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    Marie Curie 1867-1934

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    Marie Curie was a pioneering physicist and chemist who made groundbreaking discoveries about radioactivity. Along with her husband Pierre, she discovered the elements polonium and radium. Curie was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize and remains the only person to win the award in two different sciences. She championed the use of radiation in medicine and helped develop mobile X-ray units for field hospitals during WWI. Curie's research revolutionized the understanding of atoms but took a toll on her health, and she ultimately died from radiation exposure.

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    Marie Curie 1867-1934

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    Marie Curie was a pioneering physicist and chemist who made groundbreaking discoveries about radioactivity. Along with her husband Pierre, she discovered the elements polonium and radium. Curie was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize and remains the only person to win the award in two different sciences. She championed the use of radiation in medicine and helped develop mobile X-ray units for field hospitals during WWI. Curie's research revolutionized the understanding of atoms but took a toll on her health, and she ultimately died from radiation exposure.

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    MARIE CURIE 1867-1934

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    Marie Curie was a pioneering physicist and chemist who made groundbreaking discoveries about radioactivity. Along with her husband Pierre, she discovered the elements polonium and radium. Curie was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize and remains the only person to win the award in two different sciences. She championed the use of radiation in medicine and helped develop mobile X-ray units for field hospitals during WWI. Curie's research revolutionized the understanding of atoms but took a toll on her health, and she ultimately died from radiation exposure.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    43 views42 pages

    Marie Curie 1867-1934

    Uploaded by

    zmeugaby89
    Marie Curie was a pioneering physicist and chemist who made groundbreaking discoveries about radioactivity. Along with her husband Pierre, she discovered the elements polonium and radium. Curie was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize and remains the only person to win the award in two different sciences. She championed the use of radiation in medicine and helped develop mobile X-ray units for field hospitals during WWI. Curie's research revolutionized the understanding of atoms but took a toll on her health, and she ultimately died from radiation exposure.

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    of 42

    Marie Curie’s relentless resolve and insatiable curiosity made her an icon in the world of

    modern science. Indefatigable despite a career of physically demanding and ultimately


    fatal work, she discovered polonium and radium, championed the use of radiation in
    medicine and fundamentally changed our understanding of radioactivity.
    Ionization chamber, electrometer with piezoelectric quartz and sensitive scales are tools
    that were used by Marie Curie to study radioactivity © Nobel Prize Museum
    Curie was born Marya Skłodowska in 1867 in Warsaw. Her family struggled under a
    repressive Tsarist regime, which was trying to stamp out vestiges of Polish culture.

    TUYOUYOU

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    Marie Curie Wellcome Collection (CC by 4.0)
    Marie Curie (to the left) with her father and two sisters, 1890 © Association Curie Joliot-
    Curie
    Curie’s parents were Polish, and they were both teachers; their employment was
    precarious. Curie’s father moved from job to job, and the family to smaller and smaller
    apartments. When she was 11, Curie’s mother died of tuberculosis and her oldest
    sister of typhus.
    As a teenager, Curie made a pact with her sister Bronya: she would support Bronya
    while she was in medical school in Paris, and then Bronya would pay Curie’s way. From
    the age of 17, for six years, Curie worked as a governess and tutor, while attempting to
    study in her spare time.
    Marie Curie's secondary school diploma, 1883 © Association Curie Joliot-Curie

    Marie Curie Daily Herald Archive/Science Museum Group/SSPL © United Press


    International Ltd.
    Finally, at age 24, she enrolled at the Sorbonne University. She could not attend the
    University of Warsaw, as her brother had: the Russian government prohibited women
    from attending university anywhere in its empire. In Paris, she felt unprepared but
    exhilarated.
    Marie Curie, chronomèter in hand, in the process of measuring radioactivity in the
    laboratory on Cuvier Street, 1904 © Association Curie Joliot-Curie

    It was like a new world opened to me, the world of science, which I was at last permitted
    to know in all liberty.

    MARIE CURIE

    MARIAGOEPPERT MAYER

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    Marie Curie's thesis for a doctorate of science (PhD) in physics, 1903 Public domain,
    via Wikimedia Commons
    Curie decided to do her thesis on radiation, recently discovered in uranium by Henri
    Becquerel. She found that an ore containing uranium was far more radioactive than
    could be explained by its uranium content. This led her and her husband, Pierre, to the
    discovery of a new element that was 400 times more radioactive than uranium. In 1898
    it was added to the Periodic Table as polonium, named after Curie’s birth country.

    IRÈNEJOLIOT-CURIE

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    Glass plate positive of a specimen of pitchblende, one of the primary mineral ores of
    uranium, in which Marie Curie also discovered polonium and radium. Science Museum
    Group (CC by 4.0)
    Pitchblende, one of the primary mineral ores of uranium, in which Marie Curie also
    discovered polonium and radium. Science Museum Group (CC by 4.0)
    Then Curie discovered an even more radioactive element, radium, and, through
    observation of radium, made a fundamental discovery: Radiation wasn’t dependent on
    the organisation of atoms at the molecular level; something was happening inside the
    atom itself. The atom was not, as scientists believed at the time, inert, indivisible, or
    even solid.
    For her research in “radiation phenomena,” Curie became, in 1903, the first woman to
    receive a Nobel Prize. French academics originally proposed only her husband and
    Henri Becquerel, but Pierre Curie insisted that his wife share the honour.
    Marie and Pierre Curie with co-laureate Henri Becquerel, 1898. Wellcome Collection
    (CC by 4.0)

    IRÈNEJOLIOT-CURIE

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    The Curie Pavilion at the Radium Institute, Paris 1925 © Association Curie Joliot-Curie
    In 1911, for the isolation of radium, she was awarded another Nobel Prize, this time in
    chemistry. She was and still is the only person to be awarded Nobel Prizes in two
    scientific categories. By that time, Curie was world-famous, and the director of the
    Curie Laboratory at the newly established Radium Institute (today the Curie Institute).
    Pierre Curie was the love of Curie’s life and her partner in science. They met in 1894
    when Marie Curie worked in Pierre Curie’s lab; they were married the following year.
    The wedding photo of Marie and Pierre Curie, 26 July 1895 © Association Curie Joliot-
    Curie
    Marie Curie and Pierre Curie in front of their house, 1895 © Association Curie Joliot-
    Curie

    [Pierre] had dedicated his life to his dream of science: he felt the need of a companion
    who could live his dream with him.

    MARIE CURIE
    Marie Curie and her daughters, Irène and Eve, 1908 Daily Herald Archive/Science
    Museum Group/SSPL © Mirrorpix
    Marie and Pierre Curie with their daughter Irène in the garden of the house on
    Boulevard Kellermann, 1908 Science Museum Group (CC by 4.0)
    The couple had two daughters, Irène and Eve, and a few years after they married,
    Pierre Curie abandoned his own research to join his wife’s study of radioactivity. The
    Curies’ affair of the heart and mind ended tragically not long after Eve was born. In
    1906, Pierre Curie was run over by a horse and carriage and killed.

    IRÈNEJOLIOT-CURIE

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    Marie Curie explains to a group of nurses the potential benefits of radium treatment,
    1916 © Association Curie Joliot-Curie

    Marie Curie visiting a British field hospital, Furnes, Belgium, 1915 Photo by
    Historia/REX
    Curie believed scientific research was a public good and championed its utility. She and
    her husband had discovered that radium destroyed diseased cells faster than healthy
    cells, and thus that radiation could be used to treat tumours.

    IRÈNEJOLIOT-CURIE

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    ADA E.YONATH

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    DOROTHYCROWFOOTHODGKIN

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    During World War I, Curie promoted the use of X-rays; she developed radiological cars
    - which later became known as “petites Curies” - to allow battlefield surgeons to X-ray
    wounded soldiers and operate more accurately.
    Marie Curie driving the Renault car that she converted into a radiological unit during the
    first World War, 1917 © Association Curie Joliot-Curie

    One of Marie Curie’s mobile x-ray units used by the French Army Bibliothèque nationale
    de France, département Estampes et photographie
    IRÈNEJOLIOT-CURIE

    Read her story

    The Curies did not fully appreciate the danger of the radioactive materials they handled.
    Pierre Curie gave himself a lesion when he purposely exposed his arm to radium.
    Worse, however, was working for years in a poorly ventilated shed, isolating radium
    salts from tons of pitchblende ore.
    The room where experiments on uranium ore took place - the laboratories of Marie and
    Pierre Curie, Paris, ca. 1900 Wellcome Collection (CC by 4.0)
    Marie Curie in her chemistry laboratory at the Radium Institute in France © Nationaal
    Archief of the Netherlands

    I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.

    MARIE CURIE
    Marie and Pierre Curie's thank you letter to the Royal Swedish Academy of
    Science (page 1), 19 November 1903 © The Royal Swedish Academy of
    Sciences. Photo: Karl Andersson
    Marie Curie was a Polish-born physicist and chemist and one of the most famous scientists
    of her time. Together with her husband Pierre, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1903,
    and she went on to win another in 1911.

    Marie Sklodowska was born in Warsaw on 7 November 1867, the daughter of a teacher. In
    1891, she went to Paris to study physics and mathematics at the Sorbonne where she met
    Pierre Curie, professor of the School of Physics. They were married in 1895.

    The Curies worked together investigating radioactivity, building on the work of the German
    physicist Roentgen and the French physicist Becquerel. In July 1898, the Curies announced
    the discovery of a new chemical element, polonium. At the end of the year, they announced
    the discovery of another, radium. The Curies, along with Becquerel, were awarded the
    Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903.

    Pierre's life was cut short in 1906 when he was knocked down and killed by a carriage.
    Marie took over his teaching post, becoming the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne, and
    devoted herself to continuing the work that they had begun together. She received a second
    Nobel Prize, for Chemistry, in 1911.

    The Curie's research was crucial in the development of x-rays in surgery. During World War
    One Curie helped to equip ambulances with x-ray equipment, which she herself drove to the
    front lines. The International Red Cross made her head of its radiological service and she
    held training courses for medical orderlies and doctors in the new techniques.

    Despite her success, Marie continued to face great opposition from male scientists in
    France, and she never received significant financial benefits from her work. By the late
    1920s her health was beginning to deteriorate. She died on 4 July 1934 from leukaemia,
    caused by exposure to high-energy radiation from her research. The Curies' eldest daughter
    Irene was herself a scientist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

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