American Women Funded Curie's Research

When Polish-born French physicist and chemist Marie Curie ran out of radium for her research in 1921, the American women's magazine The Delineator helped lead a nationwide fundraising campaign to buy her more. Organized by journalist Marie Mattingly Meloney, the campaign raised $100,000, enough to purchase one gram of radium, which was extraordinarily expensive at the time. During Curie's visit to the United States in 1921, U.S. President Warren G. Harding formally presented the radium to her on behalf of the American women who had funded it.

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