The very woman who’d discovered radium had seen her research grind to a halt for lack of it.
After this outpouring the interview proceeded, and Meloney’s story appeared in the Delineator a few months later. In it she called Marie “the greatest woman in the world,” praising her as both a brilliant scientist and a “woman of rare beauty.” On returning to New York, though, the editor couldn’t stop thinking about Curie’s difficulties. The high price of radium had shocked her—as had the dilapidated state of Curie’s lab. Compared with the labs of other scientists Meloney had interviewed—Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell—Curie’s equipment looked like junkyard scraps. It wasn’t right.
So with her typical moxie Meloney decided there was only one thing to do. If France wouldn’t support Marie Curie properly, then the United States of America would. Meloney would just have to buy a gram of radium herself.
What a great story — an American woman journalist in 1921 gets Madame Curie the money to buy Radium and continue her research on radioactivity.