Disputing Perrin's claim of priority for the chemical explanation of fluorescence - photo 1

Disputing Perrin's claim of priority for the chemical explanation of fluorescence

Lot 92
27.06.2024 00:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Starting price
$ 24 000
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1236322
Lot 92 | Disputing Perrin's claim of priority for the chemical explanation of fluorescence
Estimate value
$ 30 000 – 50 000
CURIE, Marie (1867-1934). Typed letter signed ("M. Curie") to Jean Baptiste Perrin, Paris, 27 February 1923.

In French. One page, 268 x 214mm (mild dustsoiling along folds).

Claiming priority for the chemical explanation of fluorescence, Curie disputes the claims of Jean Baptiste Perrin. An important letter from Curie, written to future Nobel laureate Jean Perrin (1870-1942) disputing his claim that before his work, "the chemical explanation for the fluorescence phenomenon was unknown, and that no explanation for the thermoluminescence phenomenon had been given. In this respect you are wrong." Curie reminds Perrin that in her 1910 Traite de Radioactivie, she had already "expounded upon the phenomenon of phosphorescence produced by radium rays as well as the phenomenon of thermoluminescence related to those same rays, and I pointed out those phenomena were probably the results of chemical transformations.” Curie had written the present letter after Perrin had sent her notice of his recent work, and she praises it for the most part, save for this "small complaint." Overall, the tone of the letter is friendly, and she addresses Perrin as "Cher ami," a testament to their long friendship that had blossomed over their shared views of the Dreyfus Affair. Perrin, who would receive the 1926 Nobel Prize for verifying Einstein's predictions about Brownian motion (thus definitively proving the existence of atoms), was also a pioneer in the field of molecular luminescence, being one of the first scientists to apply the ideas of quantum theory to the absorption and emission of radiation by molecules and had been active in this research from 1918 to 1921. Several weeks after Curie sent Perrin this letter, The Académie des Sciences elected him a member, and he would become its president in 1938. Marie Curie letters with significant scientific content are seldom seen at auction.
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