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Primary sourcePainting1904

Vanity Fair Caricature of Pierre and Marie Curie, 'Radium'

Jean Baptiste Guth · 1904

A 1904 colour caricature of Pierre and Marie Curie published in Vanity Fair, showing how quickly the couple became celebrities after their 1903 Nobel Prize.

A popular press caricature showing the Curies' rapid rise to celebrity after their first Nobel Prize.

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Colored Vanity Fair caricature titled Radium showing a man with a beard in a brown jacket holding a glowing spark aloft, and a woman in a dark dress holding a book beside a laboratory bench with glass tubes and flasks, a microscope behind them, against a radiating light background.
Jean Baptiste Guth, 'Radium', caricature of Pierre and Marie Curie, Vanity Fair, 1904.

About this source

What it is

This is a colour caricature titled 'Radium', drawn by Jean Baptiste Guth and published in Vanity Fair magazine in 1904. It depicts Pierre and Marie Curie in a laboratory setting.

Why it matters

Published shortly after the Curies won their first Nobel Prize in 1903, this lighthearted image shows how rapidly the couple became public celebrities, not just respected scientists, in the popular press of their time.

Look closer

  • Why do you think a magazine chose to caricature the Curies rather than print a straightforward photograph?
  • What does the glowing light and the objects around them suggest about how radium was seen by the public?
  • What does a caricature like this show, and what might it exaggerate or leave out, about the real scientists?

This painting is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Marie Curie on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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Cover of the January 1904 issue of the magazine Le Radium, showing a printed masthead and a photograph captioned Le Laboratoire de la Rue Lhomond. The photo shows two men and a seated woman among laboratory equipment and glassware, with the caption M. & Mme Curie below.Photograph

Primary source

Photograph of Pierre and Marie Curie in their Laboratory, rue Lhomond

c. 1898-1904

Title page of the 1904 second edition of Recherches sur les substances radioactives by Madame Sklodowska Curie, a thesis presented at the Faculté des Sciences de Paris. Published in Paris by Gauthier-Villars. Handwritten number 5 and a note appear in the top right corner.Book

Primary source

Recherches sur les substances radioactives

Marie Curie · 1904

Document

Primary source

Rayons émis par les composés de l'uranium et du thorium

Marie Curie · 12 April 1898

A museum display case showing a wooden mahogany box with its lid open and a round metal radium container inside, beside a separate lidded metal canister with a brass knob, a key on a chain, and a small cluster of tubes on the glass base.Artifact

Primary source

International Radium Standard

Marie Curie · 1911

Black-and-white photograph of a clear glass vessel with a flared conical bowl, a pouring spout on the left rim, and a short stem on a flat circular foot, set against a plain light background.Artifact

Primary source

Glass beaker used for the first radium salt solution

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