On May 23rd, three days after her White House visit, The College of Physicians of Philadelphia held a special meeting with Madame Curie as the guest of honor. The meeting brought together Curie and Robert Abbe, who had a special interest in her visit. Due in part to his early work with radium, Abbe had become a great fan of Curie, with whom he carried on an occasional correspondence that lasted until Abbe's death in 1928. As mentioned in the invitation card, to the left, the meeting held in Curie's honor included a special presentation, by Abbe, of scientific mementoes that he had collected and donated to the College of Physicians.

When he learned of Curie's impending visit, Robert Abbe had contacted the scientist in hopes that she might donate a memento for permanent display at the College of Physicians. Abbe was an avid collector of artifacts and memorabilia; he had already obtained a carbolic acid sprayer developed by Lord Lister, and a handwritten letter from Louis Pasteur to Emile Roux. Curie agreed to gift an old quartz piezo electrometer--the precision instrument, developed by her husband, that made possible Curie's discovery and isolation of radium from uranium pitchblende. As Curie affirmed in the short, handwritten letter to the left, the donated instrument was one of several used by the Curies in their early work with radium.

The quartz piezo electrometer, seen in the picture to the left, was shipped to the United States in March, ahead of Madame Curie's visit, and presented formally at the meeting on May 23rd. Curie got up and gave a few remarks about the device, but Abbe, noting that the scientific celebrity appeared "greatly tired from her Washington Experience," encouraged Curie not to overtax herself with a long speech. The piezo electrometer remains on display in the College of Physicians to this day, minus its original quartz crystal, which had a high level of radioactive contamination.