neanderthals could have “been accelerated by a sudden deterioration of the climate on the continent 40,000 years ago,” he said beforehand.

Passionate historian, Claudine Chalmers, a native of the city of Cannes, has been decorated, on July 18, the insignia of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the Consul General of France in San Francisco. A reward that comes distinguish and commend the considerable research work conducted by the French in California. Light on the non-standard path of a determined woman.

Mother of two, Claudine Chalmers aujourdh’ui lives in the town of Nevada City (California) and prefers to remain discreet. “But I must face my reputation” she agrees, smiling. Her father was a photographer, historian and a mother is to the history of art that turns while studying. “What is also quite funny you know!” But if the field gives its pedigree as a child is a future diplomat she thinks for. “I had this sense of adventure early. ”

“Going to California 16 years was a milestone in my life. ”

It all starts when the school asked him to leave for an exchange of one year in California. His first contact with the United States. She lives now in a foster home in Palo Alto, with whom she will always keep contact. “I really had a wonderful year” she says. “The school system is very studious in France. Very academic. It is thanks to this that I have acquired solid intellectual foundation. So much so that I began to see life in three parts: introduction and a conclusion” she says in a burst of laughter. “But the French education gave me the most eager to learn. In California it’s something else. We feel a great freedom, thereby ensuring an environment of open spaces. There I felt good , I felt free. ”

Besides that, the young Claudine becomes “a beast contest”: “I was constantly exams and be always among the first three or four!” For the only way for her to obtain scholarships and thus the best way to travel and to finance his studies. Keep this financial freedom means be always on top. She obtained two licenses, one in comparative literature and English. Then the Master of “Land Art” (“area where the artist uses nature as his canvas”). And that’s just the beginning.

A turning point in 1970 décicisif

“All was well until 1970″ Year when Claudine succeeded in writing the entrance exam to the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. “When I saw the dormitories of the school of Parisian life, I realized that it was not for me. I gave up.” The idea came to him then, six years after his first visit to California, returning for one year, the United States. An opportunity that allows him to make one complete revolution of the country she loves so much, in the 1961 Chevrolet Impala. The good old days.

She then moved to California, finally, with her husband. This, in Marin County, the Bay of San Francisco, she decided to prepare the aggregation by correspondence. A period during which she worked with her while keeping her first son, still very young. “When I saw that I received, I began to cry like a madeleine.”

Then the thesis. “I had initially led to a comparison of Apocalypse Now Coppola and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. But for once, I listened to my husband. ” The latter met in Palo Alto on the west coast, proposes to address the issue of the French in California. “We used to fall regularly on the achievements of the French in the region. It was amazing! Study the subject thus became a pleasure. A family adventure” The book of eight hundred pages, presented in 1991, bringing the name of French Adventure in San Francisco during the Gold Rush of 1848 to 1854.

The appearance of a mentor

Clatchy James, the editor Sacramento Bee the contacts a day for a bilingual project and encouraged him to write in English. New to Claudine, who “speaks the language well, but writing an entire book is something else!” However, it notes the challenge. “I found a schedule of the artists who have portrayed California in the 19th century. I wanted about me.” She submits Beautiful California at Book Club of California who agrees to publish it. The 450 copies sold out in two months.

Never run out of steam, Claudine Chalmers, recently proposed to a publisher a new book project on two French artists who drew for Harper’s Weekly in New York during that time very epic march west. “I have also received a contract from the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento for an exhibition and a book on Jules Tavernier (known painter of the 19th century). But I also identify the history of French graves of Mission Dolores as well as Jules Simoneau, friend of the painter Jules Tavernier, French and many others who have shone in the region . ”

So do not think that the adventure stops there for Claudine Chalmers, because “now that the children’s great, it’s still a treasure hunt for me!”