Marie Curie

About me

She was born Maria Sktodowska-Curie (1867-1934) in Warsaw, Poland, where she lived until she was 22.
She excelled at school, was a top student in her secondary school, but couldn’t attend the men-only University of Warsaw. She instead continued her education in Warsaw’”floating university’, a set of underground informal classes held in secret.

Later, she was naturalized French . While a French citizen, she 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” after her native country. In 1891, at the age of 24, she finally made her way to Parisfollowed her older sister, Bronislawa to study in Paris. She enrolled at the Sorbonne. The course was, of course, taught in French, which Marie had to reach top speed in very quickly. She had only a little money and this was a time of some hardship for the young scientist. She didn’t have much to eat and during Winters, she had to study in her unheated apartment, chilled to the bone. She completed her master’s degree in physics in 1893 at the Sorbonne. She finished as top student in her master’s physics degree course. Then she earned another degree in mathematics the following year in 1894, aged 27. After her degrees in Physics and Mathematics, she received a commission to do a study on different types of steel and their magnetic properties. She 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. They married on July 26 1895. The Curies worked together investigating radioactivity. They were completely devoted to one another.
In 1898, the Curies announced the discovery of a new chemical element: the Polonium. At the end of the year, they announced the discovery of another, the Radium. In 1902, the Curies announced that they had produced a decigram of pure radium.They were jointly awarded Nobel Prize in Physics for research on radiation in 1903. They shared the prize with Henri Becquerel, the original discovery of radioactivity.
Then, they developed an international reputation for their scientific efforts and they used their prize money to continue their research.
By the late 1920s her health was beginning to deteriorate. She died aged 66, on 4 july 1934 of aplastic anemia, a blood disease that is often caused by too much exposure to radiation. It is likely that the radioactivity she had been exposed to during her career caused the disease.

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, by Lívia Alice

In Marie Curie,

Career

In 1896, Henri Becquerel encouraged her to study how radiations emitted by uranium salts, which had been discovered by him. Together with her husband, Marie began to study the materials that produce such radiations, looking for new elements which, according to a hypothesis that the two defenders, should exist in certain ores as a pitchblende (which had a curious characteristic of emitting still More radiation than the uranium extracted from it). Indeed, in 1898 they deduced that there would certainly be in the pitchblende some component releasing more energy than uranium; On December 26, the same year, Maria Skłodowska Curie announced a discovery of this new substance to the Academy of Sciences of Paris.

After several years of constant work, through the concentration of several classes of pitchblende, they isolated two new chemical elements. The first was named polonium, in reference to its native country, and the other radio, due to its intense radiation, obtained 0.1 g in 1902. Subsequently part of all the tons of pitchblende, obtained another 1 g of radio. . Proposition, have never patented the process and development. The radioactive terms and radioactivity were invented by the couple to characterize an energy released spontaneously by this new chemical element.

With Pierre Curie and Antoine Henri Becquerel, Marie-Novella of the Nobel Prize in Physics of 1903, "in recognition of the extraordinary results obtained by their joint investigations on the phenomena of radiation, discovered by Henri Becquerel." She was the first woman to receive such a prize.

Marie Curie got her husband, Pierre Curie, to become head of the Sorbonne Physics Laboratory. She graduated in science in 1903, and after Pierre Curie's death in 1906, in a road accident, she took her place as a professor of General Physics at the Faculty of Sciences. She was the first woman in charge of this charge. She was also appointed Director of the Curie Laboratory of the Radium Institute, University of Paris, founded in 1914.

Marie Curie also had a significant role as an educator. As early as 1885, at the age of 18, she pursued a profession of private teacher for children of families in Poland.
Eight years later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911, in recognition of his services for the advancement of chemistry, the discovery of radio and polonium elements, the isolation of radio and the study of the nature of the compounds of this element. With a generous attitude, he did not patent the process of isolation of the radio, allowing the investigation of the properties of this element throughout the scientific community.
She was the first person to receive twice the Nobel Prize. Linus Pauling repeated the feat, winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962 and became the only personality to have received two non-shared Nobel Prizes. On the other hand, Marie Curie was the only person to receive twice the Nobel Prize, in distinct scientific areas.
During World War I, Curie proposed the use of mobile radiography for the treatment of wounded soldiers. In 1921 he visited the United States, where he was received triumphantly. The reason for the trip was to raise funds for research. In her later years she was harassed by many physicists and cosmetics producers, who made use of radioactive material without precautions. He also visited Brazil, attracted by the fame of the radioactive waters of Lindóia, today known by the name of Waters of Lindóia.

He founded the Radio Institute in Paris. In 1922 he became a free associate member of the Academy of Medicine.

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, by Lívia Alice

Posthumous honors

The Pantheon : The couple originally were buried in the Paris suburb of Sceaux (department 92) In 1995 their remains were moved in interred in the Pantheon in Paris alongside France’s greatest citizens (Victor Hugo, Voltaire, Rousseau…) Marie Curie was the first woman interred there based on her own merits. The Pantheon is a building in the Latin quarter in Paris which was originally built as a church.

ECPI – Pierre and Marie Curie’s laboratory memorial tablet : A bronze memorial tablet on an external wall of the École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles – L’Ecole de Physique et Chimie – 10, rue Vauquelin, Paris 5in Paris (along Rue Pierre Brossolette – Paris 5) marks the exact spot of the laboratory where Pierre Curie and Marie Curie discovered Radium and worked together from 1898 to 1902. The tablet was discovered in 1933.

Pierre et Marie Curie Museum (open since 1992) and the Radium institute: Marie Curie decided to establish a scientific institution worthy of Pierre’s memory. Helped by her scientist friends, she persuaded the French government and the private Pasteur Foundation to fund a Radium institute. Marie would head a radioactivity laboratory, and an eminent physician would lead its medical research laboratory. A statue of them both, the laboratory where Marie Curie has been working can be visited and the garden Marie Curie has planted. It’s located in the ground floor of the Curie House of the Radium’s intitute built in 1914. The building sheltered the Curie laboratory devoted to the study of the radioactivity and directed by Marie Curie until her death in 1934.

A metro stop called Pierre et Marie Curie : on the Line 7 of the Paris’ Metro but located in the suburb of Paris.

UMPC : Pierre et Marie Curie University – 4 place Jussieu Paris 5.

Institut Curie – 26, rue d’Ulm – Paris. It was born from the will of a woman, Marie Curie and the importance of a cause, the fight against cancer. It has been created in 1909. Its main mission are the research , the diagnosis and the treatment of cancer.It’s one of the leading medical biological and biophysical research centres in the world. It’s a private non-profit foundation for research into cancer. The institute runs the Hospital Claudius Régaud, a cancer treatment hospital. 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.

Square Marie Curie: a green space in Paris 13.