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Marie Curie
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Marie Curie (disambiguation).


                               Marie Curie




                         Marie Curie, ca. 1920



  Born             Maria SalomeaSkłodowska
                   7 November 1867
                   Warsaw, Kingdom of Poland, then part of Russian
                   Empire[1]


  Died             4 July 1934 (aged 66)
                   Passy, Haute-Savoie, France


  Residence        Poland, France


  Citizenship      Poland (by birth)
                   France (by marriage)


  Fields           Physics, chemistry
Institutions        University of Paris


  Alma mater          University of Paris
                      ESPCI


  Doctoral
                      Henri Becquerel
  advisor


  Doctoral            André-Louis Debierne
  students
                      Óscar Moreno
                      Marguerite Catherine Perey


  Known for           Radioactivity, polonium, radium


  Notable awards      Nobel Prize in Physics (1903)
                      Davy Medal (1903)
                      Matteucci Medal (1904)
                      Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911)


  Spouse              Pierre Curie (1859–1906)



                                  Signature




  Notes
  She is the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences.
  She was the mother of Irène Joliot-Curie andÈve Curie.



Marie Skłodowska-Curie, often referred to as Marie Curie, (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a
Polish physicist and chemist, working mainly in France, who is famous for her pioneering research
on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the only woman to win in two fields, and the only
person to win in multiple sciences. She was also the first female professor at the University of Paris (La
Sorbonne), and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in Paris' Panthéon.

She was born Maria SalomeaSkłodowska (pronounced [ˈmarjasal ˈm askwɔ ˈd fska]) in Warsaw, in what
                                                          ɔ   ɛ        ɔ
was then the Kingdom of Poland. She studied at Warsaw's clandestine Floating University and began her
practical scientific training in Warsaw. In 1891, aged 24, she followed her older sister Bronisława to study in
Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. She shared her
1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie and with physicist Henri Becquerel. She was the
sole winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Her achievements included a theory of radioactivity (a term that she coined), techniques for isolating
radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two elements, polonium andradium. Under her direction, the world's
first studies were conducted into the treatment ofneoplasms, using radioactive isotopes. She founded the Curie
Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw, which remain major centres of medical research today. During World War I,
she established the first military field radiological centres.

While a French citizen, Marie Skłodowska-Curie (she used both surnames) never lost her sense of Polish
identity. She taught her daughters the Polish language and took them on visits to Poland. She named the
first chemical element that she discovered – polonium, which she first isolated in 1898 – after her native
country.[a]

Curie died in 1934 of aplastic anemia brought on by her years of exposure to radiation.

               Contents
                [hide]


1 Biography

 o    1.1 Early years

 o    1.2 New life in Paris

 o    1.3 New elements

 o    1.4 Nobel Prizes

 o    1.5 World War I

 o    1.6 Postwar years

 o    1.7 Death

2 Legacy

3 Awards, honours and tributes

4 Notes

5 References

6 Further reading

 o    6.1 Nonfiction

 o    6.2 Fiction

7 See also

8 External links

Biography
Early years




Birthplace on ulicaFreta in Warsaw's "New Town" – now home to the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Museum


Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw, in the Russian partition of Poland, on 7 November 1867, the fifth and
youngest child of well-known teachers Bronisława and WładysławSkłodowski.[2]Maria's older siblings were Zofia
(born 1862), Józef (1863), Bronisława (1865) and Helena (1866).[3]




WładysławSkłodowski with daughters (from left) Maria, Bronisława, Helena, 1890


On both the paternal and maternal sides, the family had lost their property and fortunes through patriotic
involvements in Polish national uprisings aiming at the restoration of Poland's independence (most recent of
which was the January Uprising of 1863–1864).[4] This condemned the subsequent generation, including Maria,
her elder sisters and her brother, to a difficult struggle to get ahead in life.[4]

Maria's paternal grandfather JózefSkłodowski had been a respected teacher in Lublin, where he taught the
young BolesławPrus,[5] who would become one of the leading figures in the history of Polish literature. [6] Her
father WładysławSkłodowski taught mathematics and physics, subjects that Maria was to pursue, and was also
director of two Warsaw gymnasia for boys.[3] After Russian authorities eliminated laboratory instruction from the
Polish schools, he brought much of the lab equipment home, and instructed his children in its use. [3] He was
eventually fired by the Russian supervisors for pro-Polish sentiments, and forced to take lower paying posts;
the family also lost money on a bad investment, and eventually chose to supplement the income by lodging
boys in their house.[3] Maria's mother Bronisława operated a prestigious Warsaw boarding school for girls; she
resigned from the position after Maria was born.[3] She died from tuberculosis when Maria was twelve.[3] Maria's
father was an atheist; her mother—a devout Catholic.[7] Two years before the death of her mother, Maria's
oldest sibling, Zofia, had died of typhus.[3] The deaths of her mother and sister caused Maria to give up
Catholicism and become agnostic.[8]

When she was ten years old, Maria began attending the boarding school of J. Sikorska; next Maria attended
a gymnasium for girls, from which she graduated on 12 June 1883 with a gold medal.[2] After a collapse,
possibly due to depression,[3] she spent the following year in the countryside with relatives of her father, and the
next with her father in Warsaw, where she did some tutoring.[2]Unable to enroll in a higher education institution
due to being a female, she and her sister Bronisława became involved with the Flying University, a clandestine
teaching institution, teaching a pro-Polish curriculum in defiance of the Russian authorities, and also willing to
admit female students.[2][3]

Maria made an agreement with her sister, Bronisława, that she would give her financial assistance during
Bronisława's medical studies in Paris, in exchange for similar assistance two years later.[2][9] In connection with
this, Maria took a position as governess: first as a home tutor in Warsaw; then for two years as a governess
in Szczuki with a landed family, the Żorawskis, who were relatives of her father.[2][9] While working for the latter
family, she fell in love with their son, KazimierzŻorawski, a future eminent mathematician.[9] His parents
rejected the idea of his marrying the penniless relative, and Kazimierz was unable to oppose them. [9]Maria's
loss of the relationship with Żorawski was tragic for both. He soon earned a doctorate and pursued an
academic career as a mathematician, becoming a professor and rector of Kraków University.[4] Still, as an old
man and a mathematics professor at theWarsaw Polytechnic, he would sit contemplatively before the statue of
Maria Skłodowska which had been erected in 1935 before theRadium Institute that she had founded in
1932.[4][10]

At the beginning of 1890, Bronisława, a few months after she married KazimierzDłuski, a physician and social
and political activist, invited Maria to join them in Paris.[2] Maria declined because she could not afford the
university tuition; it would take her a year and a half longer to gather the necessary funds.[2] She was helped by
her father, who was able to secure a more lucrative position again.[9]All that time she continued to educate
herself, reading books, exchanging letters, and being tutored herself.[9] In early 1889 she returned home to her
father in Warsaw.[2] She continued working as a governess, and remained there till late 1891. [9] She tutored,
studied at the Flying University, and began her practical scientific training (1890–91) in a chemical laboratory at
the Museum of Industry and Agriculture at KrakowskiePrzedmieście 66, near Warsaw's Old Town.[2][3][9] The
laboratory was run by her cousin JózefBoguski, who had been an assistant in Saint Petersburg to the Russian
chemist Dmitri Mendeleev.[2][9][11]

New life in Paris




At a Warsaw lab, in 1890–91, Maria Skłodowska did her first scientific work.


In late 1891 she left Poland for France.[12] In Paris, Maria (or Marie, as she would be known in France) briefly
found shelter with her sister and brother-in-law before renting a garret closer to the university, in the Latin
Quarter, and proceeding with her studies of physics, chemistry and mathematics at the Sorbonne (the
University of Paris), where she enrolled in late 1891.[13][14] She subsisted on her meager resources, suffering
from cold winters and occasionally fainting from hunger.[14]

Marie studied during the day and tutored evenings, barely earning her keep. In 1893 she was awarded a
degree in physics and began work in an industrial laboratory of Professor Gabriel Lippmann.[2] Meanwhile she
continued studying at the Sorbonne, and with the aid of a fellowship she was able to earn a second degree in
1894.[2][14][b]

Marie had begun her scientific career in Paris with an investigation of the magnetic properties of various steels,
commissioned by the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry (Sociétéd'encouragement pour
l'industrienationale).[14] That same year Pierre Curie entered her life; it was their mutual interest in natural
sciences that drew them together.[15] Pierre was an instructor at the School of Physics and Chemistry,
the Écolesupérieure de physique et de chimieindustrielles de la ville de Paris (ESPCI).[2] They were introduced
by Professor JózefWierusz-Kowalski, who had learned that Marie was looking for a larger laboratory space,
something that Wierusz-Kowalski thought Pierre had access to.[2][14] Though Pierre did not have a large
laboratory, he was able to find some space for Marie where she was able to begin work.[14]
Their mutual passion for science brought them increasingly closer, and they began to develop feelings for one
another.[2][14] Eventually Pierre proposed marriage, but at first Marie did not accept as she was still planning to
go back to her native country.[2] Pierre, however, declared that he was ready to move with her to Poland, even
if meant being reduced to teaching French.[2] Meanwhile, for the 1894 summer break, Marie returned to
Warsaw, where she visited her family.[14] She was still laboring under the illusion that she would be able to work
in her chosen field in Poland, but she was denied a place at Kraków University because she was a woman.[4] A
letter from Pierre convinced her to return to Paris to pursue a PhD.[14] At Marie's insistence, Pierre had written
up his research onmagnetism and received his own doctorate in March 1895; he was also promoted to
professor at the School.[14] A contemporary quip would call Marie, "Pierre's biggest discovery."[4] On 26 July that
year, they married in a civil union; neither wanted a religious service.[2][14] Marie's dark blue outfit, worn instead
of a bridal grown, would serve her for many years as a lab outfit.[14] They shared two pastimes: long bicycle
trips, and journeys abroad, which brought them even closer.[4] In Pierre, Marie had found a new love, a partner,
and a scientific collaborator on whom she could depend.[4]

New elements




Pierre and Marie Curie in the laboratory


In 1895, Wilhelm Roentgen discovered the existence of X-rays, though the mechanism behind their production
was not yet understood.[16] In 1896, Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium salts emitted rays that
resembled X-rays in their penetrating power.[16] He demonstrated that this radiation, unlike phosphorescence,
did not depend on an external source of energy, but seemed to arise spontaneously from uranium
itself.[2] Marie decided to look into uranium rays as a possible field of research for a thesis.[2] She used an
innovative technique to investigate samples. Fifteen years earlier, her husband and his brother had developed
a version of the electrometer, a sensitive device for measuring electrical currents.[16] Using Pierre's
electrometer, she discovered that uranium rays caused the air around a sample to conduct electricity. [16] Using
this technique, her first result was the finding that the activity of the uranium compounds depended only on the
quantity of uranium present.[16] She had hypothesized that the radiation was not the outcome of some
interaction of molecules, but must come from the atom itself.[16] This hypothesis was an important step in
disproving the ancient assumption that atoms were indivisible.[16][17]
In 1897, her daughter Irène was born.[12] To support the family, Marie begun teaching at
the ÉcoleNormaleSupérieure.[12] The Curies did not have a dedicated laboratory; most of their research was
carried in a converted shed next to the School of Physics and Chemistry.[12] The shed, formerly a medical
school dissecting room, was poorly ventilated and not even waterproof.[18] As they were unaware of the
deleterious effects of radiation exposure attendant on their chronic unprotected work with radioactive
substances, Marie and her husband had no idea what price they would pay for the effect of their research upon
their health.[4] The School did not sponsor her research, but she would receive some subsidies from
metallurgical and mining companies, and various organizations and governments.[12][18][19]

Marie's systematic studies had included two uranium minerals, pitchblende and torbernite (also known as
chalcolite).[18] Her electrometer showed that pitchblende was four times as active as uranium itself, and
chalcolite twice as active. She concluded that, if her earlier results relating the quantity of uranium to its activity
were correct, then these two minerals must contain small quantities of some other substance that was far more
active than uranium.[18][20] She began a systematic search for additional substances that emit radiation and by
1898, she discovered that the element thorium was also radioactive.[16]

Pierre was increasingly intrigued by her work. By mid-1898, he was so invested in it that he decided to drop his
work on crystals and to join her.[12][18]

The [research] idea [writes Reid] was her own; no one helped her formulate it, and although she took it to her
husband for his opinion she clearly established her ownership of it. She later recorded the fact twice in her
biography of her husband to ensure there was no chance whatever of any ambiguity. It [is] likely that already at
this early stage of her career [she] realized that... many scientists would find it difficult to believe that a woman
could be capable of the original work in which she was involved.[21]




Pierre, Irène, Marie Curie


She was acutely aware of the importance of promptly publishing her discoveries and thus establishing
her priority. Had not Becquerel, two years earlier, presented his discovery to the Académie des Sciences the
day after he made it, credit for the discovery of radioactivity, and even a Nobel Prize, would have gone
to Silvanus Thompson instead. Marie chose the same rapid means of publication. Her paper, giving a brief and
simple account of her work, was presented for her to the Académie on 12 April 1898 by her former
professor, Gabriel Lippmann.[22] Even so, just as Thompson had been beaten by Becquerel, so Marie was
beaten in the race to tell of her discovery that thorium gives off rays in the same way as uranium. Two months
earlier, Gerhard Schmidt had published his own finding in Berlin.[23]

At that time, no one else in the world of physics had noticed what Marie recorded in a sentence of her paper,
describing how much greater were the activities of pitchblende and chalcolite than uranium itself: "The fact is
very remarkable, and leads to the belief that these minerals may contain an element which is much more active
than uranium." She later would recall how she felt "a passionate desire to verify this hypothesis as rapidly as
possible."[23] On 14 April 1898, the Curies optimistically weighed out a 100-gram sample of pitchblende and
ground it with a pestle and mortar. They did not realize at the time that what they were searching for was
present in such minute quantities that they would eventually have to process tons of the ore.[23]

In July 1898, Marie and her husband published a paper together, announcing the existence of an element
which they named "polonium", in honour of her native Poland, which would for another twenty years remain
partitioned among three empires that claimed it a century before.[2] On 26 December 1898, the Curies
announced the existence of a second element, which they named "radium" for its intense radioactivity – a word
that they coined.[2][12][16][24]

To prove their discoveries beyond any doubt, the Curies had undertaken to isolate polonium and radium into its
pure components.[18]Pitchblende is a complex mineral. The chemical separation of its constituents was an
arduous task. The discovery of polonium had been relatively easy; chemically it resembles the
element bismuth, and polonium was the only bismuth-like substance in the ore. Radium, however, was more
elusive. It is closely related, chemically, to barium, and pitchblende contains both elements. By 1898, the
Curies had obtained traces of radium, but appreciable quantities, uncontaminated with barium, were still
beyond reach.[25] The Curies undertook the arduous task of separating out radium salt by
differential crystallization. From a ton of pitchblende, one-tenth of a gram of radium chloride was separated in
1902. In 1910, Marie isolated pure radium metal.[18][26] She never succeeded in isolating polonium, which has
a half-life of only 138 days.[18]

In 1900, Marie became the first woman faculty member at the ÉcoleNormaleSupérieure, and Pierre joined the
Sorbonne's faculty.[27][28] In 1902, she visited Poland on the occasion of her father's death.[12] In June 1903,
supervised by Henri Becquerel, Marie was awarded her doctorate from the University of Paris.[12][29] That
month, she and Pierre were invited to the Royal Institution in London to give a speech on radioactivity; being
female, she was prevented from speaking, and Pierre alone was allowed to.[30]Meanwhile, a new industry
began developing based on radium.[27] The Curies did not patent their discovery and benefited little from this
increasingly profitable business.[18][27]

Nobel Prizes
1903


In December 1903, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Pierre Curie, Marie Curie and Henri
Becquerel the Nobel Prize in Physics, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their
joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel."[12] At first, the
Committee intended to honour only Pierre and Henri, but one of the committee members and an advocate of
woman scientists, Swedish mathematician Magnus GoestaMittag-Leffler, alerted Pierre to the situation, and
after his complaint, Marie's name was added to the nomination.[31] Marie was the first woman to be awarded a
Nobel Prize.[12]

Marie and her husband declined to go to Stockholm to receive the prize in person; they were too busy with their
work, and Pierre, who disliked public ceremonies, was feeling increasingly ill.[30][31]As Nobel laureates were
required to deliver a lecture, the Curies finally undertook the trip in 1905.[31] The award money allowed the
Curies to hire their first lab assistant.[31] Following the award of the Nobel Prize, and galvanized by an offer from
the University of Geneva, which offered Pierre a position, the Sorbonne gave Pierre a professorship and the
chair of physics, although the Curies still did not have a proper laboratory.[12][27][28] Upon Pierre's complaint, the
Sorbonne relented and agreed to furbish a new laboratory, but it would not be ready until 1906. [31]

In December 1904, Marie gave birth to their second daughter, Ève Curie.[31] She later hired
Polish governesses to teach her daughters her native language, and sent or took them on visits to Poland. [32]

On 19 April 1906, Pierre was killed in a road accident. Walking across the Rue Dauphine in heavy rain, he was
struck by a horse-drawn vehicle and fell under its wheels; his skull was fractured.[33][12] Marie was devastated by
the death of her husband.[34] On 13 May 1906, the Sorbonne physics department decided to retain the chair
that had been created for Pierre and offer it to Marie.[34] She accepted it, hoping to create a world class
laboratory as a tribute to Pierre.[34][35] She became the first woman to become a professor at the Sorbonne.[12]
1911 Nobel Prize


Marie's quest to create a new laboratory did not end with Sorbonne. In her later years, Marie headed the
Radium Institute (Institut du radium, now Curie Institute, Institut Curie), a radioactivity laboratory created for her
by the Pasteur Institute and the University of Paris.[35] This initiative came in 1909 from Pierre Paul Émile Roux,
director of the Pasteur Institute, who became disappointed that the Sorbonne was not giving Marie a proper
laboratory and suggested that she move to the Institute.[12][36] Only then, with the threat of Marie leaving,
Sorbonne relented, and eventually the Curie Pavilion became a joint initiative of the Sorbonne and the Pasteur
Institute.[36]

In 1910, Marie succeeded in isolating radium; she also defined an international standard for radioactive
emissions that was eventually named after her and Pierre: the curie.[35]Nevertheless, in 1911 the French
Academy of Sciences did not elect her to be a member by one[12] or two votes[37] Elected instead
was ÉdouardBranly, an inventor who had helped Guglielmo Marconi develop the wireless telegraph.[38] A
doctoral student of Curie, Marguerite Perey, became the first woman elected to membership in the Academy –
over half a century later, in 1962. Despite Curie's fame as a scientist working for France, the public's attitude
tended toward xenophobia—the same that had led to the Dreyfus affair–which also fuelled false speculation
that Marie was Jewish.[12][37] During the French Academy of Sciences elections, she was vilified by the right
wing press, who criticised her for being a foreigner and an atheist.[37] Her daughter later remarked on the
public hypocrisy; as the French press often portrayed Marie as an unworthy foreigner when she was nominated
for a French honour, but would portray her as a French hero when she received a foreign one, such as her
Nobel Prizes.[12]
At First Solvay Conference (1911), Curie (seated, 2nd from right) confers with Henri Poincaré. Standing, 4th from right,
isRutherford; 2nd from right, Einstein; far right,PaulLangevin


In 1911, it was revealed that in 1910–11 Marie had conducted an affair of about a year's duration with
physicist Paul Langevin, a former student of Pierre's.[39] He was a married man who was estranged from his
wife.[37] This resulted in a press scandal that was exploited by her academic opponents. Marie was five years
older than Langevin and was portrayed in the tabloids as a foreign Jewish home-wrecker.[40] Curie was away
for a conference in Belgium when the scandal broke, upon her return, she found an angry mob in front of her
house, and had to seek a refuge with her daughters at a house of a friend.[37]Later, Curie's
granddaughter, Hélène Joliot, married Langevin's grandson, Michel Langevin.[41]

Despite that, international recognition for her work grew to new heights, and in 1911, theRoyal Swedish
Academy of Sciences awarded her a second Nobel Prize, this time for Chemistry.[4] This award was "in
recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and
polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable
element."[41] Marie was the first person to win or share two Nobel Prizes. She is one of only two people who
have been awarded a Nobel Prize in two different fields, the other person being Linus Pauling (for chemistry
and for peace). A delegation of celebrated Polish men of learning, headed by novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz,
encouraged her to return to Poland and continue her research in her native country.[4] Marie's second Nobel
Prize enabled her to talk the French government into supporting the Radium Institute, which was built in 1914
and at which research was conducted in chemistry, physics, and medicine.[36] A month after accepting her 1911
Nobel Prize, she was hospitalised with depression and a kidney ailment.[41] For most of 1912, she avoided
public life, and spent some time in England with her friend and fellow physicist, HerthaAyrton.[41] She returned
to her lab only in December, after a break of about 14 months.[41]
In 1912, the Warsaw Scientific Society offered her the directorship of a new laboratory in Warsaw, but she
declined, focusing on the developing Radium Institute, to be completed in August 1914 and a new street
named Rue Pierre-Curie.[36][41] She visited Poland in 1913, and was welcomed in Warsaw, but the visit was
mostly ignored by the Russian authorities.[36] The Institute's development was interrupted by the coming war, as
most researchers were drafted into the French Army, and it fully resumed its activities in 1919.[36][41][42]

World War I




Curie in a mobile x-ray vehicle


During World War I, Marie saw a need for field radiological centres near the front lines to assist battlefield
surgeons.[42] After a quick study of radiology, anatomy and automotive mechanics she procured x-ray
equipment, vehicles, auxiliary generators and developed mobile radiography units, which came to be popularly
known as petites Curies ("Little Curies").[42] She became the Director of the Red Cross Radiology Service and
set up France's first military radiology centre, operational by late 1914.[42] Assisted at first by a military doctor
and her 17-year old daughter Irene, she directed the installation of twenty mobile radiological vehicles and
another 200 radiological units at field hospitals in the first year of the war.[36][42] Later, she began training other
women as aides.[43]

In 1915, Marie produced hollow needles containing 'radium emanation', a colourless, radioactive gas given off
by radium, later identified as radon to be used for sterilizing infected tissue.[43] Marie provided the radium, from
her own one-gram supply.[43] It is estimated that over one million wounded soldiers were treated with her x-ray
units.[8][36] Busy with this work, she carried out next to no scientific research during that period. [36] In spite of all
her efforts, Curie never received any formal recognition from the French government for her contribution during
wartime.[42]

Also, promptly after the war started, she attempted to donate her gold Nobel Prize medals to the war effort but
the French National Bank refused to accept them.[43] She did buy war bonds, using her Nobel Prize
money.[43] She was also active member in committees of Polonia in France dedicated to the Polish
cause.[44] After the war, she summarized her war time experiences in a bookRadiology in War (1919).[43]
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).[36] 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.[36][45] 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.[46][47] 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.[47][48] In 1922 she became a fellow of
the French Academy of Medicine.[36] She also travelled to other countries, appearing publicly and giving
lectures in Belgium, Brazil, Spain, and Czechoslovakia.[49]

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.[50] 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.[50][51]

In August 1922, Marie Curie became a member of the newly created International Commission for Intellectual
Cooperation of theLeague of Nations.[52] In 1923, she wrote a biography of Pierre, entitled Pierre Curie.[53] In
1925, she visited Poland, to participate in the ceremony that laid foundations for the Radium Institute in
Warsaw.[36] 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.[36][47]

These distractions from her scientific labours and the attendant publicity caused her much discomfort but
provided resources needed for her work.[47]

Death
1935 statue, facing the Radium Institute, Warsaw


Marie visited Poland for the last time in early 1934.[4][54] A few months later, on 4 July 1934, Marie died at
the Sancellemoz Sanatorium in Passy, in Haute-Savoie, from aplastic anemia believed to have been
contracted from her long-term exposure to radiation.[36][55] The damaging effects of ionising radiation were not
known at the time of her work, which had been carried out without the safety measures later developed.[54] She
had carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket [56] and stored them in her desk drawer,
remarking on the faint light that the substances gave off in the dark.[57] Marie was also exposed to X-rays from
unshielded equipment while serving as a radiologist in field hospitals during the war. [43]

She was interred at the cemetery in Sceaux, alongside her husband Pierre.[36] Sixty years later, in 1995, in
honour of their achievements, the remains of both were transferred to the Panthéon, Paris. She became the
first—and so far the only—woman to be honoured with interment in the Panthéon on her own merits.[52]

Because of their levels of radioactivity, her papers from the 1890s are considered too dangerous to
handle.[58] Even her cookbook is highly radioactive.[58] Her papers are kept in lead-lined boxes, and those who
wish to consult them must wear protective clothing.[58]

In her last year she worked on a book, Radioactivity, which was published posthumously in 1935.[54]

Legacy




Statue, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin, Poland


The physical and societal aspects of the Curies' work contributed substantially to shaping the world of the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries.[59] Cornell University professor L. Pearce Williamsobserves:

The result of the Curies' work was epoch-making. Radium's radioactivity was so great that it could not be
ignored. It seemed to contradict the principle of the conservation of energy and therefore forced a
reconsideration of the foundations of physics. On the experimental level the discovery of radium provided men
like Ernest Rutherford with sources of radioactivity with which they could probe the structure of the atom. As a
result of Rutherford's experiments with alpha radiation, the nuclear atom was first postulated. In medicine, the
radioactivity of radium appeared to offer a means by which cancer could be successfully attacked. [26]

If Marie Curie's work helped overturn established ideas in physics and chemistry, it has had an equally
profound effect in the societal sphere. To attain her scientific achievements, she had to overcome barriers that
were placed in her way because she was a woman, in both her native and her adoptive country. This aspect of
her life and career is highlighted in Françoise Giroud's Marie Curie: A Life, which emphasizes Marie's role as a
feminist precursor.[4]

She was known for her honesty and moderate life style.[12][59] Having received a small scholarship in 1893, she
returned it in 1897 as soon as she began earning her keep.[2][19] She gave much of her first Nobel Prize money
to friends, family, students and research associates.[4] In an unusual decision, Marie intentionally refrained from
patenting the radium-isolation process, so that the scientific community could do research unhindered. [60] She
insisted that monetary gifts and awards were given to the scientific institutions she was affiliated with rather
than to herself.[59] She and her husband often refused awards and medals.[12] Albert Einstein reportedly
remarked that she was probably the only person not corrupted by fame.[4]

Awards, honours and tributes




Tomb of Pierre and Marie Curie,Panthéon, Paris


As one of the most famous female scientists to date, Marie Curie has become an icon in the scientific world
and has received tributes from across the globe, even in the realm of pop culture.[61]In a 2009 poll carried out
by New Scientist, Marie Curie was voted the "most inspirational woman in science". Curie received 25.1 per
cent of all votes cast, nearly twice as many as second-placeRosalind Franklin (14.2 per cent).[62][63]
Poland and France declared 2011 the Year of Marie Curie, and the United Nations declared that this would be
the International Year of Chemistry.[64] An artistic installation celebrating "Madame Curie" filled the Jacobs
Gallery at San Diego's Museum of Contemporary Art.[65] On 7 November, Googlecelebrated her birthday with a
special Google Doodle.[66] On 10 December, the New York Academy of Sciences celebrated the centenary of
Marie Curie's second Nobel prize in the presence ofPrincess Madeleine of Sweden.[67]

Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel prize, the first person to win two Nobel Prizes, the only woman
to win in two fields, and the only person to win in multiple sciences.[68] Awards that she received include:


    Nobel Prize in Physics (1903)[12]

    Davy Medal (1903, with Pierre)[49][69]

    Matteucci Medal (1904; with Pierre)[69]

    Elliott Cresson Medal (1909)[70]

    Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911)[4]




Soviet postage stamp (1987)


    Franklin Medal of the American Philosophical Society (1921)[71]

In 1995, she became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon,
Paris.[52] The curie (symbol Ci), a unit of radioactivity, is named in honour of her and Pierre (although the
commission which agreed on the name never clearly stated whether the standard was named after Pierre,
Marie or both of them).[72] The element with atomic number 96 was named curium.[73] Three radioactive
minerals are also named after the Curies: curite, sklodowskite, and cuprosklodowskite.[74] She received
numerous honorary degrees from universities across the world.[47] The Marie Curie Actions fellowship program
of the European Union for young scientists wishing to work in a foreign country is named after her. [75] In
Poland, she had received honorary doctorates from the Lwów Polytechnic(1912), Poznań
University (1922), Kraków's Jagiellonian University (1924), and the Warsaw Polytechnic (1926).[64]

Numerous locations around the world are named after her.[74] In 2007, a metro station in Paris was renamed to
honour both of the Curies.[74] Polish nuclear research reactor Maria is named after her.[76] The 7000
Curie asteroid is also named after her.[74] A KLMMcDonnell Douglas MD-11 (registration PH-KCC) is named in
her honour.[77]




2011 birthplace mural, oncentenary of second Nobel Prize


Several institutions bear her name, starting with the two Curie institutes - the Maria Skłodowska–Curie Institute
of Oncology, in Warsaw and the Institut Curie in Paris. She is the patron of the Maria Curie-Skłodowska
University, in Lublin, founded in 1944, and Pierre and Marie Curie University, in Paris, established in 1971. In
Britain Marie Curie Cancer Care was set up in 1948 to care for the terminally ill. There are two museums
dedicated to Marie Curie: in 1967, a museum devoted to Curie was established in Warsaw's "New Town", at
her birthplace on ulicaFreta (Freta Street);[4] her laboratory is preserved as the Musée Curie in Paris, open
since 1992.[78]

Several works of art bear her likeness, or are dedicated to her. MichalinaMościcka, wife of Polish
President IgnacyMościcki, unveiled a 1935 statue of Marie Curie before Warsaw's Radium Institute.[4]During the
1944 Second World War Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi German occupation, the monument was damaged
by gunfire; after the war it was decided to leave the bullet marks on the statue and its pedestal. [4] In 1955 Jozef
Mazur created a stained glass panel of her, the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Medallion, featured in the University at
Buffalo Polish Room.[79]

Books dedicated to her include Madame Curie (1938), written by her daughter, Ève.[64] In 1987Françoise
Giroud wrote a biography, Marie Curie: A Life.[64] In 2005, Barbara Goldsmith wroteObsessive Genius: The
Inner World of Marie Curie.[64] In 2011, another book appeared, Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, a Tale of
Love and Fallout , by Lauren Redniss.[80]

Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon starred in the 1943 U.S. Oscar-nominated film, Madame Curie, based on
her life.[53] More recently, in 1997, a French film about Pierre and Marie Curie was released, Les Palmes de M.
Schutz. It was adapted from a play of the same name. In the film, Marie Curie was played by Isabelle
Huppert.[81]
Curie's likeness also has appeared on bills, stamps and coins around the world.[74] She was featured on the
Polish late-1980s 20,000-złoty banknote[82] as well as on the last French 500-franc note, before the franc was
replaced by the euro.[83]

On the 2011 centenary of Marie Curie's second Nobel Prize (1911), an allegorical mural was painted on
the façade of her Warsaw birthplace. It depicts an infant Maria Skłodowska holding a test tube from which
emanate the elements that she would discover as an adult: polonium and radium.

Notes
a. ^ Poland had been partitioned in the 18th century among Russia, Prussia and Austria, and it was Marie
Skłodowska–Curie's hope that naming the element after her native country would bring world attention to its
lack of independence. Polonium may have been the first chemical element named to highlight a political
question.[84]

b. ^ Sources tend to vary with regards to the field of her second degree. TadeuszEstreicher, in his 1938 entry in
the Polish Biographical Dictionary, writes that while many sources state she earned a degree in mathematics,
this is incorrect, and her second degree was in chemistry.[2]




The Nobel Prize in Physics 1903
Henri Becquerel, Pierre Curie, Marie Curie
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1903

Henri Becquerel
Pierre Curie
Marie Curie



Biography
Marie Curie, née Maria Sklodowska, was born in Warsaw on November 7, 1867, the
daughter of a secondary-school teacher. She received a general education in local schools and some scientific
training from her father. She became involved in a students' revolutionary organization and found it prudent to leave
Warsaw, then in the part of Poland dominated by Russia, for Cracow, which at that time was under Austrian rule. In
1891, she went to Paris to continue her studies at the Sorbonne where she obtained Licenciateships in Physics and
the Mathematical Sciences. She met Pierre Curie, Professor in the School of Physics in 1894 and in the following
year they were married. She succeeded her husband as Head of the Physics Laboratory at the Sorbonne, gained her
Doctor of Science degree in 1903, and following the tragic death of Pierre Curie in 1906, she took his place as
Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences, the first time a woman had held this position. She was also
appointed Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris, founded in 1914.


Her early researches, together with her husband, were often performed under difficult conditions, laboratory
arrangements were poor and both had to undertake much teaching to earn a livelihood. The discovery of radioactivity
by Henri Becquerel in 1896 inspired the Curies in their brilliant researches and analyses which led to the isolation of
polonium, named after the country of Marie's birth, and radium. Mme. Curie developed methods for the separation of
radium from radioactive residues in sufficient quantities to allow for its characterization and the careful study of its
properties, therapeutic properties in particular.


Mme. Curie throughout her life actively promoted the use of radium to alleviate suffering and during World War I,
assisted by her daughter, Irene, she personally devoted herself to this remedial work. She retained her enthusiasm
for science throughout her life and did much to establish a radioactivity laboratory in her native city - in 1929
President Hoover of the United States presented her with a gift of $ 50,000, donated by American friends of science,
to purchase radium for use in the laboratory in Warsaw.


Mme. Curie, quiet, dignified and unassuming, was held in high esteem and admiration by scientists throughout the
world. She was a member of the Conseil du Physique Solvay from 1911 until her death and since 1922 she had been
a member of the Committee of Intellectual Co-operation of the League of Nations. Her work is recorded in numerous
papers in scientific journals and she is the author of Recherchessur les Substances Radioactives (1904),L'Isotopie et
les Éléments Isotopes and the classic Traité' de Radioactivité (1910).


The importance of Mme. Curie's work is reflected in the numerous awards bestowed on her. She received many
honorary science, medicine and law degrees and honorary memberships of learned societies throughout the world.
Together with her husband, she was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903, for their study into the
spontaneous radiation discovered by Becquerel, who was awarded the other half of the Prize. In 1911 she received a
secondNobel Prize, this time in Chemistry, in recognition of her work in radioactivity. She also received, jointly with
her husband, the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in 1903 and, in 1921, President Harding of the United States, on
behalf of the women of America, presented her with one gram of radium in recognition of her service to science.

For further details, cf. Biography of Pierre Curie. Mme. Curie died in Savoy, France, after a short illness, on July 4,
1934.

From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the
book seriesLes Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this
document, always state the source as shown above.




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                                                QUICK FACTS
NAME: Marie Curie
OCCUPATION: Physicist
BIRTH DATE: November 07, 1867
DEATH DATE: July 04, 1934
EDUCATION: Sorbonne
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                                             BEST KNOWN FOR
Marie Curie was a Polish-born French physicist famous for her work on radioactivity and twice a winner of the Nobel
Prize.



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 Marie Curie
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Synopsis
Born Maria Sklodowska on November 7, 1867, in Warsaw, Poland, Marie Curie became the first woman to
win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to win the award in two different fields (physics and chemistry). Curie's
efforts, with her husband, Pierre Curie, led to the discovery of polonium and radium and, after Pierre's death,
the development of X-rays. She died on July 4, 1934.
                                                   CONTENTS
                                                     Synopsis
                                                     Early Life
                                                   Discoveries
                                                 Science Celebrity
                                               Final Days and Legacy
                                                     QUOTES

    "I believe that Science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician; he is also a
              child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales."

                                                    – Marie Curie

Early Life

Maria Sklodowska, better known as Marie Curie, was born in Warsaw in modern-day Poland on November 7,
1867. Her parents were borth teachers, and she was the youngest of five children. As a child Curie took after
her father, Ladislas, a math and physics instructor. She had a bright and curious mind and excelled at school.
But tragedy struck early, and when she was only 11, Curie lost her mother, Bronsitwa, to tuberculosis.

A top student in her secondary school, Curie could not attend the men-only University of Warsaw. She instead
continued her education in Warsaw's "floating university," a set of underground, informal classes held in
secret. Both Curie and her sister Bronya dreamed of going abroad to earn an official degree, but they lacked
the financial resources to pay for more schooling. Undeterred, Curie worked out a deal with her sister. She
would work to support Bronya while she was in school and Bronya would return the favor after she completed
her studies.

For roughly five years, Curie worked as a tutor and a governess. She used her spare time to study, reading
about physics, chemistry and math. In 1891, Curie finally made her way to Paris where she enrolled at the
Sorbonne in Paris. She threw herself into her studies, but this dedication had a personal cost. With little money,
Curie survived on buttered bread and tea, and her health sometimes suffered because of her poor diet.
Curie completed her master's degree in physics in 1893 and earned another degree in mathematics the
following year. Around this time, she received a commission to do a study on different types of steel and their
magnetic properties. Curie needed a lab to work in, and a colleague introduced her to French physicist Pierre
Curie. A romance developed between the brilliant pair, and they became a scientific dynamic duo.
Discoveries
Marie and Pierre Curie were dedicated scientists and completely devoted to one another. At first, they worked
on separate projects. She was fascinated with the work of Henri Becquerel, a French physicist who discovered
that uranium casts off rays, weaker rays than the X-rays found by Wilhelm Roentgen.
Curie took Becquerel's work a few steps further, conducting her own experiments on uranium rays. She
discovered that the rays remained constant, no matter the condition or form of the uranium. The rays, she
theorized, came from the element's atomic structure. This revolutionary idea created the field of atomic physics
and Curie herself coined the word radioactivity to describe the phenomena. Marie and Pierre had a daughter,
Irene, in 1897, but their work didn't slow down.

Pierre put aside his own work to help Marie with her exploration of radioactivity. Working with the mineral
pitchblende, the pair discovered a new radioactive element in 1898. They named the element polonium, after
Marie's native country of Poland. They also detected the presence of another radioactive material in the
pitchblende, and called that radium. In 1902, the Curies announced that they had produced a decigram of pure
radium, demonstrating its existence as a unique chemical element.

                                                CONTENTS
                                                   Synopsis
                                                   Early Life
                                                 Discoveries
                                               Science Celebrity
                                            Final Days and Legacy
Science Celebrity
Marie Curie made history in 1903 when she became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in physics. She
won the prestigious honor along with her husband andHenri Becquerel, for their work on radioactivity. With
their Nobel Prize win, the Curies developed an international reputation for their scientific efforts, and they
used their prize money to continue their research. They welcomed a second child, daughter Eve, the following
year.

In 1906, Marie suffered a tremendous loss. Her husband Pierre was killed in Paris after he accidentally stepped
in front of a horse-drawn wagon. Despite her tremendous grief, she took over his teaching post at the
Sorbonne, becoming the institution's first female professor.

Curie received another great honor in 1911, winning her second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry. She was
selected for her discovery of radium and polonium, and became the first scientist to win two Nobel Prizes.
While she received the prize alone, she shared the honor jointly with her late husband in her acceptance
lecture.
Around this time, Curie joined with other famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Max Planck, to
attend the first Solvay Congress in Physics. They gathered to discuss the many groundbreaking discoveries in
their field. Curie experienced the downside of fame in 1911, when her relationship with her husband's former
student, Paul Langevin, became public. Curie was derided in the press for breaking up Langevin's marriage.
The press' negativity towards Curie stemmed at least in part from rising xenophobia in France.

When World War I broke out in 1914, Curie devoted her time and resources to helping the cause. She
championed the use of portable X-ray machines in the field, and these medical vehicles earned the nickname
"Little Curies." After the war, Curie used her celebrity to advance her research. She traveled to the United
States twice— in 1921 and in 1929— to raise funds to buy radium and to establish a radium research institute
in Warsaw.

Final Days and Legacy

All of her years of working with radioactive materials took a toll on Curie's health. She was known to carry
test tubes of radium around in the pocket of her lab coat. In 1934, Curie went to the Sancellemoz Sanatorium
in Passy, France, to try to rest and regain her strength. She died there on July 4, 1934, of aplastic anemia,
which can be caused by prolonged exposure to radiation.

Marie Curie made many breakthroughs in her lifetime. She is the most famous female scientist of all time, and
has received numerous posthumous honors.

In 1995, her and her husband's remains were interred in the Panthéon in Paris, the final resting place of many
France's greatest minds. Curie became the first and only woman to be laid to rest there.

Curie also passed down her love of science to the next generation. Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie followed in
her mother's footsteps,

                                                CONTENTS
                                                   Synopsis
                                                   Early Life
                                                 Discoveries
                                               Science Celebrity
                                            Final Days and Legacy


winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935. Joliot-Curie shared the honor with her husband Frédéric Joliot
for their work on their synthesis of new radioactive elements.

Today several educational and research institutions and medical centers bear the Curie name, including the
Institute Curie and the Pierre and Marie Curie University, both in Paris.
Nation and Family

Nation and Family
      PRISONER IN CHAINS. That is what Poland seemed like to
      Maria Sklodowska. Manya, as she was affectionately called,
learned to be a Polish patriot from her parents, Bronislawa and
VladislavSklodowski. At the time of Maria's birth in Warsaw on
November 7, 1867, Poland had not been an independent country for
most of a century. It had been divided up among Austria, Prussia, and
czarist Russia.

Warsaw was in the part of Poland controlled by the czar, who hoped         Czar Alexander II preferred to
to stamp out Polish nationalism by keeping the people ignorant of          wear a military uniform. When
their culture and language. But Polish patriots were determined to         the Czar was assassinated by
regain control of their nation. As educators, Maria's parents did their    revolutionary students in 1881,
                                                                           Manya and her best friend Kazia
best to overcome restrictions placed on them by their Russian              celebrated by dancing around
supervisors.                                                               the desks in their classroom.
                                                                                 READ Curie's words

                                                            MAP of Russian Poland
The birth of Manya, her fifth child, led her mother to
resign her position as head of a school, where the family
had resided until then. They moved to a boys' high
school, where Vladislav taught math and physics and
earned a good salary. Eventually, however, the Russian
supervisor in charge of the school fired him for his pro-
Polish sentiments.

“Constantly held in suspicion and spied upon, the
children knew that a single conversation in Polish,
or an imprudent word, might seriously harm, not             The five Sklodowski children. From left to
only themselves, but also their families.”                  right: Zosia died of typhus; Hela became an
--Marie Curie                                               educator; Maria, twice a Nobel laureate; and
                                                            Józef and Bronya, physicians. “We all had
                                                            much facility for intellectual work,” said Marie.
                                                            (photo ACJC)
S HER FATHER WAS FORCED into a series of
                                             progressively lower academic posts, the family's economic
                                       situation deteriorated. To help make ends meet they had to take
                                       in student boarders. Maria was only eight when her oldest sister
                                       caught typhus from a boarder and died. That death was followed
                                       less than three years later by the death of Madame Sklodowska,
                                       who lost a five-year battle with tuberculosis at the age of 42. The
                                       surviving family members--Professor Sklodowski; his son
                                       Joseph; and his daughters Bronya, Hela, and Maria--drew closer
                                       to one another.

                                       Although Sklodowski would never forgive himself for losing the
                                       family savings in a bad investment, the children honored him for
                                       nurturing them emotionally and intellectually. On Saturday
                                       nights he read classics of literature to Maria and her siblings. He
                                       also exposed them to the scientific apparatus he had once used
Marie was ten years old when her       in teaching physics but now kept at home, since the Russian
mother died in May 1878. As an adult   authorities had eliminated laboratory instruction from the Polish
Marie remembered it as “the first      curriculum.
great sorrow of my life,” which
“threw me into a profound
depression.” (photo ACJC)


        “I easily learned mathematics and physics, as far as these sciences were
        taken in consideration in the school. I found in this ready help from my
        father, who loved science....Unhappily, he had no laboratory and could not
        perform experiments.”

Manya was the star pupil in her class. Her personal losses
did not impede her academic success, but the pleasure of
being awarded a gold medal at her high school graduation
in 1883 was blunted because it meant shaking the hand of
the grandmaster of education in Russian Poland. After
graduating at 15, Manya suffered a collapse that doctors
thought was due to fatigue or "nervous" problems -- today
it might be diagnosed as depression. At her father's urging
Manya spent a year with cousins in the country. A merry
round of dances and other festivities, it would be the only
carefree year of her life.
                                                                Manya's secondary school diploma. She later
                                                                recalled “always having held first rank in my
                                                                class.” (photo ACJC)
The Floating University
       ARIA HOPED, LIKE HER
       SIBLINGS, to get an advanced
degree. Although Joseph was able to enroll
in the medical school at the University of
Warsaw, women were not welcome there.
Maria and Bronya joined other friends in
attending the Floating University. This
illegal night school got its name from the
fact that its classes met in changing          Cossacks parading in Warsaw after Russia crushed a
                                               nationalist rising in 1863.
locations, the better to evade the watchful
eyes of the czarist authorities. Its students'
lofty goal went beyond mere self-
improvement. They hoped their grass-roots “It was one of those groups of Polish youths who
educational movement would raise the           believed that the hope of their country lay in a
likelihood of eventual Polish liberation.      great effort to develop the intellectual and moral
                                               strength of the nation....we agreed among
This fly-by-night education could not match ourselves to give evening courses, each one
the curriculum at any of the major             teaching what he knew best.”--Marie Curie
European universities that admitted women.
Although Maria understood this fact, at the
Floating University she did get a taste of
progressive thought and an introduction to
new developments in the sciences.




Years of Study
     ANYA BECAME MARIE when she enrolled
     at the Sorbonne in fall 1891. At first she lived in
the home of her sister. Bronya had married another
Polish patriot, CasimirDluski, whom she had met in
medical school. The Dluskis' home, however, was an
hour's commute by horse-drawn bus from the
university, and Marie resented the lost time, not to
mention the money wasted on carfare.
                                                           Paris in 1889 (two years before Marie
                                                           Sklodowska's arrival), with the Eiffel Tower
                                                           newly erected for a world's fair--a celebration of
                                                           modern technology      [another view]
In addition, remaining with the Dluskis meant participating regularly in the active Polish exile
community in Paris. Marie's father warned her that doing so might jeopardize her career prospects at
home or even the lives of relatives there. Thus after a few months Marie moved to the Latin
Quarter, the artists' and students' neighborhood close to the university.
Her living arrangements were basic. Stories from these
years tell how she kept herself warm during the winter
months by wearing every piece of clothing she owned,
and how she fainted from hunger because she was too
absorbed in study to eat. But even if Bronya had to
come to her aid from time to time, living alone enabled
Marie to focus seriously on her studies.

“...my situation was not exceptional; it was the
familiar experience of many of the Polish students
whom I knew....”

                                                              Paris rooftops, painting by GustaveCaillebotte
                                                                                                     [More]

                                                                                   READ Curie's words




                                   The diligence paid off. Marie finished first in her master's degree
                                   physics course in the summer of 1893 and second in math the
                                   following year. Lack of money had stood in the way of her
                                   undertaking the math degree, but senior French scientists
                                   recognized her abilities and pulled some strings. She was awarded
                                   a scholarship earmarked for an outstanding Polish student. Before
                                   completing the math degree she was also commissioned by the
                                   Society for the Encouragement of National Industry to do a
                                   study, relating magnetic properties of different steels to their
                                   chemical composition. She needed to find a lab where she could
                                   do the work.

                                       Love and Marriage
                                           HE SEARCH FOR LAB SPACE led to a fateful
                                           introduction. In the spring of 1894, Marie Sklodowska
                                      mentioned her need for a lab to a Polish physicist of her
Another Polish student in Paris drew
this portrait of Marie in 1892, after acquaintance. It occurred to him that his colleague Pierre
she had been enrolled at the          Curie might be able to assist her. Curie, who had done pioneering
Sorbonne for some months.             research on magnetism, was laboratory chief at the Municipal
Although at first she spent some      School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry in Paris. Unaware of
time with other Polish students to       how inadequate Pierre's own lab facilities were, the professor
help overcome homesickness, she          suggested that perhaps Pierre could find room there for Marie to
soon had to devote all her time to       work. The meeting between Curie and Sklodowska would change
her studies. (Photo ACJC)
                                         not only their individual lives but also the course of science.

“I noticed the grave and gentle expression of his face, as well as a certain abandon in his
attitude, suggesting the dreamer absorbed in his reflections.”
Marie would eventually find rudimentary lab space at the
Municipal School. Meanwhile her relationship with Curie was
growing from mutual respect to love. Her senior by about a
decade, Pierre had all but given up on love after the death of a
close woman companion some 15 years earlier. The women he
had met since had shown no interest in science, his life's passion.
In Marie, however, he found an equal with a comparable devotion
to science.

    OLAND STILL BECKONED HER BACK.After her
    success in her math exam in the summer of 1894, Marie
returned there for a vacation, uncertain whether she would return
to France. Pierre's heartfelt letters helped convince her to pursue
her doctorate in Paris.
                                                                          Marie hesitated before agreeing to
                                                                          marry Pierre Curie, because such a
                                                                          decision “meant abandoning my
                                                                          country and my family.” (Photo
                                                                          ACJC)

                                                                                     READ Curie's words

                                          “Our work drew us closer and closer, until we were both
                                          convinced that neither of us could find a better life
                                          companion.”

                                          Marie was determined not only to get her own doctorate but to
                                          see to it that Pierre received one as well. Although Pierre had
                                          done important scientific research in more than one field over
                                          the past 15 years, he had never completed a doctorate (in
                                          France the process consumed even more time than it did in the
                                          U.S. or U.K.). Marie insisted now that he write up his research
                                          on magnetism. In March 1895 he was awarded the degree. At
                                          the Municipal School Pierre was promoted to a professorship.
                                          The honor and the higher salary were offset by increased
Gabriel Lippmann, Marie Curie's
thesis advisor, did early studies in a
                                          teaching duties without any improvement in lab space.
field in which Pierre Curie and his
brother were pioneers: electrical
effects in crystals. A pillar of the
French tradition of patronage,
Lippmann let Marie use his laboratory
for her thesis work and helped her find
other sources of support.

In a simple civil ceremony in July 1895, they became husband
and wife. Neither wanted a religious service. Marie had lost
her faith when her devout Roman Catholic mother died
young, and Pierre was the son of non-practicing Protestants.
Nor did they exchange rings. Instead of a bridal gown Marie
wore a dark blue outfit, which for years after was a serviceable
lab garment.




                                                                   The Curies' honeymoon trip was a tour
                                                                   of France on bicycles purchased with a
                                                                   wedding gift. (Photo ACJC)
                                                                                               Another
                                                                   view

                                                                                                            Next
                                                                                                            Work
                                                                                                            Wife
                                                                                                            and
                                                                                                            Moth

                                                                                                            Also:
                                                                                                            Pierre
                                                                                                            Curie
X-rays and Uranium Rays
      ARIE CURIE'S CHOICE of a thesis topic was
      influenced by two recent discoveries by other scientists. In
December 1895, about six months after the Curies married,
German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen discovered a kind of ray
that could travel through solid wood or flesh and yield
photographs of living people's bones. Roentgen dubbed these
mysterious rays X-rays, with X standing for unknown. In
recognition of his discovery, Roentgen in 1901 became the first
Nobel laureate in physics.




                                                                         One of Roentgen's first X-ray
                                                                         photographs -- a colleague's hand
                                                                         (note the wedding ring). The
                                                                         revelation of X-rays fascinated the
                                                                         public and deeply puzzled scientists

                                         In early 1896, only a few of months after Roentgen's discovery,
                                         French physicist Henri Becquerel reported to the French
                                         Academy of Sciences that uranium compounds, even if they
                                         were kept in the dark, emitted rays that would fog a
                                         photographic plate. He had come upon this discovery
                                         accidentally. Despite Becquerel's intriguing finding, the scientific
                                         community continued to focus its attention on Roentgen's X-
                                         rays, neglecting the much weaker Becquerel rays or uranium
                                         rays.

                                              HE IGNORED URANIUM RAYS appealed to Marie
                                              Curie. Since she would not have a long bibliography of
                                         published papers to read, she could begin experimental work on
Henri Becquerel, discoverer of           them immediately. The director of the Paris Municipal School of
uranium radiation. Although he tried     Industrial Physics and Chemistry, where Pierre was professor of
to help the Curies solve their financial physics, permitted her to use a crowded, damp storeroom there
problems and advance their careers,      as a lab.
the relationship eventually soured--as
sometimes happens with scientists
touchy about sharing credit for
discoveries.
A clever technique was her key to success. About 15 years
earlier, Pierre and his older brother, Jacques, had invented a
new kind of electrometer, a device for measuring extremely
low electrical currents. Marie now put the Curie electrometer
to use in measuring the faint currents that can pass through air
that has been bombarded with uranium rays. The moist air in
the storeroom tended to dissipate the electric charge, but she
managed to make reproducible measurements.


“Instead of making these bodies act upon photographic
plates, I preferred to determine the intensity of their
radiation by measuring the conductivity of the air
exposed to the action of the rays.”




                                                                   This device for precise electrical
                                                                   measurement, invented by Pierre Curie
                                                                   and his brother Jacques, was essential
                                                                   for Marie's work. (Photo ACJC)

                                                                   You can exit this site to
                                                                   anexhibit on the discovery of
                                                                   the electron

With numerous experiments Marie confirmed Becquerel's observations that the electrical
effects of uranium rays are constant, regardless of whether the uranium was solid or
pulverized, pure or in a compound, wet or dry, or whether exposed to light or heat.
Likewise, her study of the rays emitted by different uranium compounds validated
Becquerel's conclusion that the minerals with a higher proportion of uranium emitted the
most intense rays. She went beyond Becquerel's work, however, in forming a crucial
hypothesis: the emission of rays by uranium compounds could be an atomic property of
     the element uranium--something built into the very structure of its atoms.

     ARIE'S SIMPLE HYPOTHESIS would prove revolutionary. It would ultimately
contribute to a fundamental shift in scientific understanding. At the time scientists
regarded the atom--a word meaning undivided or indivisible -- as the most elementary
particle. A hint that this ancient idea was false came from the discovery of the electron by
other scientists around this same time. But nobody grasped the complex inner structure
or the immense energy stored in atoms. Marie and Pierre Curie themselves were not
convinced that radioactive energy came from within atoms--maybe, for example, the
earth was bathed in cosmic rays, whose energy certain atoms somehow caught and
radiated? Marie's real achievement was to cut through the complicated and obscure
observations with a crystal-clear analysis of the set of conclusions that, however
unexpected, were logically possible.

Marie tested all the known elements in order to determine if other elements or minerals
would make air conduct electricity better, or if uranium alone could do this. In this task
she was assisted by a number of chemists who donated a variety of mineral samples,
including some containing very rare elements. In April 1898 her research revealed that
thorium compounds, like those of uranium, emit Becquerel rays. Again the emission
appeared to be an atomic property. To describe the behavior of uranium and thorium she
invented the word “radioactivity” --based on the Latin word for ray.

         Next:
         The Discovery of Polonium and Radium

         Also:
         Radioactivity: The Unstable Nucleus




fRANCE WAS LESS FORTHCOMING than other
countries when it came to honoring the Curies' work. In early
June 1903 both Curies were invited to London as guests of the
prestigious Royal Institution. Since custom ruled out women
lecturers, Pierre alone described their work in his “Friday
Evening Discourse.” He was careful, however, to describe
Marie's crucial role in their collaboration. The audience included
representatives of England's social elite and such major
scientists as Lord Kelvin. Kelvin showed his respect by sitting
next to Marie at the lecture and by hosting a luncheon in
Pierre's honor the following day.




                                                                     Britain's Lord Kelvin, whose
                                                                     contributions in several fields helped
                                                                     shape the scientific thought of his era,
                                                                     openly displayed his admiration for
                                                                     Pierre's scientific achievements.
But all was not well that weekend. Pierre was in such bad
                                                 health that he had experienced difficulty in dressing himself
                                                 before the talk. His fingers were so covered with sores that
                                                 he spilled some radium in the hall while demonstrating its
                                                 properties. Ill health, however, kept neither Curie from
                                                 noting the value of the jewels worn by the members of
                                                 English high society they met in the course of the weekend.
                                                 They amused themselves by estimating the number of fine
                                                 laboratories they could set up with the proceeds from selling
                                                 those jewels.

                                                      ISITORS FROM ABROAD also helped honor Marie
                                                      on the occasion of her formal thesis defense in June
                                                 1903. Her sister Bronya made the difficult trip from Poland
                                                 to celebrate Marie's academic triumph.
The attention that English scientists paid to
the Curies' work helped make them                Bronya had insisted that the first woman to receive a
household names in that country, as in this
famous caricature, “Radium,” from the
                                                 doctorate in France should acknowledge the special event by
popular British periodicalVanity Fair.           wearing a new dress. Characteristically, Marie chose a black
                                                 dress. Like the navy wedding outfit she had chosen eight
                                                 years earlier, the new dress could be worn in the lab without
                                                 fear of stains.
                                                Another foreign admirer was a last-minute guest at a dinner to
                                                celebrate Marie's achievement. New Zealand-born scientist
                                                Ernest Rutherford, who was also actively engaged in research
                                                in the new science of radioactivity, was visiting Paris. He had
                                                stopped by the Municipal School shed where Marie isolated
                                                radium, and at dinner that night he asked Marie how they
                                                managed to work in such a place. “You know,” he said, “it
                                                must be dreadful not to have a laboratory to play around in.”

                                                    AMILY LOSSES UNDERCUT some of the pleasure
                                                    Marie could take in her own achievements. In August
                                                1903 she experienced a miscarriage. Some time later Bronya's
                                                second child died of tubercular meningitis. And against the
                                                backdrop of these specific losses was the fact that Pierre's
                                                health continued to deteriorate. Sometimes unbearable pain
                                                kept him awake all night, lying weakly in bed, moaning.
Title page of the published version of
Marie Curie's doctoral thesis, “Research
on Radioactive Substances.” The
examiners exclaimed that Curie's
doctoral research contributed more to
scientific knowledge than any previous
thesis project.
“I had grown so accustomed to the
       idea of the child that I am absolutely
       desperate and cannot be consoled.”
       --letter from Marie Curie to Bronya,
       August 25, 1903




                                                             Marie Curie in 1903, the year her thesis was
                                                             published. (Photo ACJC)



        Next:
        The Nobel Prize and its Aftermath



A Fatal Accident
    IFE WAS SEEMING A BIT ROSIER to Pierre Curie in the spring of 1906. During the
    family's recent Easter holiday in the country, he had enjoyed watching the efforts of 8-year-old
Irène to net butterflies and of 14-month-old Eve to keep her footing on the uneven turf. More
crucially, perhaps, Pierre had become involved in his work again.

Pierre Curie's agenda for Thursday, April 19, 1906, was that of a man fully engaged in both
professional and social life. After a luncheon of the Association of Professors of the Science
Faculties, he was scheduled to go over proofs with his publisher and to visit a nearby library. He was
looking forward to entertaining a number of fellow scientists at the Curie home that evening.
IERRE CURIE WAS NOT FATED to complete
    that day's activities. After working in the laboratory
all morning, he braved the heavy rain, umbrella in hand,
and traveled across Paris to his luncheon meeting. There
he spoke forcefully on a number of issues that concerned
him, including widening career options for junior faculty
and drafting legal codes to help prevent laboratory
accidents.

After the meeting was over he headed out toward his
publisher in the rain, only to find that the doors were
locked because of a strike. Hurrying to cross the street,
he was run over by a horse-drawn wagon with a load of        When Pierre's father learned that his son had
military uniforms, weighing some six tons. He was killed     been killed crossing a Paris street in traffic on
                                                             a rainy day, he said, “What was he dreaming
instantly.
                                                             of this time?” (Painting by Childe Hassam,
                                                             1893)


        “He wasn't careful enough when he was walking in the street, or when he
        rode his bicycle. He was thinking of other things.” --Pierre Clerc, the
        Sorbonne lab assistant who identified Curie's body

      ARIE DID NOT LEARN the news that would
      transform her life until that evening. In shock, she
began to attend to the necessary arrangements. She sent
Irène next door to spend a few days with the neighbors,
telegrammed the news to her family in Poland, and
arranged to have the body brought to the house. Only after
Pierre's older brother, Jacques, arrived the next day from
Montpellier did she break down briefly. The news of Pierre
Curie's death was carried in newspapers around the world,
and Marie was inundated by letters and telegrams.

The day after the funeral was notable for two reasons.
Encouraged by Jacques, Marie returned to her work. Also,       (above) Marie on the balcony of the Dluski
Jacques informed Marie that the French government              apartment on rue d'Allemagne, Paris. In the
proposed to support her and the children with a state          diary Marie began 11 days after Pierre's
pension. Marie was adamant in her refusal, insisting that      death, she described putting a copy of this
                                                               picture in Pierre's coffin: “it was the picture
she was perfectly capable of supporting herself and the        of the one you chose as your
children.                                                      companion....” (Photo ACJC)

“Crushed by the blow, I did not feel able to face the                              READ Curie's words
future. I could not forget, however, what my husband
used to say, that even deprived of him, I ought to
continue my work.”

If Marie was firm in rejecting the government's offer of
support, she was less certain how to respond to an
unexpected offer from the Sorbonne. On May 13, 1906,
the university invited her to take up Pierre's academic post.
By doing so, she hoped, she could one day establish, as a
tribute to Pierre's memory, a state-of-the-art lab such as he
had never had. It was not enough to be a teacher and
researcher. She would have to learn how to create a
scientific institution.



          Next:
          Life Goes On




                                                                Curie family gravestone. Pierre was
                                                                buried with his mother in the Curie family
                                                                plot in Sceaux, on the outskirts of Paris,
                                                                where eventually his father and Marie
                                                                joined them. Many years later Pierre and
                                                                Marie were reinterred in the Panthéon, the
                                                                national sepulcher for the most eminent
                                                                French citizens. (Photo ACJC)
© 2000 - 2013 American Institute of Physics
The Academy Debacle
                                               SCANDAL-DRIVEN PRESS is not a recent
                                               phenomenon. Pierre and Marie had been hounded by
                                         intrusive reporters as early as 1902, when news began to
                                         circulate about the medical uses of radium. After they won
                                         the Nobel Prize, reporters redoubled their attentions. But
                                         until late 1910 most press coverage of Marie Curie focused
                                         on the heroic labors of the blonde, foreign-born mother,
                                         wife, and then widow. Some of the press changed its tune,
                                         however, in November 1910, when Curie offered herself as
                                         a candidate for the single vacant seat for a physicist in the
                                         French Academy of Sciences.

                                             Her main rival for the seat was 66-year-old EdouardBranly,
The right-wing French press, including the   whose scientific reputation was based on his contribution
daily Excelsior, attacked Curie's candidacy  to wireless telegraphy. When Italian Gugliemo Marconi was
for the French Academy with scurrilous and awarded the 1909 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work in
racist claims based on supposedly scientific that field, many French patriots felt stung by Branly's
analyses of her handwriting and facial       exclusion.
characteristics.
Branly's claim to the Academy chair was also
championed by many French Catholics, who
knew that he had been singled out for honor
by the Pope. For generations French politics
had been bitterly divided between
conservative Catholics and liberal
freethinkers like Marie and her friends, and
the split ran through every public action.

Among the false rumors the right-wing press
spread about Curie was that she was Jewish,
not truly French, and thus undeserving of a
seat in the French Academy. Although the
liberal press came to her defense, the               “An academic tournament: Will a woman enter the
accusations did the intended damage. Branly          Institute?” Marie was weighed against EdouardBranly, who
won the election on January 23, 1911, by two         taught at a leading Catholic institution.
votes. Curie responded to the snub
characteristically, by throwing herself into her
work.

“The struggle between you and M. Branly will arise most strongly on the clerical
issue....Against him will be the forward-looking and university elements of the
Academy....” --letter from Georges Gouy to Marie Curie, November 1910


                                               The Langevin Affair
                                                N EVEN WORSE SCANDAL was to erupt before the
                                                end of 1911. That a woman who was left a widow at 38
                                           should become romantically attached again is not surprising.
                                           But when Curie's relationship with fellow physicist Paul
                                           Langevin moved beyond friendly collegiality to mutual love,
                                           she could not foresee where it would lead. Langevin, a brilliant
                                           former pupil of Pierre's, was unhappily married to a woman
                                           who came from a similar working-class background but lacked
                                           his educational attainments. With four children to raise,
                                           Madame Langevin complained that Paul placed his
                                           commitment to science above the needs of his family.

                                           “They can't comprehend at his house that he refuses
                                           magnificent situations...in private industry to dedicate himself
Paul Langevin. The Langevins' 1902         to science,” wrote a friend of Langevin's. During the summer
marriage had deteriorated to such an       of 1911, as rumors about a relationship between Curie and
extent by mid-July 1910 that Langevin      Langevin began to spread, Madame Langevin began
left the family home for an apartment in   proceedings to bring about a legal separation.
Paris, not far from Curie's lab.




                        Curie was the only woman at the 1911conference organized and
                        subsidized by Belgian industrialist Ernest Solvay. Discussions at this
                        gathering of the world's top physicists opened the way to a new
                        physics that would bring together relativity, the quantum, and
                        radioactive atoms. Langevin, at far right, stands next to the young
                        Albert Einstein. Rutherford stands above Curie, who confers with
                        Poincaré.


That autumn Curie, Langevin, and some 20 other top physicists attended an international
conference in Brussels. While the scientists considered the challenge to modern physics presented by
the discovery of radioactivity, the French press got hold of intimate letters that Curie and Langevin
had exchanged (or forgeries based on them).

     HE WIDOW HAD TARNISHED the good name of her deceased husband! This was only
     one of the accusations hurled at Curie during her absence in Belgium. Resurrecting the lie that
she was Jewish, some anti-Semitic newspapers decried the devastation wrought on a good
Frenchwoman by a foreign Jewish home wrecker. Other reporters spread false hints that Curie's
affair with Langevin had begun while Pierre was still alive, driving him to commit suicide in despair.

“The fires of radium which beam so mysteriously...have just lit a fire in the heart of one of
the scientists who studies their action so devotedly; and the wife and the children of this
scientist are in tears....”
--Le Journal, November 4, 1911
On her return to France, Curie discovered an angry mob congregated
in front of her home in Sceaux, terrorizing 14-year-old Irène and 7-
year-old Eve. Curie and her daughters had to take refuge in the home
of friends in Paris. Meanwhile Langevin and a journalist who had
reviled Marie held a duel--an emotional but bloodless “affair of
honor.”




          Next:
          Illness and Rebirth
                                                                             Mathematician Emile Borel,
                                                                             scientific director of the
                                                                             EcoleNormaleSupérieure,
                                                                             sheltered Curie and her
                                                                             daughters even when the
                                                                             minister of public instruction
                                                                             threatened to fire him for
                                                                             sullying French academic
                                                                             honor.
© 2000 - 2013 American Institute of Physics




                                                  Radiology at the Front
                                                    HREE GERMAN BOMBS fell on Paris on
                                                    September 2, 1914, about a month after Germany
                                               declared war on France. By that time construction of the
                                               Radium Institute was complete, although Curie had not yet
 The Radium Institute. After Germany           moved her lab there. Curie's researchers had been drafted,
 declared war on France in 1914, only two      like all other able-bodied Frenchmen.
 people remained at the Institute: Curie and
 “our mechanic who could not join the army     The Radium Institute's work would have to wait for
 because of serious heart trouble.”            peacetime. But surely there were ways in which Curie could
                                               use her scientific knowledge to advance the war effort.


            “I am resolved to put all my strength at the service of my adopted country,
            since I cannot do anything for my unfortunate native country just now...” --
            letter from Marie Curie to Paul Langevin, January 1, 1915

As the German army swept toward Paris, the government decided to move to Bordeaux. France's
entire stock of radium for research was the single gram in Curie's lab. At the government's behest,
Curie took a Bordeaux-bound train along with government staff, carrying the precious element in a
heavy lead box. Unlike many, however, Curie felt her place was in Paris. After the radium was in a
Bordeaux safe-deposit box, she returned to Paris on a military train.
X-rays could save soldiers' lives, she realized, by helping
doctors see bullets, shrapnel, and broken bones. She
convinced the government to empower her to set up
France's first military radiology centers. Newly named
Director of the Red Cross Radiology Service, she wheedled
money and cars out of wealthy acquaintances.

She convinced automobile body shops to transform the
cars into vans, and begged manufacturers to do their part            This “petite Curie,” which brought X-
                                                                     rays to the Front in World War I, was
for their country by donating equipment. By late October             displayed in Paris in 1998 during the
1914, the first of 20 radiology vehicles she would equip was         commemoration of the 100th
ready. French enlisted men would soon dub these mobile               anniversary of the discovery of radium.
radiology installations, which transported X-ray apparatus
to the wounded at the battle front, petites Curies (little
Curies).
                                         LTHOUGH CURIE HAD LECTURED about X-rays at the
                                         Sorbonne, she had no personal experience working with them.
                                    Intending to operate the petite Curie herself if necessary, she learned
                                    how to drive a car and gave herself cram courses in anatomy, in the
                                    use of X-ray equipment, and in auto mechanics. As her first
                                    radiological assistant she chose her daughter Irène, a very mature and
                                    scientifically well-versed 17-year-old. Accompanied by a military
                                    doctor, mother and daughter made their first trip to the battle front in
                                    the autumn of 1914.

                                    “The use of the X-rays during the war saved the lives of many
                                    wounded men; it also saved many from long suffering and
                                    lasting infirmity.”--Marie Curie
Marie and Irène with X-ray          Would Irène be traumatized by the sight of the soldiers' horrific
equipment at a military             wounds? To guard against a bad reaction, Curie was careful to display
hospital. After training Irène as
a radiologist for a year, Curie
                                    no emotion herself as she carefully recorded data about each patient.
deemed her daughter capable of
directing a battle-front
radiological installation on her
own.

READ Curie's words
Irène followed her mother's example. Heedless of the dangers of over-exposure to X-rays, mother
and daughter were inadequately shielded from the radiation that helped save countless soldiers' lives.
After the war the French government recognized Irène's hospital work by awarding her a military
medal. No such official recognition came to Curie. Perhaps her role in the Langevin affair was not
yet forgiven.

            Next:
            A Military Radiotherapy Service



© 2000 - 2013 American Institute of Physics




                                                The Marie Curie Radium
                                              Campaign
                                                  HE NEVER OVERCAME STAGE
                                                  FRIGHT as a professor, though she taught for
                                              nearly 30 years. Yet in order to turn the Radium
                                              Institute into a world-class institution, Curie shamelessly
                                              sought out assistance, just as she had done during the
                                              war years to create the radiological service. Throughout
                                              her career Curie had benefitted from the subsidies of
                                              wealthy French benefactors. Now, thanks to the interest
 French philanthropist Henri de
                                              of an American woman, U.S. citizens also became
 Rothschild was enthralled by                 involved in filling the needs of the Radium Institute.
 science and funded many
 research efforts. Rothschild                 “[Curie], who handles daily a particle of radium
 grants helped Curie to support               more dangerous than lightning, was afraid when
 her scientific staff--including              confronted by the necessity of appearing before the
 the man who would become
 Irène's husband and                          public.”--StéphaneLauzanne, editor-in-chief of Le
 collaborator.                                Matin

Despite her distrust of journalists, in May
1920 Curie agreed to give an interview to
Mrs. William Brown Meloney, editor of an
American women's magazine. In the
interview Curie emphasized the needs of
her institution, where research was just
resuming following the devastating war.

Thanks to her alliance with industry, few
labs in the world if any were better
equipped with radium than Curie's. But
Curie succeeded in shocking Meloney by
emphasizing the fact that research and
therapy centers in the United States
Marie curie
Marie curie
Marie curie

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Marie curie

  • 1. Marie Curie From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia For other uses, see Marie Curie (disambiguation). Marie Curie Marie Curie, ca. 1920 Born Maria SalomeaSkłodowska 7 November 1867 Warsaw, Kingdom of Poland, then part of Russian Empire[1] Died 4 July 1934 (aged 66) Passy, Haute-Savoie, France Residence Poland, France Citizenship Poland (by birth) France (by marriage) Fields Physics, chemistry
  • 2. Institutions University of Paris Alma mater University of Paris ESPCI Doctoral Henri Becquerel advisor Doctoral André-Louis Debierne students Óscar Moreno Marguerite Catherine Perey Known for Radioactivity, polonium, radium Notable awards Nobel Prize in Physics (1903) Davy Medal (1903) Matteucci Medal (1904) Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911) Spouse Pierre Curie (1859–1906) Signature Notes She is the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences. She was the mother of Irène Joliot-Curie andÈve Curie. Marie Skłodowska-Curie, often referred to as Marie Curie, (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a Polish physicist and chemist, working mainly in France, who is famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the only woman to win in two fields, and the only person to win in multiple sciences. She was also the first female professor at the University of Paris (La Sorbonne), and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in Paris' Panthéon. She was born Maria SalomeaSkłodowska (pronounced [ˈmarjasal ˈm askwɔ ˈd fska]) in Warsaw, in what ɔ ɛ ɔ was then the Kingdom of Poland. She studied at Warsaw's clandestine Floating University and began her practical scientific training in Warsaw. In 1891, aged 24, she followed her older sister Bronisława to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. She shared her
  • 3. 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie and with physicist Henri Becquerel. She was the sole winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Her achievements included a theory of radioactivity (a term that she coined), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two elements, polonium andradium. Under her direction, the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment ofneoplasms, using radioactive isotopes. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw, which remain major centres of medical research today. During World War I, she established the first military field radiological centres. While a French citizen, Marie Skłodowska-Curie (she used both surnames) never lost her sense of Polish identity. She taught her daughters the Polish language and took them on visits to Poland. She named the first chemical element that she discovered – polonium, which she first isolated in 1898 – after her native country.[a] Curie died in 1934 of aplastic anemia brought on by her years of exposure to radiation. Contents [hide] 1 Biography o 1.1 Early years o 1.2 New life in Paris o 1.3 New elements o 1.4 Nobel Prizes o 1.5 World War I o 1.6 Postwar years o 1.7 Death 2 Legacy 3 Awards, honours and tributes 4 Notes 5 References 6 Further reading o 6.1 Nonfiction o 6.2 Fiction 7 See also 8 External links Biography
  • 4. Early years Birthplace on ulicaFreta in Warsaw's "New Town" – now home to the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Museum Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw, in the Russian partition of Poland, on 7 November 1867, the fifth and youngest child of well-known teachers Bronisława and WładysławSkłodowski.[2]Maria's older siblings were Zofia (born 1862), Józef (1863), Bronisława (1865) and Helena (1866).[3] WładysławSkłodowski with daughters (from left) Maria, Bronisława, Helena, 1890 On both the paternal and maternal sides, the family had lost their property and fortunes through patriotic involvements in Polish national uprisings aiming at the restoration of Poland's independence (most recent of which was the January Uprising of 1863–1864).[4] This condemned the subsequent generation, including Maria, her elder sisters and her brother, to a difficult struggle to get ahead in life.[4] Maria's paternal grandfather JózefSkłodowski had been a respected teacher in Lublin, where he taught the young BolesławPrus,[5] who would become one of the leading figures in the history of Polish literature. [6] Her father WładysławSkłodowski taught mathematics and physics, subjects that Maria was to pursue, and was also
  • 5. director of two Warsaw gymnasia for boys.[3] After Russian authorities eliminated laboratory instruction from the Polish schools, he brought much of the lab equipment home, and instructed his children in its use. [3] He was eventually fired by the Russian supervisors for pro-Polish sentiments, and forced to take lower paying posts; the family also lost money on a bad investment, and eventually chose to supplement the income by lodging boys in their house.[3] Maria's mother Bronisława operated a prestigious Warsaw boarding school for girls; she resigned from the position after Maria was born.[3] She died from tuberculosis when Maria was twelve.[3] Maria's father was an atheist; her mother—a devout Catholic.[7] Two years before the death of her mother, Maria's oldest sibling, Zofia, had died of typhus.[3] The deaths of her mother and sister caused Maria to give up Catholicism and become agnostic.[8] When she was ten years old, Maria began attending the boarding school of J. Sikorska; next Maria attended a gymnasium for girls, from which she graduated on 12 June 1883 with a gold medal.[2] After a collapse, possibly due to depression,[3] she spent the following year in the countryside with relatives of her father, and the next with her father in Warsaw, where she did some tutoring.[2]Unable to enroll in a higher education institution due to being a female, she and her sister Bronisława became involved with the Flying University, a clandestine teaching institution, teaching a pro-Polish curriculum in defiance of the Russian authorities, and also willing to admit female students.[2][3] Maria made an agreement with her sister, Bronisława, that she would give her financial assistance during Bronisława's medical studies in Paris, in exchange for similar assistance two years later.[2][9] In connection with this, Maria took a position as governess: first as a home tutor in Warsaw; then for two years as a governess in Szczuki with a landed family, the Żorawskis, who were relatives of her father.[2][9] While working for the latter family, she fell in love with their son, KazimierzŻorawski, a future eminent mathematician.[9] His parents rejected the idea of his marrying the penniless relative, and Kazimierz was unable to oppose them. [9]Maria's loss of the relationship with Żorawski was tragic for both. He soon earned a doctorate and pursued an academic career as a mathematician, becoming a professor and rector of Kraków University.[4] Still, as an old man and a mathematics professor at theWarsaw Polytechnic, he would sit contemplatively before the statue of Maria Skłodowska which had been erected in 1935 before theRadium Institute that she had founded in 1932.[4][10] At the beginning of 1890, Bronisława, a few months after she married KazimierzDłuski, a physician and social and political activist, invited Maria to join them in Paris.[2] Maria declined because she could not afford the university tuition; it would take her a year and a half longer to gather the necessary funds.[2] She was helped by her father, who was able to secure a more lucrative position again.[9]All that time she continued to educate herself, reading books, exchanging letters, and being tutored herself.[9] In early 1889 she returned home to her father in Warsaw.[2] She continued working as a governess, and remained there till late 1891. [9] She tutored, studied at the Flying University, and began her practical scientific training (1890–91) in a chemical laboratory at the Museum of Industry and Agriculture at KrakowskiePrzedmieście 66, near Warsaw's Old Town.[2][3][9] The
  • 6. laboratory was run by her cousin JózefBoguski, who had been an assistant in Saint Petersburg to the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev.[2][9][11] New life in Paris At a Warsaw lab, in 1890–91, Maria Skłodowska did her first scientific work. In late 1891 she left Poland for France.[12] In Paris, Maria (or Marie, as she would be known in France) briefly found shelter with her sister and brother-in-law before renting a garret closer to the university, in the Latin Quarter, and proceeding with her studies of physics, chemistry and mathematics at the Sorbonne (the University of Paris), where she enrolled in late 1891.[13][14] She subsisted on her meager resources, suffering from cold winters and occasionally fainting from hunger.[14] Marie studied during the day and tutored evenings, barely earning her keep. In 1893 she was awarded a degree in physics and began work in an industrial laboratory of Professor Gabriel Lippmann.[2] Meanwhile she continued studying at the Sorbonne, and with the aid of a fellowship she was able to earn a second degree in 1894.[2][14][b] Marie had begun her scientific career in Paris with an investigation of the magnetic properties of various steels, commissioned by the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry (Sociétéd'encouragement pour l'industrienationale).[14] That same year Pierre Curie entered her life; it was their mutual interest in natural sciences that drew them together.[15] Pierre was an instructor at the School of Physics and Chemistry, the Écolesupérieure de physique et de chimieindustrielles de la ville de Paris (ESPCI).[2] They were introduced by Professor JózefWierusz-Kowalski, who had learned that Marie was looking for a larger laboratory space, something that Wierusz-Kowalski thought Pierre had access to.[2][14] Though Pierre did not have a large laboratory, he was able to find some space for Marie where she was able to begin work.[14]
  • 7. Their mutual passion for science brought them increasingly closer, and they began to develop feelings for one another.[2][14] Eventually Pierre proposed marriage, but at first Marie did not accept as she was still planning to go back to her native country.[2] Pierre, however, declared that he was ready to move with her to Poland, even if meant being reduced to teaching French.[2] Meanwhile, for the 1894 summer break, Marie returned to Warsaw, where she visited her family.[14] She was still laboring under the illusion that she would be able to work in her chosen field in Poland, but she was denied a place at Kraków University because she was a woman.[4] A letter from Pierre convinced her to return to Paris to pursue a PhD.[14] At Marie's insistence, Pierre had written up his research onmagnetism and received his own doctorate in March 1895; he was also promoted to professor at the School.[14] A contemporary quip would call Marie, "Pierre's biggest discovery."[4] On 26 July that year, they married in a civil union; neither wanted a religious service.[2][14] Marie's dark blue outfit, worn instead of a bridal grown, would serve her for many years as a lab outfit.[14] They shared two pastimes: long bicycle trips, and journeys abroad, which brought them even closer.[4] In Pierre, Marie had found a new love, a partner, and a scientific collaborator on whom she could depend.[4] New elements Pierre and Marie Curie in the laboratory In 1895, Wilhelm Roentgen discovered the existence of X-rays, though the mechanism behind their production was not yet understood.[16] In 1896, Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium salts emitted rays that resembled X-rays in their penetrating power.[16] He demonstrated that this radiation, unlike phosphorescence, did not depend on an external source of energy, but seemed to arise spontaneously from uranium itself.[2] Marie decided to look into uranium rays as a possible field of research for a thesis.[2] She used an innovative technique to investigate samples. Fifteen years earlier, her husband and his brother had developed a version of the electrometer, a sensitive device for measuring electrical currents.[16] Using Pierre's electrometer, she discovered that uranium rays caused the air around a sample to conduct electricity. [16] Using this technique, her first result was the finding that the activity of the uranium compounds depended only on the quantity of uranium present.[16] She had hypothesized that the radiation was not the outcome of some interaction of molecules, but must come from the atom itself.[16] This hypothesis was an important step in disproving the ancient assumption that atoms were indivisible.[16][17]
  • 8. In 1897, her daughter Irène was born.[12] To support the family, Marie begun teaching at the ÉcoleNormaleSupérieure.[12] The Curies did not have a dedicated laboratory; most of their research was carried in a converted shed next to the School of Physics and Chemistry.[12] The shed, formerly a medical school dissecting room, was poorly ventilated and not even waterproof.[18] As they were unaware of the deleterious effects of radiation exposure attendant on their chronic unprotected work with radioactive substances, Marie and her husband had no idea what price they would pay for the effect of their research upon their health.[4] The School did not sponsor her research, but she would receive some subsidies from metallurgical and mining companies, and various organizations and governments.[12][18][19] Marie's systematic studies had included two uranium minerals, pitchblende and torbernite (also known as chalcolite).[18] Her electrometer showed that pitchblende was four times as active as uranium itself, and chalcolite twice as active. She concluded that, if her earlier results relating the quantity of uranium to its activity were correct, then these two minerals must contain small quantities of some other substance that was far more active than uranium.[18][20] She began a systematic search for additional substances that emit radiation and by 1898, she discovered that the element thorium was also radioactive.[16] Pierre was increasingly intrigued by her work. By mid-1898, he was so invested in it that he decided to drop his work on crystals and to join her.[12][18] The [research] idea [writes Reid] was her own; no one helped her formulate it, and although she took it to her husband for his opinion she clearly established her ownership of it. She later recorded the fact twice in her biography of her husband to ensure there was no chance whatever of any ambiguity. It [is] likely that already at this early stage of her career [she] realized that... many scientists would find it difficult to believe that a woman could be capable of the original work in which she was involved.[21] Pierre, Irène, Marie Curie She was acutely aware of the importance of promptly publishing her discoveries and thus establishing her priority. Had not Becquerel, two years earlier, presented his discovery to the Académie des Sciences the day after he made it, credit for the discovery of radioactivity, and even a Nobel Prize, would have gone to Silvanus Thompson instead. Marie chose the same rapid means of publication. Her paper, giving a brief and
  • 9. simple account of her work, was presented for her to the Académie on 12 April 1898 by her former professor, Gabriel Lippmann.[22] Even so, just as Thompson had been beaten by Becquerel, so Marie was beaten in the race to tell of her discovery that thorium gives off rays in the same way as uranium. Two months earlier, Gerhard Schmidt had published his own finding in Berlin.[23] At that time, no one else in the world of physics had noticed what Marie recorded in a sentence of her paper, describing how much greater were the activities of pitchblende and chalcolite than uranium itself: "The fact is very remarkable, and leads to the belief that these minerals may contain an element which is much more active than uranium." She later would recall how she felt "a passionate desire to verify this hypothesis as rapidly as possible."[23] On 14 April 1898, the Curies optimistically weighed out a 100-gram sample of pitchblende and ground it with a pestle and mortar. They did not realize at the time that what they were searching for was present in such minute quantities that they would eventually have to process tons of the ore.[23] In July 1898, Marie and her husband published a paper together, announcing the existence of an element which they named "polonium", in honour of her native Poland, which would for another twenty years remain partitioned among three empires that claimed it a century before.[2] On 26 December 1898, the Curies announced the existence of a second element, which they named "radium" for its intense radioactivity – a word that they coined.[2][12][16][24] To prove their discoveries beyond any doubt, the Curies had undertaken to isolate polonium and radium into its pure components.[18]Pitchblende is a complex mineral. The chemical separation of its constituents was an arduous task. The discovery of polonium had been relatively easy; chemically it resembles the element bismuth, and polonium was the only bismuth-like substance in the ore. Radium, however, was more elusive. It is closely related, chemically, to barium, and pitchblende contains both elements. By 1898, the Curies had obtained traces of radium, but appreciable quantities, uncontaminated with barium, were still beyond reach.[25] The Curies undertook the arduous task of separating out radium salt by differential crystallization. From a ton of pitchblende, one-tenth of a gram of radium chloride was separated in 1902. In 1910, Marie isolated pure radium metal.[18][26] She never succeeded in isolating polonium, which has a half-life of only 138 days.[18] In 1900, Marie became the first woman faculty member at the ÉcoleNormaleSupérieure, and Pierre joined the Sorbonne's faculty.[27][28] In 1902, she visited Poland on the occasion of her father's death.[12] In June 1903, supervised by Henri Becquerel, Marie was awarded her doctorate from the University of Paris.[12][29] That month, she and Pierre were invited to the Royal Institution in London to give a speech on radioactivity; being female, she was prevented from speaking, and Pierre alone was allowed to.[30]Meanwhile, a new industry began developing based on radium.[27] The Curies did not patent their discovery and benefited little from this increasingly profitable business.[18][27] Nobel Prizes
  • 10. 1903 In December 1903, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Pierre Curie, Marie Curie and Henri Becquerel the Nobel Prize in Physics, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel."[12] At first, the Committee intended to honour only Pierre and Henri, but one of the committee members and an advocate of woman scientists, Swedish mathematician Magnus GoestaMittag-Leffler, alerted Pierre to the situation, and after his complaint, Marie's name was added to the nomination.[31] Marie was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize.[12] Marie and her husband declined to go to Stockholm to receive the prize in person; they were too busy with their work, and Pierre, who disliked public ceremonies, was feeling increasingly ill.[30][31]As Nobel laureates were required to deliver a lecture, the Curies finally undertook the trip in 1905.[31] The award money allowed the Curies to hire their first lab assistant.[31] Following the award of the Nobel Prize, and galvanized by an offer from the University of Geneva, which offered Pierre a position, the Sorbonne gave Pierre a professorship and the chair of physics, although the Curies still did not have a proper laboratory.[12][27][28] Upon Pierre's complaint, the Sorbonne relented and agreed to furbish a new laboratory, but it would not be ready until 1906. [31] In December 1904, Marie gave birth to their second daughter, Ève Curie.[31] She later hired Polish governesses to teach her daughters her native language, and sent or took them on visits to Poland. [32] On 19 April 1906, Pierre was killed in a road accident. Walking across the Rue Dauphine in heavy rain, he was struck by a horse-drawn vehicle and fell under its wheels; his skull was fractured.[33][12] Marie was devastated by the death of her husband.[34] On 13 May 1906, the Sorbonne physics department decided to retain the chair that had been created for Pierre and offer it to Marie.[34] She accepted it, hoping to create a world class laboratory as a tribute to Pierre.[34][35] She became the first woman to become a professor at the Sorbonne.[12]
  • 11. 1911 Nobel Prize Marie's quest to create a new laboratory did not end with Sorbonne. In her later years, Marie headed the Radium Institute (Institut du radium, now Curie Institute, Institut Curie), a radioactivity laboratory created for her by the Pasteur Institute and the University of Paris.[35] This initiative came in 1909 from Pierre Paul Émile Roux, director of the Pasteur Institute, who became disappointed that the Sorbonne was not giving Marie a proper laboratory and suggested that she move to the Institute.[12][36] Only then, with the threat of Marie leaving, Sorbonne relented, and eventually the Curie Pavilion became a joint initiative of the Sorbonne and the Pasteur Institute.[36] In 1910, Marie succeeded in isolating radium; she also defined an international standard for radioactive emissions that was eventually named after her and Pierre: the curie.[35]Nevertheless, in 1911 the French Academy of Sciences did not elect her to be a member by one[12] or two votes[37] Elected instead was ÉdouardBranly, an inventor who had helped Guglielmo Marconi develop the wireless telegraph.[38] A doctoral student of Curie, Marguerite Perey, became the first woman elected to membership in the Academy – over half a century later, in 1962. Despite Curie's fame as a scientist working for France, the public's attitude tended toward xenophobia—the same that had led to the Dreyfus affair–which also fuelled false speculation that Marie was Jewish.[12][37] During the French Academy of Sciences elections, she was vilified by the right wing press, who criticised her for being a foreigner and an atheist.[37] Her daughter later remarked on the public hypocrisy; as the French press often portrayed Marie as an unworthy foreigner when she was nominated for a French honour, but would portray her as a French hero when she received a foreign one, such as her Nobel Prizes.[12]
  • 12. At First Solvay Conference (1911), Curie (seated, 2nd from right) confers with Henri Poincaré. Standing, 4th from right, isRutherford; 2nd from right, Einstein; far right,PaulLangevin In 1911, it was revealed that in 1910–11 Marie had conducted an affair of about a year's duration with physicist Paul Langevin, a former student of Pierre's.[39] He was a married man who was estranged from his wife.[37] This resulted in a press scandal that was exploited by her academic opponents. Marie was five years older than Langevin and was portrayed in the tabloids as a foreign Jewish home-wrecker.[40] Curie was away for a conference in Belgium when the scandal broke, upon her return, she found an angry mob in front of her house, and had to seek a refuge with her daughters at a house of a friend.[37]Later, Curie's granddaughter, Hélène Joliot, married Langevin's grandson, Michel Langevin.[41] Despite that, international recognition for her work grew to new heights, and in 1911, theRoyal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded her a second Nobel Prize, this time for Chemistry.[4] This award was "in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element."[41] Marie was the first person to win or share two Nobel Prizes. She is one of only two people who have been awarded a Nobel Prize in two different fields, the other person being Linus Pauling (for chemistry and for peace). A delegation of celebrated Polish men of learning, headed by novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz, encouraged her to return to Poland and continue her research in her native country.[4] Marie's second Nobel Prize enabled her to talk the French government into supporting the Radium Institute, which was built in 1914 and at which research was conducted in chemistry, physics, and medicine.[36] A month after accepting her 1911 Nobel Prize, she was hospitalised with depression and a kidney ailment.[41] For most of 1912, she avoided public life, and spent some time in England with her friend and fellow physicist, HerthaAyrton.[41] She returned to her lab only in December, after a break of about 14 months.[41]
  • 13. In 1912, the Warsaw Scientific Society offered her the directorship of a new laboratory in Warsaw, but she declined, focusing on the developing Radium Institute, to be completed in August 1914 and a new street named Rue Pierre-Curie.[36][41] She visited Poland in 1913, and was welcomed in Warsaw, but the visit was mostly ignored by the Russian authorities.[36] The Institute's development was interrupted by the coming war, as most researchers were drafted into the French Army, and it fully resumed its activities in 1919.[36][41][42] World War I Curie in a mobile x-ray vehicle During World War I, Marie saw a need for field radiological centres near the front lines to assist battlefield surgeons.[42] After a quick study of radiology, anatomy and automotive mechanics she procured x-ray equipment, vehicles, auxiliary generators and developed mobile radiography units, which came to be popularly known as petites Curies ("Little Curies").[42] She became the Director of the Red Cross Radiology Service and set up France's first military radiology centre, operational by late 1914.[42] Assisted at first by a military doctor and her 17-year old daughter Irene, she directed the installation of twenty mobile radiological vehicles and another 200 radiological units at field hospitals in the first year of the war.[36][42] Later, she began training other women as aides.[43] In 1915, Marie produced hollow needles containing 'radium emanation', a colourless, radioactive gas given off by radium, later identified as radon to be used for sterilizing infected tissue.[43] Marie provided the radium, from her own one-gram supply.[43] It is estimated that over one million wounded soldiers were treated with her x-ray units.[8][36] Busy with this work, she carried out next to no scientific research during that period. [36] In spite of all her efforts, Curie never received any formal recognition from the French government for her contribution during wartime.[42] Also, promptly after the war started, she attempted to donate her gold Nobel Prize medals to the war effort but the French National Bank refused to accept them.[43] She did buy war bonds, using her Nobel Prize money.[43] She was also active member in committees of Polonia in France dedicated to the Polish cause.[44] After the war, she summarized her war time experiences in a bookRadiology in War (1919).[43]
  • 14. 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).[36] 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.[36][45] 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.[46][47] 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.[47][48] In 1922 she became a fellow of the French Academy of Medicine.[36] She also travelled to other countries, appearing publicly and giving lectures in Belgium, Brazil, Spain, and Czechoslovakia.[49] 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.[50] 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.[50][51] In August 1922, Marie Curie became a member of the newly created International Commission for Intellectual Cooperation of theLeague of Nations.[52] In 1923, she wrote a biography of Pierre, entitled Pierre Curie.[53] In 1925, she visited Poland, to participate in the ceremony that laid foundations for the Radium Institute in Warsaw.[36] 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.[36][47] These distractions from her scientific labours and the attendant publicity caused her much discomfort but provided resources needed for her work.[47] Death
  • 15. 1935 statue, facing the Radium Institute, Warsaw Marie visited Poland for the last time in early 1934.[4][54] A few months later, on 4 July 1934, Marie died at the Sancellemoz Sanatorium in Passy, in Haute-Savoie, from aplastic anemia believed to have been contracted from her long-term exposure to radiation.[36][55] The damaging effects of ionising radiation were not known at the time of her work, which had been carried out without the safety measures later developed.[54] She had carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket [56] and stored them in her desk drawer, remarking on the faint light that the substances gave off in the dark.[57] Marie was also exposed to X-rays from unshielded equipment while serving as a radiologist in field hospitals during the war. [43] She was interred at the cemetery in Sceaux, alongside her husband Pierre.[36] Sixty years later, in 1995, in honour of their achievements, the remains of both were transferred to the Panthéon, Paris. She became the first—and so far the only—woman to be honoured with interment in the Panthéon on her own merits.[52] Because of their levels of radioactivity, her papers from the 1890s are considered too dangerous to handle.[58] Even her cookbook is highly radioactive.[58] Her papers are kept in lead-lined boxes, and those who wish to consult them must wear protective clothing.[58] In her last year she worked on a book, Radioactivity, which was published posthumously in 1935.[54] Legacy Statue, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin, Poland The physical and societal aspects of the Curies' work contributed substantially to shaping the world of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.[59] Cornell University professor L. Pearce Williamsobserves: The result of the Curies' work was epoch-making. Radium's radioactivity was so great that it could not be ignored. It seemed to contradict the principle of the conservation of energy and therefore forced a
  • 16. reconsideration of the foundations of physics. On the experimental level the discovery of radium provided men like Ernest Rutherford with sources of radioactivity with which they could probe the structure of the atom. As a result of Rutherford's experiments with alpha radiation, the nuclear atom was first postulated. In medicine, the radioactivity of radium appeared to offer a means by which cancer could be successfully attacked. [26] If Marie Curie's work helped overturn established ideas in physics and chemistry, it has had an equally profound effect in the societal sphere. To attain her scientific achievements, she had to overcome barriers that were placed in her way because she was a woman, in both her native and her adoptive country. This aspect of her life and career is highlighted in Françoise Giroud's Marie Curie: A Life, which emphasizes Marie's role as a feminist precursor.[4] She was known for her honesty and moderate life style.[12][59] Having received a small scholarship in 1893, she returned it in 1897 as soon as she began earning her keep.[2][19] She gave much of her first Nobel Prize money to friends, family, students and research associates.[4] In an unusual decision, Marie intentionally refrained from patenting the radium-isolation process, so that the scientific community could do research unhindered. [60] She insisted that monetary gifts and awards were given to the scientific institutions she was affiliated with rather than to herself.[59] She and her husband often refused awards and medals.[12] Albert Einstein reportedly remarked that she was probably the only person not corrupted by fame.[4] Awards, honours and tributes Tomb of Pierre and Marie Curie,Panthéon, Paris As one of the most famous female scientists to date, Marie Curie has become an icon in the scientific world and has received tributes from across the globe, even in the realm of pop culture.[61]In a 2009 poll carried out by New Scientist, Marie Curie was voted the "most inspirational woman in science". Curie received 25.1 per cent of all votes cast, nearly twice as many as second-placeRosalind Franklin (14.2 per cent).[62][63]
  • 17. Poland and France declared 2011 the Year of Marie Curie, and the United Nations declared that this would be the International Year of Chemistry.[64] An artistic installation celebrating "Madame Curie" filled the Jacobs Gallery at San Diego's Museum of Contemporary Art.[65] On 7 November, Googlecelebrated her birthday with a special Google Doodle.[66] On 10 December, the New York Academy of Sciences celebrated the centenary of Marie Curie's second Nobel prize in the presence ofPrincess Madeleine of Sweden.[67] Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel prize, the first person to win two Nobel Prizes, the only woman to win in two fields, and the only person to win in multiple sciences.[68] Awards that she received include: Nobel Prize in Physics (1903)[12] Davy Medal (1903, with Pierre)[49][69] Matteucci Medal (1904; with Pierre)[69] Elliott Cresson Medal (1909)[70] Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911)[4] Soviet postage stamp (1987) Franklin Medal of the American Philosophical Society (1921)[71] In 1995, she became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon, Paris.[52] The curie (symbol Ci), a unit of radioactivity, is named in honour of her and Pierre (although the commission which agreed on the name never clearly stated whether the standard was named after Pierre, Marie or both of them).[72] The element with atomic number 96 was named curium.[73] Three radioactive minerals are also named after the Curies: curite, sklodowskite, and cuprosklodowskite.[74] She received numerous honorary degrees from universities across the world.[47] The Marie Curie Actions fellowship program of the European Union for young scientists wishing to work in a foreign country is named after her. [75] In Poland, she had received honorary doctorates from the Lwów Polytechnic(1912), Poznań University (1922), Kraków's Jagiellonian University (1924), and the Warsaw Polytechnic (1926).[64] Numerous locations around the world are named after her.[74] In 2007, a metro station in Paris was renamed to honour both of the Curies.[74] Polish nuclear research reactor Maria is named after her.[76] The 7000
  • 18. Curie asteroid is also named after her.[74] A KLMMcDonnell Douglas MD-11 (registration PH-KCC) is named in her honour.[77] 2011 birthplace mural, oncentenary of second Nobel Prize Several institutions bear her name, starting with the two Curie institutes - the Maria Skłodowska–Curie Institute of Oncology, in Warsaw and the Institut Curie in Paris. She is the patron of the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, in Lublin, founded in 1944, and Pierre and Marie Curie University, in Paris, established in 1971. In Britain Marie Curie Cancer Care was set up in 1948 to care for the terminally ill. There are two museums dedicated to Marie Curie: in 1967, a museum devoted to Curie was established in Warsaw's "New Town", at her birthplace on ulicaFreta (Freta Street);[4] her laboratory is preserved as the Musée Curie in Paris, open since 1992.[78] Several works of art bear her likeness, or are dedicated to her. MichalinaMościcka, wife of Polish President IgnacyMościcki, unveiled a 1935 statue of Marie Curie before Warsaw's Radium Institute.[4]During the 1944 Second World War Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi German occupation, the monument was damaged by gunfire; after the war it was decided to leave the bullet marks on the statue and its pedestal. [4] In 1955 Jozef Mazur created a stained glass panel of her, the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Medallion, featured in the University at Buffalo Polish Room.[79] Books dedicated to her include Madame Curie (1938), written by her daughter, Ève.[64] In 1987Françoise Giroud wrote a biography, Marie Curie: A Life.[64] In 2005, Barbara Goldsmith wroteObsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie.[64] In 2011, another book appeared, Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, a Tale of Love and Fallout , by Lauren Redniss.[80] Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon starred in the 1943 U.S. Oscar-nominated film, Madame Curie, based on her life.[53] More recently, in 1997, a French film about Pierre and Marie Curie was released, Les Palmes de M. Schutz. It was adapted from a play of the same name. In the film, Marie Curie was played by Isabelle Huppert.[81]
  • 19. Curie's likeness also has appeared on bills, stamps and coins around the world.[74] She was featured on the Polish late-1980s 20,000-złoty banknote[82] as well as on the last French 500-franc note, before the franc was replaced by the euro.[83] On the 2011 centenary of Marie Curie's second Nobel Prize (1911), an allegorical mural was painted on the façade of her Warsaw birthplace. It depicts an infant Maria Skłodowska holding a test tube from which emanate the elements that she would discover as an adult: polonium and radium. Notes a. ^ Poland had been partitioned in the 18th century among Russia, Prussia and Austria, and it was Marie Skłodowska–Curie's hope that naming the element after her native country would bring world attention to its lack of independence. Polonium may have been the first chemical element named to highlight a political question.[84] b. ^ Sources tend to vary with regards to the field of her second degree. TadeuszEstreicher, in his 1938 entry in the Polish Biographical Dictionary, writes that while many sources state she earned a degree in mathematics, this is incorrect, and her second degree was in chemistry.[2] The Nobel Prize in Physics 1903 Henri Becquerel, Pierre Curie, Marie Curie The Nobel Prize in Physics 1903 Henri Becquerel Pierre Curie Marie Curie Biography
  • 20. Marie Curie, née Maria Sklodowska, was born in Warsaw on November 7, 1867, the daughter of a secondary-school teacher. She received a general education in local schools and some scientific training from her father. She became involved in a students' revolutionary organization and found it prudent to leave Warsaw, then in the part of Poland dominated by Russia, for Cracow, which at that time was under Austrian rule. In 1891, she went to Paris to continue her studies at the Sorbonne where she obtained Licenciateships in Physics and the Mathematical Sciences. She met Pierre Curie, Professor in the School of Physics in 1894 and in the following year they were married. She succeeded her husband as Head of the Physics Laboratory at the Sorbonne, gained her Doctor of Science degree in 1903, and following the tragic death of Pierre Curie in 1906, she took his place as Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences, the first time a woman had held this position. She was also appointed Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris, founded in 1914. Her early researches, together with her husband, were often performed under difficult conditions, laboratory arrangements were poor and both had to undertake much teaching to earn a livelihood. The discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896 inspired the Curies in their brilliant researches and analyses which led to the isolation of polonium, named after the country of Marie's birth, and radium. Mme. Curie developed methods for the separation of radium from radioactive residues in sufficient quantities to allow for its characterization and the careful study of its properties, therapeutic properties in particular. Mme. Curie throughout her life actively promoted the use of radium to alleviate suffering and during World War I, assisted by her daughter, Irene, she personally devoted herself to this remedial work. She retained her enthusiasm for science throughout her life and did much to establish a radioactivity laboratory in her native city - in 1929 President Hoover of the United States presented her with a gift of $ 50,000, donated by American friends of science, to purchase radium for use in the laboratory in Warsaw. Mme. Curie, quiet, dignified and unassuming, was held in high esteem and admiration by scientists throughout the world. She was a member of the Conseil du Physique Solvay from 1911 until her death and since 1922 she had been a member of the Committee of Intellectual Co-operation of the League of Nations. Her work is recorded in numerous papers in scientific journals and she is the author of Recherchessur les Substances Radioactives (1904),L'Isotopie et les Éléments Isotopes and the classic Traité' de Radioactivité (1910). The importance of Mme. Curie's work is reflected in the numerous awards bestowed on her. She received many honorary science, medicine and law degrees and honorary memberships of learned societies throughout the world.
  • 21. Together with her husband, she was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903, for their study into the spontaneous radiation discovered by Becquerel, who was awarded the other half of the Prize. In 1911 she received a secondNobel Prize, this time in Chemistry, in recognition of her work in radioactivity. She also received, jointly with her husband, the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in 1903 and, in 1921, President Harding of the United States, on behalf of the women of America, presented her with one gram of radium in recognition of her service to science. For further details, cf. Biography of Pierre Curie. Mme. Curie died in Savoy, France, after a short illness, on July 4, 1934. From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967 This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book seriesLes Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above. ADVERTISEMENT more sharing servicesshare Marie Curie biography profile photos
  • 22. 1 photo QUICK FACTS NAME: Marie Curie OCCUPATION: Physicist BIRTH DATE: November 07, 1867 DEATH DATE: July 04, 1934 EDUCATION: Sorbonne more about Marie BEST KNOWN FOR Marie Curie was a Polish-born French physicist famous for her work on radioactivity and twice a winner of the Nobel Prize. QUIZ Think you know about Biography? Answer questions and see how you rank against other players. PLAY NOW Home
  • 23. • People • Marie Curie Print Cite This Synopsis Born Maria Sklodowska on November 7, 1867, in Warsaw, Poland, Marie Curie became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to win the award in two different fields (physics and chemistry). Curie's efforts, with her husband, Pierre Curie, led to the discovery of polonium and radium and, after Pierre's death, the development of X-rays. She died on July 4, 1934. CONTENTS Synopsis Early Life Discoveries Science Celebrity Final Days and Legacy QUOTES "I believe that Science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician; he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales." – Marie Curie Early Life Maria Sklodowska, better known as Marie Curie, was born in Warsaw in modern-day Poland on November 7, 1867. Her parents were borth teachers, and she was the youngest of five children. As a child Curie took after her father, Ladislas, a math and physics instructor. She had a bright and curious mind and excelled at school. But tragedy struck early, and when she was only 11, Curie lost her mother, Bronsitwa, to tuberculosis. A top student in her secondary school, Curie could not attend the men-only University of Warsaw. She instead continued her education in Warsaw's "floating university," a set of underground, informal classes held in secret. Both Curie and her sister Bronya dreamed of going abroad to earn an official degree, but they lacked the financial resources to pay for more schooling. Undeterred, Curie worked out a deal with her sister. She would work to support Bronya while she was in school and Bronya would return the favor after she completed her studies. For roughly five years, Curie worked as a tutor and a governess. She used her spare time to study, reading about physics, chemistry and math. In 1891, Curie finally made her way to Paris where she enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris. She threw herself into her studies, but this dedication had a personal cost. With little money, Curie survived on buttered bread and tea, and her health sometimes suffered because of her poor diet.
  • 24. Curie completed her master's degree in physics in 1893 and earned another degree in mathematics the following year. Around this time, she received a commission to do a study on different types of steel and their magnetic properties. Curie needed a lab to work in, and a colleague introduced her to French physicist Pierre Curie. A romance developed between the brilliant pair, and they became a scientific dynamic duo. Discoveries Marie and Pierre Curie were dedicated scientists and completely devoted to one another. At first, they worked on separate projects. She was fascinated with the work of Henri Becquerel, a French physicist who discovered that uranium casts off rays, weaker rays than the X-rays found by Wilhelm Roentgen. Curie took Becquerel's work a few steps further, conducting her own experiments on uranium rays. She discovered that the rays remained constant, no matter the condition or form of the uranium. The rays, she theorized, came from the element's atomic structure. This revolutionary idea created the field of atomic physics and Curie herself coined the word radioactivity to describe the phenomena. Marie and Pierre had a daughter, Irene, in 1897, but their work didn't slow down. Pierre put aside his own work to help Marie with her exploration of radioactivity. Working with the mineral pitchblende, the pair discovered a new radioactive element in 1898. They named the element polonium, after Marie's native country of Poland. They also detected the presence of another radioactive material in the pitchblende, and called that radium. In 1902, the Curies announced that they had produced a decigram of pure radium, demonstrating its existence as a unique chemical element. CONTENTS Synopsis Early Life Discoveries Science Celebrity Final Days and Legacy Science Celebrity Marie Curie made history in 1903 when she became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in physics. She won the prestigious honor along with her husband andHenri Becquerel, for their work on radioactivity. With their Nobel Prize win, the Curies developed an international reputation for their scientific efforts, and they used their prize money to continue their research. They welcomed a second child, daughter Eve, the following year. In 1906, Marie suffered a tremendous loss. Her husband Pierre was killed in Paris after he accidentally stepped in front of a horse-drawn wagon. Despite her tremendous grief, she took over his teaching post at the Sorbonne, becoming the institution's first female professor. Curie received another great honor in 1911, winning her second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry. She was selected for her discovery of radium and polonium, and became the first scientist to win two Nobel Prizes. While she received the prize alone, she shared the honor jointly with her late husband in her acceptance lecture.
  • 25. Around this time, Curie joined with other famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Max Planck, to attend the first Solvay Congress in Physics. They gathered to discuss the many groundbreaking discoveries in their field. Curie experienced the downside of fame in 1911, when her relationship with her husband's former student, Paul Langevin, became public. Curie was derided in the press for breaking up Langevin's marriage. The press' negativity towards Curie stemmed at least in part from rising xenophobia in France. When World War I broke out in 1914, Curie devoted her time and resources to helping the cause. She championed the use of portable X-ray machines in the field, and these medical vehicles earned the nickname "Little Curies." After the war, Curie used her celebrity to advance her research. She traveled to the United States twice— in 1921 and in 1929— to raise funds to buy radium and to establish a radium research institute in Warsaw. Final Days and Legacy All of her years of working with radioactive materials took a toll on Curie's health. She was known to carry test tubes of radium around in the pocket of her lab coat. In 1934, Curie went to the Sancellemoz Sanatorium in Passy, France, to try to rest and regain her strength. She died there on July 4, 1934, of aplastic anemia, which can be caused by prolonged exposure to radiation. Marie Curie made many breakthroughs in her lifetime. She is the most famous female scientist of all time, and has received numerous posthumous honors. In 1995, her and her husband's remains were interred in the Panthéon in Paris, the final resting place of many France's greatest minds. Curie became the first and only woman to be laid to rest there. Curie also passed down her love of science to the next generation. Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie followed in her mother's footsteps, CONTENTS Synopsis Early Life Discoveries Science Celebrity Final Days and Legacy winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935. Joliot-Curie shared the honor with her husband Frédéric Joliot for their work on their synthesis of new radioactive elements. Today several educational and research institutions and medical centers bear the Curie name, including the Institute Curie and the Pierre and Marie Curie University, both in Paris.
  • 26. Nation and Family Nation and Family PRISONER IN CHAINS. That is what Poland seemed like to Maria Sklodowska. Manya, as she was affectionately called, learned to be a Polish patriot from her parents, Bronislawa and VladislavSklodowski. At the time of Maria's birth in Warsaw on November 7, 1867, Poland had not been an independent country for most of a century. It had been divided up among Austria, Prussia, and czarist Russia. Warsaw was in the part of Poland controlled by the czar, who hoped Czar Alexander II preferred to to stamp out Polish nationalism by keeping the people ignorant of wear a military uniform. When their culture and language. But Polish patriots were determined to the Czar was assassinated by regain control of their nation. As educators, Maria's parents did their revolutionary students in 1881, Manya and her best friend Kazia best to overcome restrictions placed on them by their Russian celebrated by dancing around supervisors. the desks in their classroom. READ Curie's words MAP of Russian Poland The birth of Manya, her fifth child, led her mother to resign her position as head of a school, where the family had resided until then. They moved to a boys' high school, where Vladislav taught math and physics and earned a good salary. Eventually, however, the Russian supervisor in charge of the school fired him for his pro- Polish sentiments. “Constantly held in suspicion and spied upon, the children knew that a single conversation in Polish, or an imprudent word, might seriously harm, not The five Sklodowski children. From left to only themselves, but also their families.” right: Zosia died of typhus; Hela became an --Marie Curie educator; Maria, twice a Nobel laureate; and Józef and Bronya, physicians. “We all had much facility for intellectual work,” said Marie. (photo ACJC)
  • 27. S HER FATHER WAS FORCED into a series of progressively lower academic posts, the family's economic situation deteriorated. To help make ends meet they had to take in student boarders. Maria was only eight when her oldest sister caught typhus from a boarder and died. That death was followed less than three years later by the death of Madame Sklodowska, who lost a five-year battle with tuberculosis at the age of 42. The surviving family members--Professor Sklodowski; his son Joseph; and his daughters Bronya, Hela, and Maria--drew closer to one another. Although Sklodowski would never forgive himself for losing the family savings in a bad investment, the children honored him for nurturing them emotionally and intellectually. On Saturday nights he read classics of literature to Maria and her siblings. He also exposed them to the scientific apparatus he had once used Marie was ten years old when her in teaching physics but now kept at home, since the Russian mother died in May 1878. As an adult authorities had eliminated laboratory instruction from the Polish Marie remembered it as “the first curriculum. great sorrow of my life,” which “threw me into a profound depression.” (photo ACJC) “I easily learned mathematics and physics, as far as these sciences were taken in consideration in the school. I found in this ready help from my father, who loved science....Unhappily, he had no laboratory and could not perform experiments.” Manya was the star pupil in her class. Her personal losses did not impede her academic success, but the pleasure of being awarded a gold medal at her high school graduation in 1883 was blunted because it meant shaking the hand of the grandmaster of education in Russian Poland. After graduating at 15, Manya suffered a collapse that doctors thought was due to fatigue or "nervous" problems -- today it might be diagnosed as depression. At her father's urging Manya spent a year with cousins in the country. A merry round of dances and other festivities, it would be the only carefree year of her life. Manya's secondary school diploma. She later recalled “always having held first rank in my class.” (photo ACJC)
  • 28. The Floating University ARIA HOPED, LIKE HER SIBLINGS, to get an advanced degree. Although Joseph was able to enroll in the medical school at the University of Warsaw, women were not welcome there. Maria and Bronya joined other friends in attending the Floating University. This illegal night school got its name from the fact that its classes met in changing Cossacks parading in Warsaw after Russia crushed a nationalist rising in 1863. locations, the better to evade the watchful eyes of the czarist authorities. Its students' lofty goal went beyond mere self- improvement. They hoped their grass-roots “It was one of those groups of Polish youths who educational movement would raise the believed that the hope of their country lay in a likelihood of eventual Polish liberation. great effort to develop the intellectual and moral strength of the nation....we agreed among This fly-by-night education could not match ourselves to give evening courses, each one the curriculum at any of the major teaching what he knew best.”--Marie Curie European universities that admitted women. Although Maria understood this fact, at the Floating University she did get a taste of progressive thought and an introduction to new developments in the sciences. Years of Study ANYA BECAME MARIE when she enrolled at the Sorbonne in fall 1891. At first she lived in the home of her sister. Bronya had married another Polish patriot, CasimirDluski, whom she had met in medical school. The Dluskis' home, however, was an hour's commute by horse-drawn bus from the university, and Marie resented the lost time, not to mention the money wasted on carfare. Paris in 1889 (two years before Marie Sklodowska's arrival), with the Eiffel Tower newly erected for a world's fair--a celebration of modern technology [another view]
  • 29. In addition, remaining with the Dluskis meant participating regularly in the active Polish exile community in Paris. Marie's father warned her that doing so might jeopardize her career prospects at home or even the lives of relatives there. Thus after a few months Marie moved to the Latin Quarter, the artists' and students' neighborhood close to the university. Her living arrangements were basic. Stories from these years tell how she kept herself warm during the winter months by wearing every piece of clothing she owned, and how she fainted from hunger because she was too absorbed in study to eat. But even if Bronya had to come to her aid from time to time, living alone enabled Marie to focus seriously on her studies. “...my situation was not exceptional; it was the familiar experience of many of the Polish students whom I knew....” Paris rooftops, painting by GustaveCaillebotte [More] READ Curie's words The diligence paid off. Marie finished first in her master's degree physics course in the summer of 1893 and second in math the following year. Lack of money had stood in the way of her undertaking the math degree, but senior French scientists recognized her abilities and pulled some strings. She was awarded a scholarship earmarked for an outstanding Polish student. Before completing the math degree she was also commissioned by the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry to do a study, relating magnetic properties of different steels to their chemical composition. She needed to find a lab where she could do the work. Love and Marriage HE SEARCH FOR LAB SPACE led to a fateful introduction. In the spring of 1894, Marie Sklodowska mentioned her need for a lab to a Polish physicist of her Another Polish student in Paris drew this portrait of Marie in 1892, after acquaintance. It occurred to him that his colleague Pierre she had been enrolled at the Curie might be able to assist her. Curie, who had done pioneering Sorbonne for some months. research on magnetism, was laboratory chief at the Municipal Although at first she spent some School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry in Paris. Unaware of
  • 30. time with other Polish students to how inadequate Pierre's own lab facilities were, the professor help overcome homesickness, she suggested that perhaps Pierre could find room there for Marie to soon had to devote all her time to work. The meeting between Curie and Sklodowska would change her studies. (Photo ACJC) not only their individual lives but also the course of science. “I noticed the grave and gentle expression of his face, as well as a certain abandon in his attitude, suggesting the dreamer absorbed in his reflections.” Marie would eventually find rudimentary lab space at the Municipal School. Meanwhile her relationship with Curie was growing from mutual respect to love. Her senior by about a decade, Pierre had all but given up on love after the death of a close woman companion some 15 years earlier. The women he had met since had shown no interest in science, his life's passion. In Marie, however, he found an equal with a comparable devotion to science. OLAND STILL BECKONED HER BACK.After her success in her math exam in the summer of 1894, Marie returned there for a vacation, uncertain whether she would return to France. Pierre's heartfelt letters helped convince her to pursue her doctorate in Paris. Marie hesitated before agreeing to marry Pierre Curie, because such a decision “meant abandoning my country and my family.” (Photo ACJC) READ Curie's words “Our work drew us closer and closer, until we were both convinced that neither of us could find a better life companion.” Marie was determined not only to get her own doctorate but to see to it that Pierre received one as well. Although Pierre had done important scientific research in more than one field over the past 15 years, he had never completed a doctorate (in France the process consumed even more time than it did in the U.S. or U.K.). Marie insisted now that he write up his research on magnetism. In March 1895 he was awarded the degree. At the Municipal School Pierre was promoted to a professorship. The honor and the higher salary were offset by increased Gabriel Lippmann, Marie Curie's thesis advisor, did early studies in a teaching duties without any improvement in lab space. field in which Pierre Curie and his brother were pioneers: electrical effects in crystals. A pillar of the
  • 31. French tradition of patronage, Lippmann let Marie use his laboratory for her thesis work and helped her find other sources of support. In a simple civil ceremony in July 1895, they became husband and wife. Neither wanted a religious service. Marie had lost her faith when her devout Roman Catholic mother died young, and Pierre was the son of non-practicing Protestants. Nor did they exchange rings. Instead of a bridal gown Marie wore a dark blue outfit, which for years after was a serviceable lab garment. The Curies' honeymoon trip was a tour of France on bicycles purchased with a wedding gift. (Photo ACJC) Another view Next Work Wife and Moth Also: Pierre Curie
  • 32. X-rays and Uranium Rays ARIE CURIE'S CHOICE of a thesis topic was influenced by two recent discoveries by other scientists. In December 1895, about six months after the Curies married, German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen discovered a kind of ray that could travel through solid wood or flesh and yield photographs of living people's bones. Roentgen dubbed these mysterious rays X-rays, with X standing for unknown. In recognition of his discovery, Roentgen in 1901 became the first Nobel laureate in physics. One of Roentgen's first X-ray photographs -- a colleague's hand (note the wedding ring). The revelation of X-rays fascinated the public and deeply puzzled scientists In early 1896, only a few of months after Roentgen's discovery, French physicist Henri Becquerel reported to the French Academy of Sciences that uranium compounds, even if they were kept in the dark, emitted rays that would fog a photographic plate. He had come upon this discovery accidentally. Despite Becquerel's intriguing finding, the scientific community continued to focus its attention on Roentgen's X- rays, neglecting the much weaker Becquerel rays or uranium rays. HE IGNORED URANIUM RAYS appealed to Marie Curie. Since she would not have a long bibliography of published papers to read, she could begin experimental work on Henri Becquerel, discoverer of them immediately. The director of the Paris Municipal School of uranium radiation. Although he tried Industrial Physics and Chemistry, where Pierre was professor of to help the Curies solve their financial physics, permitted her to use a crowded, damp storeroom there problems and advance their careers, as a lab. the relationship eventually soured--as sometimes happens with scientists touchy about sharing credit for discoveries.
  • 33. A clever technique was her key to success. About 15 years earlier, Pierre and his older brother, Jacques, had invented a new kind of electrometer, a device for measuring extremely low electrical currents. Marie now put the Curie electrometer to use in measuring the faint currents that can pass through air that has been bombarded with uranium rays. The moist air in the storeroom tended to dissipate the electric charge, but she managed to make reproducible measurements. “Instead of making these bodies act upon photographic plates, I preferred to determine the intensity of their radiation by measuring the conductivity of the air exposed to the action of the rays.” This device for precise electrical measurement, invented by Pierre Curie and his brother Jacques, was essential for Marie's work. (Photo ACJC) You can exit this site to anexhibit on the discovery of the electron With numerous experiments Marie confirmed Becquerel's observations that the electrical effects of uranium rays are constant, regardless of whether the uranium was solid or pulverized, pure or in a compound, wet or dry, or whether exposed to light or heat. Likewise, her study of the rays emitted by different uranium compounds validated Becquerel's conclusion that the minerals with a higher proportion of uranium emitted the most intense rays. She went beyond Becquerel's work, however, in forming a crucial hypothesis: the emission of rays by uranium compounds could be an atomic property of the element uranium--something built into the very structure of its atoms. ARIE'S SIMPLE HYPOTHESIS would prove revolutionary. It would ultimately contribute to a fundamental shift in scientific understanding. At the time scientists regarded the atom--a word meaning undivided or indivisible -- as the most elementary particle. A hint that this ancient idea was false came from the discovery of the electron by other scientists around this same time. But nobody grasped the complex inner structure or the immense energy stored in atoms. Marie and Pierre Curie themselves were not convinced that radioactive energy came from within atoms--maybe, for example, the earth was bathed in cosmic rays, whose energy certain atoms somehow caught and radiated? Marie's real achievement was to cut through the complicated and obscure
  • 34. observations with a crystal-clear analysis of the set of conclusions that, however unexpected, were logically possible. Marie tested all the known elements in order to determine if other elements or minerals would make air conduct electricity better, or if uranium alone could do this. In this task she was assisted by a number of chemists who donated a variety of mineral samples, including some containing very rare elements. In April 1898 her research revealed that thorium compounds, like those of uranium, emit Becquerel rays. Again the emission appeared to be an atomic property. To describe the behavior of uranium and thorium she invented the word “radioactivity” --based on the Latin word for ray. Next: The Discovery of Polonium and Radium Also: Radioactivity: The Unstable Nucleus fRANCE WAS LESS FORTHCOMING than other countries when it came to honoring the Curies' work. In early June 1903 both Curies were invited to London as guests of the prestigious Royal Institution. Since custom ruled out women lecturers, Pierre alone described their work in his “Friday Evening Discourse.” He was careful, however, to describe Marie's crucial role in their collaboration. The audience included representatives of England's social elite and such major scientists as Lord Kelvin. Kelvin showed his respect by sitting next to Marie at the lecture and by hosting a luncheon in Pierre's honor the following day. Britain's Lord Kelvin, whose contributions in several fields helped shape the scientific thought of his era, openly displayed his admiration for Pierre's scientific achievements.
  • 35. But all was not well that weekend. Pierre was in such bad health that he had experienced difficulty in dressing himself before the talk. His fingers were so covered with sores that he spilled some radium in the hall while demonstrating its properties. Ill health, however, kept neither Curie from noting the value of the jewels worn by the members of English high society they met in the course of the weekend. They amused themselves by estimating the number of fine laboratories they could set up with the proceeds from selling those jewels. ISITORS FROM ABROAD also helped honor Marie on the occasion of her formal thesis defense in June 1903. Her sister Bronya made the difficult trip from Poland to celebrate Marie's academic triumph. The attention that English scientists paid to the Curies' work helped make them Bronya had insisted that the first woman to receive a household names in that country, as in this famous caricature, “Radium,” from the doctorate in France should acknowledge the special event by popular British periodicalVanity Fair. wearing a new dress. Characteristically, Marie chose a black dress. Like the navy wedding outfit she had chosen eight years earlier, the new dress could be worn in the lab without fear of stains. Another foreign admirer was a last-minute guest at a dinner to celebrate Marie's achievement. New Zealand-born scientist Ernest Rutherford, who was also actively engaged in research in the new science of radioactivity, was visiting Paris. He had stopped by the Municipal School shed where Marie isolated radium, and at dinner that night he asked Marie how they managed to work in such a place. “You know,” he said, “it must be dreadful not to have a laboratory to play around in.” AMILY LOSSES UNDERCUT some of the pleasure Marie could take in her own achievements. In August 1903 she experienced a miscarriage. Some time later Bronya's second child died of tubercular meningitis. And against the backdrop of these specific losses was the fact that Pierre's health continued to deteriorate. Sometimes unbearable pain kept him awake all night, lying weakly in bed, moaning. Title page of the published version of Marie Curie's doctoral thesis, “Research on Radioactive Substances.” The examiners exclaimed that Curie's doctoral research contributed more to scientific knowledge than any previous thesis project.
  • 36. “I had grown so accustomed to the idea of the child that I am absolutely desperate and cannot be consoled.” --letter from Marie Curie to Bronya, August 25, 1903 Marie Curie in 1903, the year her thesis was published. (Photo ACJC) Next: The Nobel Prize and its Aftermath A Fatal Accident IFE WAS SEEMING A BIT ROSIER to Pierre Curie in the spring of 1906. During the family's recent Easter holiday in the country, he had enjoyed watching the efforts of 8-year-old Irène to net butterflies and of 14-month-old Eve to keep her footing on the uneven turf. More crucially, perhaps, Pierre had become involved in his work again. Pierre Curie's agenda for Thursday, April 19, 1906, was that of a man fully engaged in both professional and social life. After a luncheon of the Association of Professors of the Science Faculties, he was scheduled to go over proofs with his publisher and to visit a nearby library. He was looking forward to entertaining a number of fellow scientists at the Curie home that evening.
  • 37. IERRE CURIE WAS NOT FATED to complete that day's activities. After working in the laboratory all morning, he braved the heavy rain, umbrella in hand, and traveled across Paris to his luncheon meeting. There he spoke forcefully on a number of issues that concerned him, including widening career options for junior faculty and drafting legal codes to help prevent laboratory accidents. After the meeting was over he headed out toward his publisher in the rain, only to find that the doors were locked because of a strike. Hurrying to cross the street, he was run over by a horse-drawn wagon with a load of When Pierre's father learned that his son had military uniforms, weighing some six tons. He was killed been killed crossing a Paris street in traffic on a rainy day, he said, “What was he dreaming instantly. of this time?” (Painting by Childe Hassam, 1893) “He wasn't careful enough when he was walking in the street, or when he rode his bicycle. He was thinking of other things.” --Pierre Clerc, the Sorbonne lab assistant who identified Curie's body ARIE DID NOT LEARN the news that would transform her life until that evening. In shock, she began to attend to the necessary arrangements. She sent Irène next door to spend a few days with the neighbors, telegrammed the news to her family in Poland, and arranged to have the body brought to the house. Only after Pierre's older brother, Jacques, arrived the next day from Montpellier did she break down briefly. The news of Pierre Curie's death was carried in newspapers around the world, and Marie was inundated by letters and telegrams. The day after the funeral was notable for two reasons. Encouraged by Jacques, Marie returned to her work. Also, (above) Marie on the balcony of the Dluski Jacques informed Marie that the French government apartment on rue d'Allemagne, Paris. In the proposed to support her and the children with a state diary Marie began 11 days after Pierre's pension. Marie was adamant in her refusal, insisting that death, she described putting a copy of this picture in Pierre's coffin: “it was the picture she was perfectly capable of supporting herself and the of the one you chose as your children. companion....” (Photo ACJC) “Crushed by the blow, I did not feel able to face the READ Curie's words future. I could not forget, however, what my husband used to say, that even deprived of him, I ought to continue my work.” If Marie was firm in rejecting the government's offer of
  • 38. support, she was less certain how to respond to an unexpected offer from the Sorbonne. On May 13, 1906, the university invited her to take up Pierre's academic post. By doing so, she hoped, she could one day establish, as a tribute to Pierre's memory, a state-of-the-art lab such as he had never had. It was not enough to be a teacher and researcher. She would have to learn how to create a scientific institution. Next: Life Goes On Curie family gravestone. Pierre was buried with his mother in the Curie family plot in Sceaux, on the outskirts of Paris, where eventually his father and Marie joined them. Many years later Pierre and Marie were reinterred in the Panthéon, the national sepulcher for the most eminent French citizens. (Photo ACJC) © 2000 - 2013 American Institute of Physics
  • 39. The Academy Debacle SCANDAL-DRIVEN PRESS is not a recent phenomenon. Pierre and Marie had been hounded by intrusive reporters as early as 1902, when news began to circulate about the medical uses of radium. After they won the Nobel Prize, reporters redoubled their attentions. But until late 1910 most press coverage of Marie Curie focused on the heroic labors of the blonde, foreign-born mother, wife, and then widow. Some of the press changed its tune, however, in November 1910, when Curie offered herself as a candidate for the single vacant seat for a physicist in the French Academy of Sciences. Her main rival for the seat was 66-year-old EdouardBranly, The right-wing French press, including the whose scientific reputation was based on his contribution daily Excelsior, attacked Curie's candidacy to wireless telegraphy. When Italian Gugliemo Marconi was for the French Academy with scurrilous and awarded the 1909 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work in racist claims based on supposedly scientific that field, many French patriots felt stung by Branly's analyses of her handwriting and facial exclusion. characteristics.
  • 40. Branly's claim to the Academy chair was also championed by many French Catholics, who knew that he had been singled out for honor by the Pope. For generations French politics had been bitterly divided between conservative Catholics and liberal freethinkers like Marie and her friends, and the split ran through every public action. Among the false rumors the right-wing press spread about Curie was that she was Jewish, not truly French, and thus undeserving of a seat in the French Academy. Although the liberal press came to her defense, the “An academic tournament: Will a woman enter the accusations did the intended damage. Branly Institute?” Marie was weighed against EdouardBranly, who won the election on January 23, 1911, by two taught at a leading Catholic institution. votes. Curie responded to the snub characteristically, by throwing herself into her work. “The struggle between you and M. Branly will arise most strongly on the clerical issue....Against him will be the forward-looking and university elements of the Academy....” --letter from Georges Gouy to Marie Curie, November 1910 The Langevin Affair N EVEN WORSE SCANDAL was to erupt before the end of 1911. That a woman who was left a widow at 38 should become romantically attached again is not surprising. But when Curie's relationship with fellow physicist Paul Langevin moved beyond friendly collegiality to mutual love, she could not foresee where it would lead. Langevin, a brilliant former pupil of Pierre's, was unhappily married to a woman who came from a similar working-class background but lacked his educational attainments. With four children to raise, Madame Langevin complained that Paul placed his commitment to science above the needs of his family. “They can't comprehend at his house that he refuses magnificent situations...in private industry to dedicate himself Paul Langevin. The Langevins' 1902 to science,” wrote a friend of Langevin's. During the summer marriage had deteriorated to such an of 1911, as rumors about a relationship between Curie and extent by mid-July 1910 that Langevin Langevin began to spread, Madame Langevin began left the family home for an apartment in proceedings to bring about a legal separation.
  • 41. Paris, not far from Curie's lab. Curie was the only woman at the 1911conference organized and subsidized by Belgian industrialist Ernest Solvay. Discussions at this gathering of the world's top physicists opened the way to a new physics that would bring together relativity, the quantum, and radioactive atoms. Langevin, at far right, stands next to the young Albert Einstein. Rutherford stands above Curie, who confers with Poincaré. That autumn Curie, Langevin, and some 20 other top physicists attended an international conference in Brussels. While the scientists considered the challenge to modern physics presented by the discovery of radioactivity, the French press got hold of intimate letters that Curie and Langevin had exchanged (or forgeries based on them). HE WIDOW HAD TARNISHED the good name of her deceased husband! This was only one of the accusations hurled at Curie during her absence in Belgium. Resurrecting the lie that she was Jewish, some anti-Semitic newspapers decried the devastation wrought on a good Frenchwoman by a foreign Jewish home wrecker. Other reporters spread false hints that Curie's affair with Langevin had begun while Pierre was still alive, driving him to commit suicide in despair. “The fires of radium which beam so mysteriously...have just lit a fire in the heart of one of the scientists who studies their action so devotedly; and the wife and the children of this scientist are in tears....” --Le Journal, November 4, 1911
  • 42. On her return to France, Curie discovered an angry mob congregated in front of her home in Sceaux, terrorizing 14-year-old Irène and 7- year-old Eve. Curie and her daughters had to take refuge in the home of friends in Paris. Meanwhile Langevin and a journalist who had reviled Marie held a duel--an emotional but bloodless “affair of honor.” Next: Illness and Rebirth Mathematician Emile Borel, scientific director of the EcoleNormaleSupérieure, sheltered Curie and her daughters even when the minister of public instruction threatened to fire him for sullying French academic honor. © 2000 - 2013 American Institute of Physics Radiology at the Front HREE GERMAN BOMBS fell on Paris on September 2, 1914, about a month after Germany declared war on France. By that time construction of the Radium Institute was complete, although Curie had not yet The Radium Institute. After Germany moved her lab there. Curie's researchers had been drafted, declared war on France in 1914, only two like all other able-bodied Frenchmen. people remained at the Institute: Curie and “our mechanic who could not join the army The Radium Institute's work would have to wait for because of serious heart trouble.” peacetime. But surely there were ways in which Curie could use her scientific knowledge to advance the war effort. “I am resolved to put all my strength at the service of my adopted country, since I cannot do anything for my unfortunate native country just now...” -- letter from Marie Curie to Paul Langevin, January 1, 1915 As the German army swept toward Paris, the government decided to move to Bordeaux. France's entire stock of radium for research was the single gram in Curie's lab. At the government's behest,
  • 43. Curie took a Bordeaux-bound train along with government staff, carrying the precious element in a heavy lead box. Unlike many, however, Curie felt her place was in Paris. After the radium was in a Bordeaux safe-deposit box, she returned to Paris on a military train. X-rays could save soldiers' lives, she realized, by helping doctors see bullets, shrapnel, and broken bones. She convinced the government to empower her to set up France's first military radiology centers. Newly named Director of the Red Cross Radiology Service, she wheedled money and cars out of wealthy acquaintances. She convinced automobile body shops to transform the cars into vans, and begged manufacturers to do their part This “petite Curie,” which brought X- rays to the Front in World War I, was for their country by donating equipment. By late October displayed in Paris in 1998 during the 1914, the first of 20 radiology vehicles she would equip was commemoration of the 100th ready. French enlisted men would soon dub these mobile anniversary of the discovery of radium. radiology installations, which transported X-ray apparatus to the wounded at the battle front, petites Curies (little Curies). LTHOUGH CURIE HAD LECTURED about X-rays at the Sorbonne, she had no personal experience working with them. Intending to operate the petite Curie herself if necessary, she learned how to drive a car and gave herself cram courses in anatomy, in the use of X-ray equipment, and in auto mechanics. As her first radiological assistant she chose her daughter Irène, a very mature and scientifically well-versed 17-year-old. Accompanied by a military doctor, mother and daughter made their first trip to the battle front in the autumn of 1914. “The use of the X-rays during the war saved the lives of many wounded men; it also saved many from long suffering and lasting infirmity.”--Marie Curie Marie and Irène with X-ray Would Irène be traumatized by the sight of the soldiers' horrific equipment at a military wounds? To guard against a bad reaction, Curie was careful to display hospital. After training Irène as a radiologist for a year, Curie no emotion herself as she carefully recorded data about each patient. deemed her daughter capable of directing a battle-front radiological installation on her own. READ Curie's words Irène followed her mother's example. Heedless of the dangers of over-exposure to X-rays, mother and daughter were inadequately shielded from the radiation that helped save countless soldiers' lives. After the war the French government recognized Irène's hospital work by awarding her a military medal. No such official recognition came to Curie. Perhaps her role in the Langevin affair was not
  • 44. yet forgiven. Next: A Military Radiotherapy Service © 2000 - 2013 American Institute of Physics The Marie Curie Radium Campaign HE NEVER OVERCAME STAGE FRIGHT as a professor, though she taught for nearly 30 years. Yet in order to turn the Radium Institute into a world-class institution, Curie shamelessly sought out assistance, just as she had done during the war years to create the radiological service. Throughout her career Curie had benefitted from the subsidies of wealthy French benefactors. Now, thanks to the interest French philanthropist Henri de of an American woman, U.S. citizens also became Rothschild was enthralled by involved in filling the needs of the Radium Institute. science and funded many research efforts. Rothschild “[Curie], who handles daily a particle of radium grants helped Curie to support more dangerous than lightning, was afraid when her scientific staff--including confronted by the necessity of appearing before the the man who would become Irène's husband and public.”--StéphaneLauzanne, editor-in-chief of Le collaborator. Matin Despite her distrust of journalists, in May 1920 Curie agreed to give an interview to Mrs. William Brown Meloney, editor of an American women's magazine. In the interview Curie emphasized the needs of her institution, where research was just resuming following the devastating war. Thanks to her alliance with industry, few labs in the world if any were better equipped with radium than Curie's. But Curie succeeded in shocking Meloney by emphasizing the fact that research and therapy centers in the United States