A couple of blocks down from the Metro station Jussieu in Paris’s 5th arrondisement lies Rue Cuvier, which runs along the north-western edge of the botanic gardens which houses the Natural History Museum. The other side of the road is bordered by various institutes of the Sorbonne, notably UPMC (formerly Pierre and Marie Curie University).
The Curies have historical associations with a number of streets in the Latin Quarter, and Rue Cuvier in particular. Pierre Curie was born at No.16 and it was in a science faculty building in this street that the Curies conducted their fundamental research on radium between 1903 and 1914. The building still exists, shielded from public curiosity by a set of prison-style metal gates, and it was in this laboratory that the first pioneering research into what would later be recognized as nuclear energy was conducted in 1903. (more…)
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