Abstract

Marie and Pierre Curie’s decision not to patent the discovery (1898) and later isolation (1902) of radium is perhaps the most famous of all disinterested decisions in the history of science. To choose publishing instead of patenting and openness instead of enclosure was hardly a radical choice at the time. Traditionally, we associate academic publishing with “pure science” and Mertonian ideals of openness, sharing and transparency. Patenting on the other hand, as a byproduct of “applied science” is intimately linked to an increased emphasis and dependency on commercialization and technology transfer within academia. Starting from the Curies’ mythological decision I delineate the contours of an increasing convergence of the patent and the paper (article) from the end of the nineteenth-century until today. Ultimately, my goal is to suggest a few possible ways of addressing the hybrid space that today constitute the terrain of late modern science and intellectual property.

Highlights

  • Marie and Pierre Curie’s decision not to patent the discovery (1898) and later isolation (1902) of radium is perhaps the most famous of all disinterested decisions in the history of science

  • We know that this was the birth of a new science, one Marie Curie later baptized radioactivity—a science that would turn out as much foe as friend

  • I rely on the Curies famous decision not to patent radium or the process of its extraction in order to query the relationship between the paper and the patent, two types of documents that traditionally have been considered antithetical, on either side of sciences “pure” and “applied.” In the current debate on enclosure/openness there is little doubt that intellectual property, and especially perhaps patents, symbolizes the truly dark underbelly of an ongoing commodification of research and higher education (Greenberg 2007; Rader 2010; McSherry 2001)

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Summary

Introduction

Marie and Pierre Curie’s decision not to patent the discovery (1898) and later isolation (1902) of radium is perhaps the most famous of all disinterested decisions in the history of science. In order to work for international cooperation in science and research following the First World War. And in 1920, she had been offered the opportunity to write a biography of her late husband Pierre for the book series “Les Grands Hommes de France.” Managing their public personas in print was something scientists were increasingly willing to do, and readers had a huge appetite to take it all in, and (like today) the biography was a popular genre in which to do so.

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