Eve Curie Labouisse dies

At the age of 102 Eve Curie Labouisse, the daughter of the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Marie Curie, has died. She was a humanitarian and journalist who wrote a best-selling biography of her mother.

Photo: Eve Curie Labouisse dies

Labouisse died Monday in her Manhattan apartment, her stepdaughter, Anne L. Peretz, said Thursday.

Her book, "Madame Curie," published in 1937, chronicled the life of Labouisse's mother from her birth in Poland and education in France to her discovery - with her husband Pierre Curie - of the radioactive elements radium and polonium.

Marie Curie was awarded two Nobel prizes: in physics, which she shared with her husband in 1903, and in chemistry in 1911.

The book, published three years after her mother's death, is considered a classic among scientific biographies. However, it has been criticized by some for leaving out an affair Curie had with a married man after the death of her husband.

The book was made into a film starring Greer Garson as Marie Curie and Walter Pidgeon as her husband.

Labouisse was a war correspondent during World War II, covering fronts in Libya, Russia, Burma (now Myanmar) and China. She chronicled her wartime experience in a 1943 book, "Journal Among Warriors."

Born in Paris, Labouisse served with the women's division of Gen. Charles de Gaulle's Fighting French. She became a staunch advocate of the Free French cause after the Nazis occupied France and later was publisher of the French newspaper Paris-Press.

She came to the United States after the Vichy government revoked her French citizenship.

In the 1950s, she was a special adviser to the secretary general of NATO.

She married Henry R. Labouisse, a United Nations diplomat, in 1954, becoming an advocate for underprivileged children around the world during her husband's 15-year tenure as executive director of UNICEF.

In 1935, Labouisse's only sibling, Irene Joliot-Curie, and her brother-in-law, Frederic Joliot, shared a Nobel Prize in chemistry. Her sister died in 1956 of the same cause as their mother: leukemia, believed to have been caused by prolonged exposure to radioactive material.

Labouisse also was a trained concert pianist, and as a young woman performed throughout Europe.

In addition to her stepdaughter, Labouisse, a former resident of Wainscott, on Long Island, is survived by four stepgrandchildren and seven stepgreat-grandchildren. Her husband died in 1987.

A private graveside service is planned for Monday at the Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans. The family asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Center for Family Life in Brooklyn.