On December 12, 1909, the University of Paris and Institut Pasteur decided to build the Institut du Radium for Marie Curie, who won the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics along with her husband Pierre Curie and their colleague Henri Becquerel, for their work on radioactivity. This laboratory was set up just a few streets away from the “hangar” at the school of industrial chemistry and physics, where Pierre and Marie Curie discovered radioactivity along with polonium and radium in 1898.

When Marie Curie discovered radium, she very quickly had the revolutionary idea of applying radioactivity and its properties to medicine. The goal was to study radioactivity and its applications in physics, chemistry, biology and medicine. The set-up was very original for its time: the Institut du Radium featured the Curie laboratory, directed by Marie Curie and entirely devoted to physics and chemistry research, and the Pasteur laboratory, directed by Dr. Claudius Regaud and devoted to studying the biological effects and medical applications of radioactivity.

Once the World War I ended and they settled into their respective laboratories, Curie and Regaud proposed a general development project for the Institut du Radium, where research and therapeutic applications would be closely linked. This well-known research-care continuum, developed by Curie and Regaud, is still the hallmark of Institut Curie a century later. Institut Curie’s innovations are based on this fundamental pillar.

Construction was completed in 1914.