Curie Institute (Paris) a hospital specializing in cancer. The Institute also operates the proton therapy center at Orsay, one of the few such facilities in the world. The Institut du Radium, a giant laboratory for Marie Curie, was founded in 1909 by the University of Paris and Institut Pasteur. The Institut du Radium had two sections. The Curie laboratory, directed by Marie Curie, was dedicated to physics and chemistry research. The Pasteur laboratory, directed by Dr. Claudius Regaud, was studying the biological and medical effects of radioactivity. After receiving a joint Nobel Prize with her husband Pierre in 1903, Marie Curie won a
Nobel Prize in Literature of the gesture. He was a candidate for the Nobel Prize in 1904, to be shared with the Provençal writer Frédéric Mistral, in recognition of their contributions to literature in non-official languages. Political pressure from Spain's central government having made this prize impossible, it was eventually awarded to Mistral and to the Spanish language playwright José Echegaray. The choice of Selma Lagerlöf (Sweden 1858–1940) as Nobel Laureate in 1909 (for the 'lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterizes her writings') followed fierce debate because of her writing style and subject matter, which broke literary decorums of the time.