Postwar years
In 1920, for the 25th anniversary of the discovery of radium, the French government established a stipend for her; its previous recipient was Louis Pasteur (1822–95).[43] In 1921, Marie was welcomed triumphantly when she toured the United States to raise funds for research on radium. Mrs. William Brown Meloney, after interviewing Marie, created a Marie Curie Radium Fund and raised money to buy radium, publicising her trip.[43][52] In 1921, US President Warren G. Harding received her at the White House to present her with the 1 gram of radium collected in the United States.[53][54] Before the meeting, recognising her growing fame abroad, and embarrassed by the fact that she had no French official distinctions to wear in public, the French government offered her a Legion of Honour award, but she refused.[54][55] In 1922 she became a fellow of the French Academy of Medicine.[43] She also travelled to other countries, appearing publicly and giving lectures in Belgium, Brazil, Spain, and Czechoslovakia.[56]
Led by Curie, the Institute produced four more Nobel Prize winners, including her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie and her son-in-law, Frédéric Joliot-Curie.[57] Eventually, it became one of four major radioactivity research laboratories, the others being the Cavendish Laboratory, with Ernest Rutherford; the Institute for Radium Research, Vienna, with Stefan Meyer; and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, with Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner.[57][58]
In August 1922, Marie Curie became a member of the newly created International Commission for Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations.[59] In 1923, she wrote a biography of Pierre, entitled Pierre Curie.[60] In 1925, she visited Poland, to participate in the ceremony that laid foundations for the Radium Institute in Warsaw.[43] Her second American tour, in 1929, succeeded in equipping the Warsaw Radium Institute with radium; it was opened in 1932 and her sister Bronisława became its director.[43][54] These distractions from her scientific labours and the attendant publicity caused her much discomfort but provided resources needed for her work.[54] In 1930, she was elected a member of the International Atomic Weights Committee where she served until her death.[61]