Marie Curie

- polish-french physicist -

*Portrait of Marie Curie
Maria Salomea Skłodowska (7 November 1867 - 4 July 1934) was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and the only woman to win the Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two scientific fields.

Early life

Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw, in Congress Poland in the Russian Empire, on 7 November 1867, the fifth and youngest child of well-known teachers Bronisława, née Boguska, and Władysław Skłodowski.

Life in Paris

Skłodowska 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.

New elements

Curie's systematic studies included two uranium minerals, pitchblende and torbernite (also known as chalcolite).[31] 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 another substance that was far more active than uranium.[31][33] She began a systematic search for additional substances that emit radiation, and by 1898 she discovered that the element thorium was also radioactive.[29] Pierre Curie 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.

Nobel Prizes

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. Marie Curie was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize. 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 on a new street named Rue Pierre-Curie.

WWI

During World War I, Curie recognised that wounded soldiers were best served if operated upon as soon as possible.[57] She saw a need for field radiological centres near the front lines to assist battlefield surgeons,[56] including to obviate amputations when in fact limbs could be saved.[58][59] 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").

Post war

In 1920, for the 25th anniversary of the discovery of radium, the French government established a stipend for her. In 1921, U.S. President Warren G. Harding received her at the White House to present her with the 1 gram of radium collected in the United States. In 1922 she became a fellow of the French Academy of Medicine. In August 1922 Marie Curie became a member of the League of Nations'. She sat on the committee until 1934 and contributed to League of Nations' scientific coordination with other prominent researchers such as Albert Einstein, Hendrik Lorentz, and Henri Bergson. In 1925 she visited Poland to participate in a ceremony laying the foundations for Warsaw's Radium Institute. In 1930 she was elected to the International Atomic Weights Committee, on which she served until her death. In 1931, Curie was awarded the Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh.

Death

Curie visited Poland for the last time in early 1934. A few months later, on 4 July 1934, she died aged 66 at the Sancellemoz sanatorium in Passy, Haute-Savoie, from aplastic anemia believed to have been contracted from her long-term exposure to radiation, causing damage to her bone marrow. 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. Curie was also exposed to X-rays from unshielded equipment while serving as a radiologist in field hospitals during the war. Sixty years later, in 1995, in honour of their achievements, the remains of both were transferred to the Paris Panthéon. Their remains were sealed in a lead lining because of the radioactivity. She became the second woman to be interred at the Panthéon (after Sophie Berthelot) and the first woman to be honoured with interment in the Panthéon on her own merits.

Legacy

The physical and societal aspects of the Curies' work contributed to shaping the world of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Cornell University professor L. Pearce Williams observes: "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."