Ève Curie

Ève Curie (1937)

Ève Denise Curie Labouisse (born December 6, 1904 in Paris , † October 22, 2007 in New York City ) was a writer , journalist and political advisor .

Live and act

Ève (left) with her mother Marie Curie and sister Irène (1908). Shortly before (1906) the young family had lost their father in a tragic accidental death.

Ève Curie was the daughter of the physicists Marie and Pierre Curie and the younger sister of the physicist Irène Joliot-Curie . In 1921 she crossed the Atlantic for the first time with her mother and sister; the Curies received an extremely warm welcome in the USA.

As a teenager, Curie aspired to become a pianist and from 1925 went on concert tours of France and Belgium. Since a great success failed to materialize, Curie became journalistic and writing. In addition, she accompanied her mother, whom she was particularly close after puberty, on trips through Europe, including Belgium, Spain, Italy and Switzerland. After her mother's death in 1934, she wrote her biography , in which she described Marie Curie's career. After its publication in autumn 1937, the book was translated into numerous languages ​​and filmed in Hollywood in 1943 as Madame Curie with Greer Garson .

During the Second World War , Curie was initially the assistant to the poet Jean Giraudoux . During the German occupation, she escaped to Great Britain, where she volunteered for the de Gaulle fighting movement . As a war correspondent, she toured numerous war scenes around the world and, as a result, also met important personalities such as Winston Churchill , Chiang Kai-Shek , Shah Mohammad , Mahatma Gandhi and Eleanor Roosevelt . Her in the book Journey Among Warriors (dt .: A woman at the front ) collected reports were in 1944 for the Pulitzer Prize nominated. She was awarded the Croix de guerre for her service .

After the end of the war she worked for the daily newspaper Paris-Presse until 1949 . She also advised the de Gaulle government on women's issues and pleaded before the United Nations for recognition of the State of Israel. From 1952 to 1954 she was an advisor to the first NATO Secretary General Ismay . Ève Curie married the American diplomat Henry R. Labouisse (1904–1987) in 1954 . In 1958 she became a US citizen.

Her husband was UN High Commissioner for Palestinian Refugee Aid from 1954 to 1958, then from 1962 to 1965 US Ambassador to Greece, then until 1979 the Executive Director of the UN Children's Fund UNICEF . Curie-Labouisse has been involved in refugee aid and later children's aid since 1954 and was also active for UNICEF. In this role, Ève Curie-Labouisse and her husband traveled to over 100 nations. In 1965 the couple accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to UNICEF.

After the death of her husband in 1987, Curie-Labouisse lived in New York. On her 100th birthday, she received congratulations from around the world, including from the US and French presidents. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan visited her personally in her apartment. She died there on October 22, 2007 at the age of 102.

Publications

• Madame Curie . Paris, Gallimard 1938.
• Madame Curie . German translation by Maria Giustiniani. Vienna, Bermann-Fischer 1937.
• A woman at the front . German translation by Rose Richter. Zurich, Steinberg, 1946.
• Madame Curie, a biography. 24th edition, Frankfurt am Main, Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag 1999. (Fischer Taschenbücher; 2243.) ISBN 3-596-22243-5

literature

• Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 123

Web links

Commons : Ève Curie  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Ève Curie in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography
• "Eve Curie Labouisse, Mother's Biographer, Dies at 102" , New York Times , October 25, 2007 (only with cookie acceptance)