Radioactivity on tour: analyzing the public uses of Eve Curie’s picture at the Portuguese Institute of Oncology (1940)

Abstract

On January 1940, Eve Curie was pictured at the Portuguese Institute of Oncology (IPO). The shot would be reproduced in IPO’s Bulletin, a monthly journal of anti-cancer propaganda directed to the general public. Addressing Eve’s photograph as a picture, endowed with epistemic value, I seek to understand how it became an important tool for Portuguese anti-cancer campaigns. A second picture is considered – that of Marie Curie receiving her ‘gram’ of radium at the White House (1921) – to show the role that both mother and daughter played in the construction of radioactivity’s ambiguous public image. This paper tries to analyze how the public reproduction of the younger Curie’s photograph at IPO’s Radium Pavilion, the first European facility that followed the safety guidelines of the International Congress of Radiology of 1928, attempted to dismiss public fears over radioactive contamination. Portuguese anti-cancer campaigns needed to gain public support, not only regarding cancer, but also radioactivity, for the latter needed to be trusted if it was to be applied in time to its potential beneficiaries.