Pierre and marie curie

Пьер Кюри (15 мая 1859 г. – 19 апреля 1906 г.) был французским физиком, пионером в области кристаллографии, магнетизма, пьезоэлектричества и радиоактивности.

История успеха

До того как он присоединился к исследованиям своей жены - Марии Склодовской-Кюри, Пьер Кюри был уже широко известен и уважаем в мире физики. Вместе с братом Жаком он обнаружил явление пьезоэлектричества, при котором кристалл может стать электрически поляризованным, и изобрел кварцевые весы. Его работы по симметрии кристаллов и выводы о связи между магнетизмом и температурой также получили одобрение в научном сообществе. Он разделил Нобелевскую премию 1903 года по физике с Анри Беккерелем и со своей женой Марией Кюри.

Пьер и его супруга сыграли ключевую роль в открытии радия и полония, веществ, оказавших значительное влияние на человечество своими практическими и ядерными свойствами. Их брак основал научную династию: дети и внуки знаменитых физиков также стали известными учеными.

Мария и Пьер Кюри: биография

Пьер родился в Париже, во Франции, в семье Софи-Клер Депуи, дочери фабриканта, и доктора Эжена Кюри, свободомыслящего врача. Его отец поддерживал семью скромной медицинской практикой, попутно удовлетворяя свою любовь к естественным наукам. Эжен Кюри был идеалистом и ярым республиканцем, и основал госпиталь для раненых во время Коммуны 1871 года.

Пьер получил свое доуниверситетское образование дома. Преподавала сначала его мать, а затем - отец и старший брат Жак. Ему особенно нравились экскурсии в сельскую местность, где Пьер мог наблюдать и изучать растения и животных, развивая любовь к природе, сохранившуюся у него на протяжении всей жизни, что составляло его единственное развлечение и отдых во время дальнейшей научной карьеры. В возрасте 14 лет он проявил сильную склонность к точным наукам и начал заниматься у профессора математики, который помог ему развить свой дар в этой дисциплине, особенно пространственное представление.

Мальчиком Кюри наблюдал опыты, проводимые его отцом, и обрел склонность к экспериментальным исследованиям.

Из фармакологов в физики

Познания Пьера в физико-математической сфере принесли ему в 1875 году степень бакалавра наук в возрасте шестнадцати лет.

В 18 лет он получил равноценный диплом в Сорбонне, также известной как Парижский университет, но не сразу поступил на докторантуру из-за отсутствия средств. Вместо этого он исполнял обязанности лаборанта в своей альма-матер, в 1878 году став ассистентом Пола Десена, отвечая за лабораторные работы студентов-физиков. В то время его брат Жак работал в лаборатории минералогии в Сорбонне, и они начали продуктивный пятилетний период научного сотрудничества.

Удачный брак

В 1894 году Пьер познакомился со своей будущей супругой - Марией Склодовской, которая изучала физику и математику в Сорбонне, и женился на ней 25 июля 1895 г., совершив простую гражданскую брачную церемонию. Полученные в качестве свадебного подарка деньги Мария использовала для приобретения двух велосипедов, на которых молодожены совершили свадебную поездку по французской глубинке, и которые были их основным средством отдыха на протяжении долгих лет. В 1897 году у них родилась дочь, и через несколько дней мать Пьера умерла. Доктор Кюри переехал к молодой паре и помогал заботиться о своей внучке, Ирен Кюри.

Пьер и Мария посвятили себя научной работе. Они вместе выделили полоний и радий, стали пионерами в изучении радиоактивности и были первыми, кто использовал этот термин. В своих трудах, включая знаменитую докторскую работу Марии, они использовали данные, полученные с помощью чувствительного пьезоэлектрического электрометра, созданного Пьером и его братом Жаком.

Пьер Кюри: биография ученого

В 1880 году он и его старший брат Жак показали, что при сжатии кристалла возникает электрический потенциал, пьезоэлектричество. Вскоре после этого (в 1881 году) был продемонстрирован обратный эффект: кристаллы могут деформироваться под действием электрического поля. Почти все цифровые электронные схемы сегодня используют это явление в виде кварцевых генераторов.

До своей знаменитой докторской диссертации по магнетизму для измерения магнитных коэффициентов французский физик разработал и усовершенствовал чрезвычайно чувствительные крутильные весы. Их модификации использовались и последующими исследователями в этой области.

Пьер изучал ферромагнетизм, парамагнетизм и диамагнетизм. Он обнаружил и описал зависимость способности веществ намагничиваться от температуры, известную сегодня как закон Кюри. Константа в этом законе носит название константы Кюри. Пьер также установил, что ферромагнитные вещества обладают критической температурой перехода, выше которой они теряют свои ферромагнитные свойства. Это явление носит название точки Кюри.

Принцип, который сформулировал Пьер Кюри, учение о симметрии, заключается в том, что физическое воздействие не может вызвать асимметрию, отсутствующую у его причины. Например, случайная смесь песка в невесомости асимметрии не имеет (песок является изотропным). Под действием гравитации из-за направления поля возникает асимметрия. Песчинки «сортируются» по плотности, которая увеличивается с глубиной. Но это новое направленное взаиморасположение частиц песка на самом деле отражает асимметрию гравитационного поля, вызвавшего разделение.

Радиоактивность

Работа Пьера и Марии над радиоактивностью была основана на результатах Рентгена и Анри Беккереля. В 1898 году, после тщательных исследований, они открыли полоний, а несколько месяцев спустя – радий, выделив 1 г этого химического элемента из уранинита. Кроме того, они обнаружили, что бета-лучи являются отрицательно заряженными частицами.

Открытия Пьера и Марии Кюри требовали большого труда. Денег не хватало, и чтобы сэкономить на транспортных расходах, на работу они ездили на велосипедах. Действительно, зарплата учителя была минимальной, но чета ученых продолжала посвящать свое время и деньги исследованиям.

Открытие полония

Секрет их успеха крылся в примененном Кюри новом методе химического анализа, основанном на точном измерении излучения. Каждое вещество помещалось на одну из пластин конденсатора, и с помощью электрометра и пьезоэлектрического кварца измерялась проводимость воздуха. Эта величина была пропорциональна содержанию активного вещества, такого как уран или торий.

Супруги проверили большое количество соединений практически всех известных элементов и обнаружили, что только уран и торий являются радиоактивными. Тем не менее они решили измерить излучение, испускаемое рудами, из которых извлекаются уран и торий, такими как хальколит и уранинит. Руда показала активность, которая была в 2,5 раза больше, чем у урана. После обработки остатка кислотой и сероводородом они установили, что активное вещество во всех реакциях сопутствует висмуту. Тем не менее они добились частичного разделения, заметив, что сульфид висмута менее летуч, чем сульфид нового элемента, который они назвали полонием в честь родины Марии Кюри Польши.

Радий, радиация и Нобелевская премия

26 декабря 1898 года Кюри и Ж. Бемон, руководитель исследований в «Муниципальной школе промышленной физики и химии», в своем докладе Академии наук объявили об открытии нового элемента, который они назвали радием.

Французский физик вместе с одним из своих учеников впервые выявил энергию атома, обнаружив непрерывное излучение тепла частицами новооткрытого элемента. Он также исследовал излучение радиоактивных веществ, а с помощью магнитных полей ему удалось определить, что одни испускаемые частицы заряжены положительно, другие – отрицательно, а третьи были нейтральными. Так обнаружилось альфа, бета и гамма-излучение.

Кюри разделил Нобелевскую премию по физике 1903 года со своей женой и Анри Беккерелем. Ее присудили в знак признания чрезвычайных услуг, которые они оказали своими исследованиями явлений радиации, открытых профессором Беккерелем.

Последние годы

Пьер Кюри, открытия которого поначалу не получили широкого признания во Франции, что не позволило ему занять кафедру физической химии и минералогии в Сорбонне, уехал в Женеву. Переезд изменил положение вещей, которое можно объяснить его левыми взглядами и разногласиями по поводу политики Третьей республики в отношении науки. После того как его кандидатура была отвержена в 1902 г., в 1905-м он был принят в Академию.

Престиж Нобелевской премии побудил парламент Франции в 1904 г. создать новую профессуру для Кюри в Сорбонне. Пьер заявил, что не останется в Школе физики, пока там не будет в полной мере финансированной лаборатории с необходимым числом ассистентов. Его требование было выполнено, и Мария возглавила его лабораторию.

К началу 1906 г. Пьер Кюри оказался готов, наконец, впервые приступить к работе в должных условиях, хотя был болен и очень уставал.

19 апреля 1906 года в Париже во время обеденного перерыва, идя со встречи с коллегами по Сорбонне, переходя скользкую от дождя Рю Дофин, Кюри поскользнулся перед конной повозкой. Ученый умер в результате несчастного случая. Его безвременная гибель, хотя и трагическая, тем не менее, помогла ему избежать смерти от того, что открыл Пьер Кюри – радиационного облучения, позже убившего его жену. Чета захоронена в крипте Пантеона в Париже.

Наследие ученого

Радиоактивность радия делает его чрезвычайно опасным химическим элементом. Ученые поняли это лишь после того как использование данного вещества для подсветки циферблатов, панелей, часов и других инструментов в начале двадцатого века стало оказывать влияние на здоровье лаборантов и потребителей. Тем не менее хлористый радий используется в медицине для лечения рака.

Полоний получил различное практическое применение в промышленных и ядерных установках. Он также известен как очень токсичное вещество и может быть использован в качестве яда. Пожалуй, наиболее важным является его применение в качестве нейтронного запала для ядерного оружия.

В честь Пьера Кюри на Радиологическом конгрессе в 1910 году после смерти физика была названа единица радиоактивности, равная 3,7 х 1010 распадов в секунду или 37 гигабеккерелей.

Научная династия

Дети и внуки физиков также стали крупными учеными. Их дочь Ирен вышла замуж за Фредерика Жолио и в 1935 году они вместе получили Нобелевскую премию по химии. Младшая дочь Ева, родившаяся в 1904-м, вышла замуж за американского дипломата и директора Детского фонда ООН. Она является автором биографии своей матери «Мадам Кюри» (1938), переведенной на несколько языков.

Внучка - Элен Ланжевен-Жолио - стала профессором ядерной физики в Университете Парижа, а внук - Пьер Жолио-Кюри, названный в честь деда - известный биохимик.

pierre and marie curie

On April 20, 1902, Marie and Pierre Curie successfully isolate radioactive radium salts from the mineral pitchblende in their laboratory in Paris. In 1898, the Curies discovered the existence of the elements radium and polonium in their research of pitchblende. One year after isolating radium, they would share the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics with French scientist A. Henri Becquerel for their groundbreaking investigations of radioactivity.

Marie Curie was born Marie Sklodowska in Warsaw, Poland, in 1867. The daughter of a physics teacher, she was a gifted student and in 1891 went to study at the Sorbonne in Paris. With highest honors, she received a degree in physical sciences in 1893 and in mathematics in 1894. That year she met Pierre Curie, a noted French physicist and chemist who had done important work in magnetism. Marie and Pierre married in 1895, marking the beginning of a scientific partnership that would achieve world renown.

READ MORE: Marie Curie: Facts About The Pioneering Chemist

Looking for a subject for her doctoral thesis, Marie Curie began studying uranium, which was at the heart of Becquerel’s discovery of radioactivity in 1896. The term radioactivity, which describes the phenomenon of radiation caused by atomic decay, was in fact coined by Marie Curie. In her husband’s laboratory, she studied the mineral pitchblende, of which uranium is the primary element, and reported the probable existence of one or more other radioactive elements in the mineral. Pierre Curie joined her in her research, and in 1898 they discovered polonium, named after Marie’s native Poland, and radium.

While Pierre investigated the physical properties of the new elements, Marie worked to chemically isolate radium from pitchblende. Unlike uranium and polonium, radium does not occur freely in nature, and Marie and her assistant Andre Debierne laboriously refined several tons of pitchblende in order to isolate one-tenth gram of pure radium chloride in 1902. On the results of this research, she was awarded her doctorate of science in June 1903 and later in the year shared the Nobel Prize in physics with her husband and Becquerel. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.

Pierre Curie was appointed to the chair of physics at the Sorbonne in 1904, and Marie continued her efforts to isolate pure, non-chloride radium. On April 19, 1906, Pierre Curie was killed in an accident in the Paris streets. Although devastated, Marie Curie vowed to continue her work and in May 1906 was appointed to her husband’s seat at the Sorbonne, thus becoming the university’s first female professor. In 1910, with Debierne, she finally succeeded in isolating pure, metallic radium. For this achievement, she was the sole recipient of the 1911 Nobel Prize in chemistry, making her the first person to win a second Nobel Prize.

She became interested in the medical applications of radioactive substances, working on radiology during World War I and the potential of radium as a cancer therapy. Beginning in 1918, the Radium Institute at the University of Paris began to operate under Curie’s direction and from its inception was a major center for chemistry and nuclear physics. In 1921, she visited the United States, and President Warren G. Harding presented her with a gram of radium.

Curie’s daughter, Irene Curie, was also a physical chemist and, with her husband, Frederic Joliot, was awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in chemistry for the discovery of artificial radioactivity. Marie Curie died in 1934 from leukemia caused by four decades of exposure to radioactive substances.

READ MORE: 9 Groundbreaking Inventions by Women

For the musician, see Marie Currie.

In this Slavic name, the surname is Skłodowska, sometimes transliterated as Sklodowska. .mw-parser-output .infobox-subbox{padding:0;border:none;margin:-3px;width:auto;min-width:100%;font-size:100%;clear:none;float:none;background-color:transparent}.mw-parser-output .infobox-3cols-child{margin:auto}.mw-parser-output .infobox .navbar{font-size:100%}body.skin-minerva .mw-parser-output .infobox-header,body.skin-minerva .mw-parser-output .infobox-subheader,body.skin-minerva .mw-parser-output .infobox-above,body.skin-minerva .mw-parser-output .infobox-title,body.skin-minerva .mw-parser-output .infobox-image,body.skin-minerva .mw-parser-output .infobox-full-data,body.skin-minerva .mw-parser-output .infobox-below{text-align:center}Marie CurieCurie c. 1920BornMaria Salomea Skłodowska
7 November 1867
Warsaw, Congress Poland, Russian Empire (now Poland)[1]Died4 July 1934 (aged 66)
Passy, Haute-Savoie, FranceCause of deathAplastic anemia[2]Citizenship

• Poland (by birth)
• France (by marriage)

Alma mater

• University of Paris
• ESPCI[3]

Known for

• Pioneering research on radioactivity
• Discovering polonium and radium

SpousePierre Curie ​ ​(m. 1895; died 1906)​Children

• Irène
• Ève

Awards

• Nobel Prize in Physics (1903)
• Davy Medal (1903)
• Matteucci Medal (1904)
• Actonian Prize (1907)
• Elliott Cresson Medal (1909)
• Albert Medal (1910)
• Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911)
• Willard Gibbs Award (1921)
• Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh (1931)

Scientific careerFields

• Physics
• chemistry

Institutions.mw-parser-output .treeview ul{padding:0;margin:0}.mw-parser-output .treeview li{padding:0;margin:0;list-style-type:none;list-style-image:none}.mw-parser-output .treeview li li{background:url("https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Treeview-grey-line.png")no-repeat 0 -2981px;padding-left:21px;text-indent:0.3em}.mw-parser-output .treeview li li:last-child{background-position:0 -5971px}.mw-parser-output .treeview li.emptyline>ul>.mw-empty-elt:first-child .emptyline,.mw-parser-output .treeview li.emptyline>ul>li:first-child{background-position:0 9px}

• University of Paris
  • Institut du Radium
• École Normale Supérieure
• French Academy of Medicine
• International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation

ThesisRecherches sur les substances radioactives (Research on Radioactive Substances) (1903)Doctoral advisorGabriel LippmannDoctoral students

• André-Louis Debierne
• Ladislas Goldstein
• Émile Henriot
• Irène Joliot-Curie
• Óscar Moreno
• Marguerite Perey
• Francis Perrin

SignatureNotesShe is the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two sciences. Birthplace, ulica Freta 16, Warsaw.

Marie Salomea Skłodowska–Curie (/ˈkjʊəri/ KURE-ee,[4] French pronunciation: ​[maʁi kyʁi], Polish pronunciation: [ˈmarja skwɔˈdɔfska kʲiˈri]; born Maria Salomea Skłodowska, Polish: [ˈmarja salɔˈmɛa skwɔˈdɔfska]; 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. Her husband, Pierre Curie, was a co-winner on her first Nobel Prize, making them the first ever married couple to win the Nobel Prize and launching the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was, in 1906, the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris.[5]

She was born in Warsaw, in what was then the Kingdom of Poland, part of the Russian Empire. She studied at Warsaw's clandestine Flying University and began her practical scientific training in Warsaw. In 1891, aged 24, she followed her elder sister Bronisława to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. In 1895 she married the French physicist Pierre Curie, and she shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with him and with the physicist Henri Becquerel for their pioneering work developing the theory of "radioactivity"—a term she coined.[6][7] In 1906 Pierre Curie died in a Paris street accident. Marie won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of the elements polonium and radium, using techniques she invented for isolating radioactive isotopes.

Under her direction, the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms by the use of radioactive isotopes. In 1920 she founded the Curie Institute in Paris, and in 1932 the Curie Institute in Warsaw; both remain major centres of medical research. During World War I she developed mobile radiography units to provide X-ray services to field hospitals.

While a French citizen, Marie Skłodowska Curie, who used both surnames,[8][9] never lost her sense of Polish identity. She taught her daughters the Polish language and took them on visits to Poland.[10] She named the first chemical element she discovered polonium, after her native country.[a]

Marie Curie died in 1934, aged 66, at the Sancellemoz sanatorium in Passy (Haute-Savoie), France, of aplastic anemia from exposure to radiation in the course of her scientific research and in the course of her radiological work at field hospitals during World War I.[12] In addition to her Nobel Prizes, she has received numerous other honours and tributes; in 1995 she became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Paris Panthéon,[13] and Poland declared 2011 the Year of Marie Curie during the International Year of Chemistry. She is the subject of numerous biographical works, where she is also known as Madame Curie.

Life

Early years

Władysław Skłodowski, daughters (from left) Maria, Bronisława, Helena, 1890

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.[14] The elder siblings of Maria (nicknamed Mania) were Zofia (born 1862, nicknamed Zosia), Józef (born 1863, nicknamed Józio), Bronisława (born 1865, nicknamed Bronia) and Helena (born 1866, nicknamed Hela).[15][16]

On both the paternal and maternal sides, the family had lost their property and fortunes through patriotic involvements in Polish national uprisings aimed at restoring Poland's independence (the most recent had been the January Uprising of 1863–65).[17] This condemned the subsequent generation, including Maria and her elder siblings, to a difficult struggle to get ahead in life.[17] Maria's paternal grandfather, Józef Skłodowski, had been principal of the Lublin primary school attended by Bolesław Prus,[18] who became a leading figure in Polish literature.[19]

Władysław Skłodowski taught mathematics and physics, subjects that Maria was to pursue, and was also director of two Warsaw gymnasia (secondary schools) for boys. After Russian authorities eliminated laboratory instruction from the Polish schools, he brought much of the laboratory equipment home and instructed his children in its use.[15] He was eventually fired by his 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 their income by lodging boys in the house.[15] Maria's mother Bronisława operated a prestigious Warsaw boarding school for girls; she resigned from the position after Maria was born.[15] She died of tuberculosis in May 1878, when Maria was ten years old.[15] Less than three years earlier, Maria's oldest sibling, Zofia, had died of typhus contracted from a boarder.[15] Maria's father was an atheist, her mother a devout Catholic.[20] The deaths of Maria's mother and sister caused her to give up Catholicism and become agnostic.[21]

Maria (left), sister Bronisława, c. 1886

When she was ten years old, Maria began attending the boarding school of J. Sikorska; next, she attended a gymnasium for girls, from which she graduated on 12 June 1883 with a gold medal.[14] After a collapse, possibly due to depression,[15] she spent the following year in the countryside with relatives of her father, and the next year with her father in Warsaw, where she did some tutoring.[14] Unable to enroll in a regular institution of higher education because she was a woman, she and her sister Bronisława became involved with the clandestine Flying University (sometimes translated as Floating University), a Polish patriotic institution of higher learning that admitted women students.[14][15]

Krakowskie Przedmiescie 66, Warsaw, where Maria did her first scientific work, 1890–91.

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.[14][22] In connection with this, Maria took a position 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.[14][22] While working for the latter family, she fell in love with their son, Kazimierz Żorawski, a future eminent mathematician.[22] His parents rejected the idea of his marrying the penniless relative, and Kazimierz was unable to oppose them.[22] 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. Still, as an old man and a mathematics professor at the Warsaw Polytechnic, he would sit contemplatively before the statue of Maria Skłodowska that had been erected in 1935 before the Radium Institute, which she had founded in 1932.[17][23]

At the beginning of 1890, Bronisława—who a few months earlier had married Kazimierz Dłuski, a Polish physician and social and political activist—invited Maria to join them in Paris. 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.[14] She was helped by her father, who was able to secure a more lucrative position again.[22] All that time she continued to educate herself, reading books, exchanging letters, and being tutored herself.[22] In early 1889 she returned home to her father in Warsaw.[14] She continued working as a governess and remained there until late 1891.[22] 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 Krakowskie Przedmieście 66, near Warsaw's Old Town.[14][15][22] The laboratory was run by her cousin Józef Boguski, who had been an assistant in Saint Petersburg to the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev.[14][22][24]

Life in Paris

In late 1891, she left Poland for France.[25] 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 University of Paris, where she enrolled in late 1891.[26][27] She subsisted on her meagre resources, keeping herself warm during cold winters by wearing all the clothes she had. She focused so hard on her studies that she sometimes forgot to eat.[27] Skłodowska 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 Gabriel Lippmann. Meanwhile, she continued studying at the University of Paris and with the aid of a fellowship she was able to earn a second degree in 1894.[14][27][b]

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.[27] That same year, Pierre Curie entered her life: it was their mutual interest in natural sciences that drew them together.[28] Pierre Curie was an instructor at The City of Paris Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution (ESPCI Paris).[14] They were introduced by Polish physicist Józef Wierusz-Kowalski, who had learned that she was looking for a larger laboratory space, something that Wierusz-Kowalski thought Pierre could access.[14][27] Though Curie did not have a large laboratory, he was able to find some space for Skłodowska where she was able to begin work.[27]

Their mutual passion for science brought them increasingly closer, and they began to develop feelings for one another.[14][27] Eventually, Pierre proposed marriage, but at first Skłodowska did not accept as she was still planning to go back to her native country. Curie, however, declared that he was ready to move with her to Poland, even if it meant being reduced to teaching French.[14] Meanwhile, for the 1894 summer break, Skłodowska returned to Warsaw, where she visited her family.[27] She was still labouring 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 of sexism in academia.[17] A letter from Pierre convinced her to return to Paris to pursue a Ph.D.[27] At Skłodowska's insistence, Curie had written up his research on magnetism and received his own doctorate in March 1895; he was also promoted to professor at the School.[27] A contemporary quip would call Skłodowska "Pierre's biggest discovery".[17]

On 26 July 1895, they were married in Sceaux;[29] neither wanted a religious service.[14][27] Curie's dark blue outfit, worn instead of a bridal gown, would serve her for many years as a laboratory outfit.[27] They shared two pastimes: long bicycle trips and journeys abroad, which brought them even closer. In Pierre, Marie had found a new love, a partner, and a scientific collaborator on whom she could depend.[17]

New elements

Pierre and Marie Curie in the laboratory, c. 1904

In 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen discovered the existence of X-rays, though the mechanism behind their production was not yet understood.[30] In 1896, Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium salts emitted rays that resembled X-rays in their penetrating power.[30] He demonstrated that this radiation, unlike phosphorescence, did not depend on an external source of energy but seemed to arise spontaneously from uranium itself. Influenced by these two important discoveries, Curie decided to look into uranium rays as a possible field of research for a thesis.[14][30]

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 electric charge.[30] Using her husband's electrometer, she discovered that uranium rays caused the air around a sample to conduct electricity. Using this technique, her first result was the finding that the activity of the uranium compounds depended only on the quantity of uranium present.[30] She hypothesized that the radiation was not the outcome of some interaction of molecules but must come from the atom itself.[30] This hypothesis was an important step in disproving the assumption that atoms were indivisible.[30][31]

In 1897, her daughter Irène was born. To support her family, Curie began teaching at the École Normale Supérieure.[25] The Curies did not have a dedicated laboratory; most of their research was carried out in a converted shed next to ESPCI.[25] The shed, formerly a medical school dissecting room, was poorly ventilated and not even waterproof.[32] They were unaware of the deleterious effects of radiation exposure attendant on their continued unprotected work with radioactive substances. ESPCI did not sponsor her research, but she would receive subsidies from metallurgical and mining companies and from various organizations and governments.[25][32][33]

Curie's systematic studies included two uranium minerals, pitchblende and torbernite (also known as chalcolite).[32] 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.[32][34] She began a systematic search for additional substances that emit radiation, and by 1898 she discovered that the element thorium was also radioactive.[30] 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.[25][32]

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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.[35]

Pierre, Irène, Marie Curie, c. 1902

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 instead have gone to Silvanus Thompson. Curie 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.[36] Even so, just as Thompson had been beaten by Becquerel, so Curie 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 Carl Schmidt had published his own finding in Berlin.[37]

At that time, no one else in the world of physics had noticed what Curie 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."[37] 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 tonnes of the ore.[37]

In July 1898, Curie and her husband published a joint paper announcing the existence of an element they named "polonium", in honour of her native Poland, which would for another twenty years remain partitioned among three empires (Russian, Austrian, and Prussian).[14] On 26 December 1898, the Curies announced the existence of a second element, which they named "radium", from the Latin word for "ray".[25][32][38] In the course of their research, they also coined the word "radioactivity".[14]

Pierre and Marie Curie, c. 1903

To prove their discoveries beyond any doubt, the Curies sought to isolate polonium and radium in pure form.[32] 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.[32] 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.[39] The Curies undertook the arduous task of separating out radium salt by differential crystallization. From a tonne of pitchblende, one-tenth of a gram of radium chloride was separated in 1902. In 1910, she isolated pure radium metal.[32][40] She never succeeded in isolating polonium, which has a half-life of only 138 days.[32]

Between 1898 and 1902, the Curies published, jointly or separately, a total of 32 scientific papers, including one that announced that, when exposed to radium, diseased, tumour-forming cells were destroyed faster than healthy cells.[41]

In 1900, Curie became the first woman faculty member at the École Normale Supérieure and her husband joined the faculty of the University of Paris.[42][43] In 1902 she visited Poland on the occasion of her father's death.[25]

In June 1903, supervised by Gabriel Lippmann, Curie was awarded her doctorate from the University of Paris.[25][44] That month the couple were invited to the Royal Institution in London to give a speech on radioactivity; being a woman, she was prevented from speaking, and Pierre Curie alone was allowed to.[45] Meanwhile, a new industry began developing, based on radium.[42] The Curies did not patent their discovery and benefited little from this increasingly profitable business.[32][42]

Nobel Prizes

1903 Nobel Prize portrait 1903 Nobel Prize diploma

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."[25] At first the committee had intended to honour only Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, but a committee member and advocate for women scientists, Swedish mathematician Magnus Gösta Mittag-Leffler, alerted Pierre to the situation, and after his complaint, Marie's name was added to the nomination.[46] Marie Curie was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize.[25]

Curie and her husband declined to go to Stockholm to receive the prize in person; they were too busy with their work, and Pierre Curie, who disliked public ceremonies, was feeling increasingly ill.[45][46] As Nobel laureates were required to deliver a lecture, the Curies finally undertook the trip in 1905.[46] The award money allowed the Curies to hire their first laboratory assistant.[46] Following the award of the Nobel Prize, and galvanized by an offer from the University of Geneva, which offered Pierre Curie a position, the University of Paris gave him a professorship and the chair of physics, although the Curies still did not have a proper laboratory.[25][42][43] Upon Pierre Curie's complaint, the University of Paris relented and agreed to furnish a new laboratory, but it would not be ready until 1906.[46]

Caricature of Marie and Pierre Curie, captioned "Radium", in the London magazine Vanity Fair, December 1904

In December 1904, Curie gave birth to their second daughter, Ève.[46] She hired Polish governesses to teach her daughters her native language, and sent or took them on visits to Poland.[10]

On 19 April 1906, Pierre Curie 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, fracturing his skull and killing him instantly.[25][47] Curie was devastated by her husband's death.[48] On 13 May 1906 the physics department of the University of Paris decided to retain the chair that had been created for her late husband and offer it to Marie. She accepted it, hoping to create a world-class laboratory as a tribute to her husband Pierre.[48][49] She was the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris.[25]

Curie's quest to create a new laboratory did not end with the University of Paris, however. In her later years, she 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.[49] The initiative for creating the Radium Institute had come in 1909 from Pierre Paul Émile Roux, director of the Pasteur Institute, who had been disappointed that the University of Paris was not giving Curie a proper laboratory and had suggested that she move to the Pasteur Institute.[25][50] Only then, with the threat of Curie leaving, did the University of Paris relent, and eventually the Curie Pavilion became a joint initiative of the University of Paris and the Pasteur Institute.[50]

At the first Solvay Conference (1911), Curie (seated, second from right) confers with Henri Poincaré; standing nearby are Rutherford (fourth from right), Einstein (second from right), and Paul Langevin (far right).

In 1910 Curie succeeded in isolating radium; she also defined an international standard for radioactive emissions that was eventually named for her and Pierre: the curie.[49] Nevertheless, in 1911 the French Academy of Sciences failed, by one[25] or two votes,[51] to elect her to membership in the academy. Elected instead was Édouard Branly, an inventor who had helped Guglielmo Marconi develop the wireless telegraph.[52] It was only over half a century later, in 1962, that a doctoral student of Curie's, Marguerite Perey, became the first woman elected to membership in the academy.

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 Curie was Jewish.[25][51] During the French Academy of Sciences elections, she was vilified by the right-wing press as a foreigner and atheist.[51] Her daughter later remarked on the French press's hypocrisy in portraying Curie as an unworthy foreigner when she was nominated for a French honour, but portraying her as a French heroine when she received foreign honours such as her Nobel Prizes.[25]

In 1911 it was revealed that Curie was involved in a year-long affair with physicist Paul Langevin, a former student of Pierre Curie's,[53] a married man who was estranged from his wife.[51] This resulted in a press scandal that was exploited by her academic opponents. Curie (then in her mid-40s) was five years older than Langevin and was misrepresented in the tabloids as a foreign Jewish home-wrecker.[54] When the scandal broke, she was away at a conference in Belgium; on her return, she found an angry mob in front of her house and had to seek refuge, with her daughters, in the home of her friend, Camille Marbo.[51]

1911 Nobel Prize diploma

International recognition for her work had been growing to new heights, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, overcoming opposition prompted by the Langevin scandal, honoured her a second time, with the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.[17] 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."[55] Because of the negative publicity due to her affair with Langevin, the chair of the Nobel committee, Svante Arrhenius, attempted to prevent her attendance at the official ceremony for her Nobel Prize in Chemistry, citing her questionable moral standing. Curie replied that she would be present at the ceremony, because "the prize has been given to her for her discovery of polonium and radium" and that "there is no relation between her scientific work and the facts of her private life".

She was the first person to win or share two Nobel Prizes, and remains alone with Linus Pauling as Nobel laureates in two fields each. 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.[17] Curie's second Nobel Prize enabled her to persuade the French government to support the Radium Institute, built in 1914, where research was conducted in chemistry, physics, and medicine.[50] A month after accepting her 1911 Nobel Prize, she was hospitalised with depression and a kidney ailment. For most of 1912, she avoided public life but did spend time in England with her friend and fellow physicist, Hertha Ayrton. She returned to her laboratory only in December, after a break of about 14 months.[55]

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.[50][55] She was appointed Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris, founded in 1914.[56] She visited Poland in 1913 and was welcomed in Warsaw but the visit was mostly ignored by the Russian authorities. 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.[50][55][57]

World War I

Curie in a mobile X-ray vehicle, c. 1915

During World War I, Curie recognised that wounded soldiers were best served if operated upon as soon as possible.[58] She saw a need for field radiological centres near the front lines to assist battlefield surgeons,[57] including to obviate amputations when in fact limbs could be saved.[59][60] 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").[57] She became the director of the Red Cross Radiology Service and set up France's first military radiology centre, operational by late 1914.[57] Assisted at first by a military doctor and her 17-year-old daughter Irène, Curie directed the installation of 20 mobile radiological vehicles and another 200 radiological units at field hospitals in the first year of the war.[50][57] Later, she began training other women as aides.[61]

In 1915, Curie 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. She provided the radium from her own one-gram supply.[61] It is estimated that over a million wounded soldiers were treated with her X-ray units.[21][50] Busy with this work, she carried out very little scientific research during that period.[50] In spite of all her humanitarian contributions to the French war effort, Curie never received any formal recognition of it from the French government.[57]

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.[61] She did buy war bonds, using her Nobel Prize money.[61] She said:

I am going to give up the little gold I possess. I shall add to this the scientific medals, which are quite useless to me. There is something else: by sheer laziness I had allowed the money for my second Nobel Prize to remain in Stockholm in Swedish crowns. This is the chief part of what we possess. I should like to bring it back here and invest it in war loans. The state needs it. Only, I have no illusions: this money will probably be lost.[58]

She was also an active member in committees of Polonia in France dedicated to the Polish cause.[62] After the war, she summarized her wartime experiences in a book, Radiology in War (1919).[61]

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).[50] In 1921, she was welcomed triumphantly when she toured the United States to raise funds for research on radium. Mrs. William Brown Meloney, after interviewing Curie, created a Marie Curie Radium Fund and raised money to buy radium, publicising her trip.[50][63][c]

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, and the First Lady praised her as an example of a professional achiever who was also a supportive wife.[5][65] 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.[65][66] In 1922 she became a fellow of the French Academy of Medicine.[50] She also travelled to other countries, appearing publicly and giving lectures in Belgium, Brazil, Spain, and Czechoslovakia.[67]

Marie and daughter Irène, 1925

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.[68] Eventually it became one of the world's 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.[68][69]

In August 1922 Marie Curie became a member of the League of Nations' newly created International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation.[70][13] 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.[71] In 1923 she wrote a biography of her late husband, titled Pierre Curie.[72] In 1925 she visited Poland to participate in a ceremony laying the foundations for Warsaw's Radium Institute.[50] Her second American tour, in 1929, succeeded in equipping the Warsaw Radium Institute with radium; the Institute opened in 1932, with her sister Bronisława its director.[50][65] These distractions from her scientific labours, and the attendant publicity, caused her much discomfort but provided resources for her work.[65] In 1930 she was elected to the International Atomic Weights Committee, on which she served until her death.[73] In 1931, Curie was awarded the Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh.[74]

Death

1935 statue, facing the Radium Institute, Warsaw

Curie visited Poland for the last time in early 1934.[17][75] 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.[50][76]

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.[75] She had carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket,[77] and she stored them in her desk drawer, remarking on the faint light that the substances gave off in the dark.[78] Curie was also exposed to X-rays from unshielded equipment while serving as a radiologist in field hospitals during the war.[61] In fact, when Curie's body was exhumed in 1995, the French Office de Protection contre les Rayonnements Ionisants (ORPI) "concluded that she could not have been exposed to lethal levels of radium while she was alive". They pointed out that radium poses a risk only if it is ingested,[79] and speculated that her illness was more likely to have been due to her use of radiography during the First World War.[80]

She was interred at the cemetery in Sceaux, alongside her husband Pierre.[50] 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.[81] 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.[13]

Because of their levels of radioactive contamination, her papers from the 1890s are considered too dangerous to handle.[82] Even her cookbooks are highly radioactive.[83] Her papers are kept in lead-lined boxes, and those who wish to consult them must wear protective clothing.[83] In her last year, she worked on a book, Radioactivity, which was published posthumously in 1935.[75]

Legacy

Marie Curie Monument in Lublin

The physical and societal aspects of the Curies' work contributed to shaping the world of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.[84] 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.[40]

If 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, in both her native and her adoptive country, that were placed in her way because she was a woman. This aspect of her life and career is highlighted in Françoise Giroud's Marie Curie: A Life, which emphasizes Curie's role as a feminist precursor.[17]

She was known for her honesty and moderate lifestyle.[25][84] Having received a small scholarship in 1893, she returned it in 1897 as soon as she began earning her keep.[14][33] She gave much of her first Nobel Prize money to friends, family, students, and research associates.[17] In an unusual decision, Curie intentionally refrained from patenting the radium-isolation process so that the scientific community could do research unhindered.[85] [d] She insisted that monetary gifts and awards be given to the scientific institutions she was affiliated with rather than to her.[84] She and her husband often refused awards and medals.[25] Albert Einstein reportedly remarked that she was probably the only person who could not be corrupted by fame.[17]

Honours and tributes

Tomb of Pierre and Marie Curie, Panthéon, Paris in 2011 Bust of "Maria Skłodowska-Curie", CERN Museum, Switzerland, 2015

As one of the most famous scientists, 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.[86]

In 1995, she became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon, Paris.[13]

In a 2009 poll carried out by New Scientist, she was voted the "most inspirational woman in science". Curie received 25.1 percent of all votes cast, nearly twice as many as second-place Rosalind Franklin (14.2 per cent).[87][88]

On the centenary of her second Nobel Prize, Poland declared 2011 the Year of Marie Curie;[89] and the United Nations declared that this would be the International Year of Chemistry.[90] An artistic installation celebrating "Madame Curie" filled the Jacobs Gallery at San Diego's Museum of Contemporary Art.[91] On 7 November, Google celebrated the anniversary of her birth with a special Google Doodle.[92] On 10 December, the New York Academy of Sciences celebrated the centenary of Marie Curie's second Nobel Prize in the presence of Princess Madeleine of Sweden.[93]

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.[94] Awards that she received include:

• Nobel Prize in Physics (1903, with her husband Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel)[25]
• Davy Medal (1903, with Pierre)[67][95]
• Matteucci Medal (1904, with Pierre)[95]
• Actonian Prize (1907)[96]
• Elliott Cresson Medal (1909)[97]
• Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911)[17]
• Franklin Medal of the American Philosophical Society (1921)[98]

She received numerous honorary degrees from universities across the world.[65] In Poland, she received honorary doctorates from the Lwów Polytechnic (1912),[99] Poznań University (1922), Kraków's Jagiellonian University (1924), and the Warsaw Polytechnic (1926).[90] In 1920 she became the first female member of The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.[100] In 1921, in the U.S., she was awarded membership in the Iota Sigma Pi women scientists' society.[101] In 1924, she became an Honorary Member of the Polish Chemical Society.[102] Marie Curie's 1898 publication with her husband and their collaborator Gustave Bémont[103] of their discovery of radium and polonium was honoured by a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society presented to the ESPCI Paris in 2015.[104][105]

Entities that have been named in her honour include:

• The curie (symbol Ci), a unit of radioactivity, is named in honour of her and Pierre Curie (although the commission which agreed on the name never clearly stated whether the standard was named after Pierre, Marie, or both).[106]
• The element with atomic number 96 was named curium.[107]
• Three radioactive minerals are also named after the Curies: curite, sklodowskite, and cuprosklodowskite.[108]
• The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions fellowship program of the European Union for young scientists wishing to work in a foreign country is named after her.[109]
• In 2007, a metro station in Paris was renamed to honour both of the Curies.[108]
• the sole Polish nuclear reactor in operation, the research reactor Maria, is named after her.[110]
• The 7000 Curie asteroid is also named after her.[108]
• A KLM McDonnell Douglas MD-11 (registration PH-KCC) is named in her honour.[111]
• In 2011, a new Warsaw bridge over the Vistula River was named in her honour.[112]
• In January 2020, Satellogic, a high-resolution Earth observation imaging and analytics company, launched a ÑuSat type micro-satellite; ÑuSat 8, also known as Marie, was named in her honour.[113]
• The Marie-Curie station, a planned underground Réseau express métropolitain (REM) station in the borough of Saint-Laurent in Montreal is named in her honour.[114] A nearby road, Avenue Marie Curie, is also named in her honour.
• The molecular docking task CurieMariedock is a component of the Slovenian distributed computing project SiDock (which runs under the aegis of BOINC); its focus is SARS‑CoV‑2.[115][116][117]
• Mount Curie in New Zealand's Paparoa Range was named after her in 1970 by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.[118]

Several institutions presently bear her name, including the two Curie institutes which she founded: the Maria Sklodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology in Warsaw, and the Institut Curie in Paris. The Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, in Lublin, was founded in 1944; and the Pierre and Marie Curie University (also known as Paris VI) was France's pre-eminent science university, which would later merge to form the Sorbonne University. In Britain, the Marie Curie charity was organized in 1948 to care for the terminally ill.[119] Two museums are devoted to Marie Curie. In 1967, the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Museum was established in Warsaw's "New Town", at her birthplace on ulica Freta (Freta Street).[17] Her Paris laboratory is preserved as the Musée Curie, open since 1992.[120] Curie's likeness has appeared on banknotes, stamps and coins around the world.[108] She was featured on the Polish late-1980s 20,000-złoty banknote[121] as well as on the last French 500-franc note, before the franc was replaced by the euro.[122] Curie-themed postage stamps from Mali, the Republic of Togo, Zambia, and the Republic of Guinea actually show a picture of Susan Marie Frontczak portraying Curie in a 2001 picture by Paul Schroeder.[123] Her likeness or name has appeared on several artistic works. In 1935, Michalina Mościcka, wife of Polish President Ignacy Mościcki, unveiled a statue of Marie Curie before Warsaw's Radium Institute; 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.[17] Her name is included on the Monument to the X-ray and Radium Martyrs of All Nations, erected in Hamburg, Germany in 1936.[124] In 1955 Jozef Mazur created a stained glass panel of her, the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Medallion, featured in the University at Buffalo Polish Room.[125] In 2011, on the centenary of Marie Curie's second Nobel Prize, an allegorical mural was painted on the façade of her Warsaw birthplace. It depicted an infant Maria Skłodowska holding a test tube from which emanated the elements that she would discover as an adult: polonium and radium.

In popular culture

Numerous biographies are devoted to her, including:

• Ève Curie (Marie Curie's daughter), Madame Curie, 1938.
• Françoise Giroud, Marie Curie: A Life, 1987.
• Barbara Goldsmith, Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie, 2005.[90]
• Lauren Redniss, Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, a Tale of Love and Fallout, 2011,[126] adapted into the 2019 British film.

Marie Curie has been the subject of a number of films:

• 1943: Madame Curie, a U.S. Oscar-nominated film by Mervyn LeRoy starring Greer Garson.[72]
• 1997: Les Palmes de M. Schutz, a French film adapted from a play of the same title, and directed by Claude Pinoteau. Marie Curie is played by Isabelle Huppert.[127]
• 2014: Marie Curie, une femme sur le front, a French-Belgian film, directed by Alain Brunard and starring Dominique Reymond.
• 2016: Marie Curie: The Courage of Knowledge, a European co-production by Marie Noëlle starring Karolina Gruszka.
• 2019: Radioactive, a British film by Marjane Satrapi starring Rosamund Pike.

Curie is the subject of the 2013 play, False Assumptions, by Lawrence Aronovitch, in which the ghosts of three other women scientists observe events in her life.[128] Curie has also been portrayed by Susan Marie Frontczak in her play, Manya: The Living History of Marie Curie, a one-woman show which by 2014 had been performed in 30 U.S. states and nine countries.[123]

See also

.mw-parser-output .div-col{margin-top:0.3em;column-width:30em}.mw-parser-output .div-col-small{font-size:90%}.mw-parser-output .div-col-rules{column-rule:1px solid #aaa}.mw-parser-output .div-col dl,.mw-parser-output .div-col ol,.mw-parser-output .div-col ul{margin-top:0}.mw-parser-output .div-col li,.mw-parser-output .div-col dd{page-break-inside:avoid;break-inside:avoid-column}

• Charlotte Hoffman Kellogg, who sponsored Marie Curie's visit to the US
• Eusapia Palladino: Spiritualist medium whose Paris séances were attended by an intrigued Pierre Curie and a skeptical Marie Curie
• Marie Curie Medal
• Genius, television series depicting Einstein's life
• List of female Nobel laureates
• List of female nominees for the Nobel Prize
• List of multiple discoveries (1898 discovery of thorium radioactivity)
• List of Poles (Chemistry)
• List of Poles (Physics)
• List of Polish Nobel laureates
• Maria Skłodowska-Curie Museum, Warsaw, Poland
• Marie Curie Gargoyle (1988), at University of Oregon
• Poles
• Timeline of women in science
• Treatise on Radioactivity, by Marie Curie
• Women in chemistry

Notes

.mw-parser-output .reflist{font-size:90%;margin-bottom:0.5em;list-style-type:decimal}.mw-parser-output .reflist .references{font-size:100%;margin-bottom:0;list-style-type:inherit}.mw-parser-output .reflist-columns-2{column-width:30em}.mw-parser-output .reflist-columns-3{column-width:25em}.mw-parser-output .reflist-columns{margin-top:0.3em}.mw-parser-output .reflist-columns ol{margin-top:0}.mw-parser-output .reflist-columns li{page-break-inside:avoid;break-inside:avoid-column}.mw-parser-output .reflist-upper-alpha{list-style-type:upper-alpha}.mw-parser-output .reflist-upper-roman{list-style-type:upper-roman}.mw-parser-output .reflist-lower-alpha{list-style-type:lower-alpha}.mw-parser-output .reflist-lower-greek{list-style-type:lower-greek}.mw-parser-output .reflist-lower-roman{list-style-type:lower-roman} ^ Poland had been partitioned in the 18th century among Russia, Prussia, and Austria, and it was Maria Skłodowska Curie's hope that naming the element after her native country would bring world attention to Poland's lack of independence as a sovereign state. Polonium may have been the first chemical element named to highlight a political question.[11] ^ Sources vary concerning the field of her second degree. Tadeusz Estreicher, in the 1938 Polski słownik biograficzny entry, writes that, while many sources state she earned a degree in mathematics, this is incorrect, and that her second degree was in chemistry.[14] ^ Marie Skłodowska Curie was escorted to the United States by the American author and social activist Charlotte Hoffman Kellogg.[64] ^ However, University of Cambridge historian of science Patricia Fara writes: "Marie Skłodowska Curie's reputation as a scientific martyr is often supported by quoting her denial (carefully crafted by her American publicist, Marie Meloney) that she derived any personal gain from her research: 'There were no patents. We were working in the interests of science. Radium was not to enrich anyone. Radium... belongs to all people.' As Eva Hemmungs Wirtén pointed out in Making Marie Curie, this claim takes on a different hue once you learn that, under French law, Curie was banned from taking out a patent in her own name, so that any profits from her research would automatically have gone to her husband, Pierre." Patricia Fara, "It leads to everything" (review of Paul Sen, Einstein's Fridge: The Science of Fire, Ice and the Universe, William Collins, April 2021, .mw-parser-output cite.citation{font-style:inherit;word-wrap:break-word}.mw-parser-output .citation q{quotesmw-parser-output .citation:target{background-color:rgba(0,127,255,0.133)}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-free a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-free a{background:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Lock-green.svg")right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .id-lock-registration a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-registration a{background:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Lock-gray-alt-2.svg")right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-subscription a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-subscription a{background:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Lock-red-alt-2.svg")right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .cs1-ws-icon a{background:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg")right 0.1em center/12px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .cs1-code{color:inherit;background:inherit;border:none;padding:inherit}.mw-parser-output .cs1-hidden-error{display:none;color:#d33}.mw-parser-output .cs1-visible-error{color:#d33}.mw-parser-output .cs1-maint{display:none;color:#3a3;margin-left:0.3em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-format{font-size:95%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-left{padding-left:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-right{padding-right:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .citation .mw-selflink{font-weight:inherit}ISBN 978 0 00 826279 2, 305 pp.), London Review of Books, vol. 43, no. 18 (23 September 2021), pp. 20–21 (quotation, p. 21).

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Archived from the original on 2 April 2018. Retrieved 6 May 2017. ^ "MarieCurie | Royal Academy". www.royalacademy.dk. Archived from the original on 2 August 2020. Retrieved 23 April 2020. ^ "Professional Awards". Iota Stigma Pi: National Honor Society for Women in Chemistry. Archived from the original on 23 March 2019. Retrieved 16 December 2014. ^ "President of honour and honorary members of PTChem". Archived from the original on 20 April 2020. Retrieved 23 February 2020. ^ Curie, M.P.; Curie, Mme .P; Bémont, M.G. (26 December 1898). "sur une nouvelle substance fortement redio-active, contenue dans la pechblende". Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences (in French). Paris. 127: 1215–1217. Archived from the original on 29 March 2017. Retrieved 28 March 2017. ^ "2015 Awardees". American Chemical Society, Division of the History of Chemistry. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign School of Chemical Sciences. 2015. Archived from the original on 21 June 2016. Retrieved 1 July 2016. ^ "Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award" (PDF). American Chemical Society, Division of the History of Chemistry. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign School of Chemical Sciences. 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 September 2016. Retrieved 1 July 2016. ^ Paul W. Frame (October–November 1996). "How the Curie Came to Be". Oak Ridge Associated Universities. Archived from the original on 8 October 2021. Retrieved 16 November 2021. ^ "Curium". Chemistry in its element. Royal Society of Chemistry. Archived from the original on 9 August 2016. Retrieved 27 August 2012. ^ a b c d Borzendowski, Janice (2009). Sterling Biographies: Marie Curie: Mother of Modern Physics. Sterling Publishing Company, Inc. p. 37. ISBN 978-1-4027-5318-3. Archived from the original on 30 November 2015. Retrieved 7 September 2015. ^ "Marie Curie Actions" (PDF). European Commission. 2012. p. 5. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 June 2013. Retrieved 10 September 2012. ^ "IEA – reaktor Maria". Institute of Atomic Energy, Poland. Archived from the original on 19 March 2012. Retrieved 27 August 2012. ^ "Picture of the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 aircraft". Airliners.net. Archived from the original on 18 March 2009. Retrieved 27 April 2011. ^ "Most Marii Skłodowskiej-Curie, Polska » Vistal Gdynia". www.vistal.pl. Archived from the original on 29 March 2016. Retrieved 26 January 2017. ^ "China lofts 4 satellites into orbit with its second launch of 2020". space.com. 16 January 2020. Archived from the original on 30 January 2020. Retrieved 30 January 2020. ^ "Premier coup d'œil aux stations du REM" (in French). Metro Media. 5 December 2016. Archived from the original on 28 January 2019. Retrieved 15 July 2020. ^ "Interview of Boinc User". 8 December 2020. ^ "Active projects last 24 hours". wuprop.boinc-af.org. ^ "SiDock@Home New application: CurieMarieDock - The Scottish Boinc Team". www.tsbt.co.uk. ^ "Place name detail: Mount Curie". New Zealand Gazetteer. New Zealand Geographic Board. Retrieved 21 August 2022. ^ Charity Commission. Marie Curie (charity), registered charity no. 207994 Archived 8 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine. ^ Curie, Institut (17 December 2010). "Curie museum | Institut Curie". Curie.fr. Archived from the original on 6 September 2012. Retrieved 27 August 2012. ^ Council of Scientific Industrial Research (India) (1997). Science reporter. Council of Scientific Industrial Research. p. 117. Archived from the original on 4 May 2016. Retrieved 15 March 2016. ^ Letcher, Piers (2003). Eccentric France. Bradt Travel Guides. p. 59. ISBN 978-1-84162-068-8. Archived from the original on 20 November 2015. Retrieved 7 September 2015. ^ a b Main, Douglas (7 March 2014). "This Famous Image Of Marie Curie Isn't Marie Curie". Popular Science www.popsci.com. Archived from the original on 10 November 2014. Retrieved 15 November 2014. ^ "Museum of Modern Imaging". Archived from the original on 21 February 2019. Retrieved 27 November 2016. ^ "Marie Curie Medallion Returns to UB Polish Collection By Way of eBay". News Center, University of Buffalo. 11 September 2007. Archived from the original on 18 October 2012. Retrieved 27 August 2012. ^ "Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, a Tale of Love and Fallout". Cosmopolitanreview.com. 3 July 2011. Archived from the original on 14 August 2011. Retrieved 27 August 2012. ^ Sandra Brennan (2012). "Les-Palmes-de-M-Schutz (1997)". Movies TV Dept. The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2 November 2012. Retrieved 27 August 2012. ^ Mixing Science With Theatre Archived 12 May 2014 at the Wayback Machine – Ottawa Sun, March 2013

Further reading

Nonfiction

• Curie, Marie (1921). The Discovery of Radium . Poughkeepsie: Vassar College.
• Curie, Eve (2001). Madame Curie: A Biography. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-306-81038-1.
• Dzienkiewicz, Marta (2017). Polish Pioneers: Book of Prominent Poles. Rzezak, Joanna; Karski, Piotr; Monod-Gayraud, Agnes. Warsaw. ISBN 9788365341686. OCLC 1060750234.
• Giroud, Françoise (1986). Marie Curie: A life. Holmes Meier. ISBN 978-0-8419-0977-9. translated by Lydia Davis.
• Kaczorowska, Teresa (2011). Córka mazowieckich równin, czyli, Maria Skłodowska-Curie z Mazowsza [Daughter of the Mazovian Plains: Maria Skłodowska–Curie of Mazowsze] (in Polish). Związek Literatów Polskich, Oddział w Ciechanowie. ISBN 978-83-89408-36-5. Retrieved 15 March 2016.
• Opfell, Olga S. (1978). The Lady Laureates : Women Who Have Won the Nobel Prize. Metuchen, N.J. London: Scarecrow Press. pp. 147–164. ISBN 978-0-8108-1161-4.
• Pasachoff, Naomi (1996). Marie Curie and the Science of Radioactivity. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-509214-1.
• Quinn, Susan (1996). Marie Curie: A Life. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-201-88794-5.
• Redniss, Lauren (2010). Radioactive: Marie Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-135132-7.
• Wirten, Eva Hemmungs (2015). Making Marie Curie: Intellectual Property and Celebrity Culture in an Age of Information. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-23584-4. Retrieved 15 March 2016.

Fiction

• Olov Enquist, Per (2006). The Book about Blanche and Marie. New York: Overlook. ISBN 978-1-58567-668-2. A 2004 novel by Per Olov Enquist featuring Maria Skłodowska-Curie, neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, and his Salpêtrière patient "Blanche" (Marie Wittman). The English translation was published in 2006.

External links

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• Newspaper clippings about Marie Curie in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
• Marie Curie on Nobelprize.org

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Marie and Pierre Curie

• Curie constant
• Curie temperature
• Curie's law
• Curie–Weiss law
• Curium
• Piezoelectricity
• Polonium
• Radium
• Treatise on Radioactivity

Links to related articles

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• e

1903 Nobel Prize laureatesChemistry

• Svante Arrhenius (Sweden)

Literature (1903)

• Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (Norway)

Peace

• Randal Cremer (Great Britain)

Physics

• Henri Becquerel (France)
• Pierre Curie (France)
• Marie Skłodowska-Curie (Poland/France)

Physiology or Medicine

• Niels Ryberg Finsen (Denmark)

.mw-parser-output .nobold{font-weight:normal}Nobel Prize recipients 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908

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1911 Nobel Prize laureatesChemistry

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie (Poland/France)

Literature (1911)

• Maurice Maeterlinck (Belgium)

Peace

• Tobias Asser (Netherlands)
• Alfred Hermann Fried (Austria)

Physics

• Wilhelm Wien (Germany)

Physiology or Medicine

• Allvar Gullstrand (Sweden)

Nobel Prize recipients 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916

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• e

Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry1901–1925

• 1901: Jacobus van 't Hoff
• 1902: Emil Fischer
• 1903: Svante Arrhenius
• 1904: William Ramsay
• 1905: Adolf von Baeyer
• 1906: Henri Moissan
• 1907: Eduard Buchner
• 1908: Ernest Rutherford
• 1909: Wilhelm Ostwald
• 1910: Otto Wallach
• 1911: Marie Curie
• 1912: Victor Grignard / Paul Sabatier
• 1913: Alfred Werner
• 1914: Theodore Richards
• 1915: Richard Willstätter
• 1916
• 1917
• 1918: Fritz Haber
• 1919
• 1920: Walther Nernst
• 1921: Frederick Soddy
• 1922: Francis Aston
• 1923: Fritz Pregl
• 1924
• 1925: Richard Zsigmondy

1926–1950

• 1926: Theodor Svedberg
• 1927: Heinrich Wieland
• 1928: Adolf Windaus
• 1929: Arthur Harden / Hans von Euler-Chelpin
• 1930: Hans Fischer
• 1931: Carl Bosch / Friedrich Bergius
• 1932: Irving Langmuir
• 1933
• 1934: Harold Urey
• 1935: Frédéric Joliot-Curie / Irène Joliot-Curie
• 1936: Peter Debye
• 1937: Norman Haworth / Paul Karrer
• 1938: Richard Kuhn
• 1939: Adolf Butenandt / Leopold Ružička
• 1940
• 1941
• 1942
• 1943: George de Hevesy
• 1944: Otto Hahn
• 1945: Artturi Virtanen
• 1946: James B. Sumner / John Northrop / Wendell Meredith Stanley
• 1947: Robert Robinson
• 1948: Arne Tiselius
• 1949: William Giauque
• 1950: Otto Diels / Kurt Alder

1951–1975

• 1951: Edwin McMillan / Glenn T. Seaborg
• 1952: Archer Martin / Richard Synge
• 1953: Hermann Staudinger
• 1954: Linus Pauling
• 1955: Vincent du Vigneaud
• 1956: Cyril Hinshelwood / Nikolay Semyonov
• 1957: Alexander Todd
• 1958: Frederick Sanger
• 1959: Jaroslav Heyrovský
• 1960: Willard Libby
• 1961: Melvin Calvin
• 1962: Max Perutz / John Kendrew
• 1963: Karl Ziegler / Giulio Natta
• 1964: Dorothy Hodgkin
• 1965: Robert Woodward
• 1966: Robert S. Mulliken
• 1967: Manfred Eigen / Ronald Norrish / George Porter
• 1968: Lars Onsager
• 1969: Derek Barton / Odd Hassel
• 1970: Luis Federico Leloir
• 1971: Gerhard Herzberg
• 1972: Christian B. Anfinsen / Stanford Moore / William Stein
• 1973: Ernst Otto Fischer / Geoffrey Wilkinson
• 1974: Paul Flory
• 1975: John Cornforth / Vladimir Prelog

1976–2000

• 1976: William Lipscomb
• 1977: Ilya Prigogine
• 1978: Peter D. Mitchell
• 1979: Herbert C. Brown / Georg Wittig
• 1980: Paul Berg / Walter Gilbert / Frederick Sanger
• 1981: Kenichi Fukui / Roald Hoffmann
• 1982: Aaron Klug
• 1983: Henry Taube
• 1984: Robert Merrifield
• 1985: Herbert A. Hauptman / Jerome Karle
• 1986: Dudley R. Herschbach / Yuan T. Lee / John Polanyi
• 1987: Donald J. Cram / Jean-Marie Lehn / Charles J. Pedersen
• 1988: Johann Deisenhofer / Robert Huber / Hartmut Michel
• 1989: Sidney Altman / Thomas Cech
• 1990: Elias Corey
• 1991: Richard R. Ernst
• 1992: Rudolph A. Marcus
• 1993: Kary Mullis / Michael Smith
• 1994: George Olah
• 1995: Paul J. Crutzen / Mario Molina / F. Sherwood Rowland
• 1996: Robert Curl / Harold Kroto / Richard Smalley
• 1997: Paul D. Boyer / John E. Walker / Jens Christian Skou
• 1998: Walter Kohn / John Pople
• 1999: Ahmed Zewail
• 2000: Alan J. Heeger / Alan MacDiarmid / Hideki Shirakawa

2001–present

• 2001: William Knowles / Ryoji Noyori / K. Barry Sharpless
• 2002: John B. Fenn / Koichi Tanaka / Kurt Wüthrich
• 2003: Peter Agre / Roderick MacKinnon
• 2004: Aaron Ciechanover / Avram Hershko / Irwin Rose
• 2005: Robert H. Grubbs / Richard R. Schrock / Yves Chauvin
• 2006: Roger D. Kornberg
• 2007: Gerhard Ertl
• 2008: Osamu Shimomura / Martin Chalfie / Roger Y. Tsien
• 2009: Venkatraman Ramakrishnan / Thomas A. Steitz / Ada E. Yonath
• 2010: Richard F. Heck / Akira Suzuki / Ei-ichi Negishi
• 2011: Dan Shechtman
• 2012: Robert Lefkowitz / Brian Kobilka
• 2013: Martin Karplus / Michael Levitt / Arieh Warshel
• 2014: Eric Betzig / Stefan Hell / William E. Moerner
• 2015: Tomas Lindahl / Paul L. Modrich / Aziz Sancar
• 2016: Jean-Pierre Sauvage / Fraser Stoddart / Ben Feringa
• 2017: Jacques Dubochet / Joachim Frank / Richard Henderson
• 2018: Frances Arnold / Gregory Winter / George Smith
• 2019: John B. Goodenough / M. Stanley Whittingham / Akira Yoshino
• 2020: Emmanuelle Charpentier / Jennifer Doudna
• 2021: David MacMillan / Benjamin List
• 2022: Carolyn R. Bertozzi / Morten P. Meldal / Karl Barry Sharpless

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Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Physics1901–1925

• 1901: Röntgen
• 1902: Lorentz / Zeeman
• 1903: Becquerel / P. Curie / M. Curie
• 1904: Rayleigh
• 1905: Lenard
• 1906: J. J. Thomson
• 1907: Michelson
• 1908: Lippmann
• 1909: Marconi / Braun
• 1910: Van der Waals
• 1911: Wien
• 1912: Dalén
• 1913: Kamerlingh Onnes
• 1914: Laue
• 1915: W. L. Bragg / W. H. Bragg
• 1916
• 1917: Barkla
• 1918: Planck
• 1919: Stark
• 1920: Guillaume
• 1921: Einstein
• 1922: N. Bohr
• 1923: Millikan
• 1924: M. Siegbahn
• 1925: Franck / Hertz

1926–1950

• 1926: Perrin
• 1927: Compton / C. Wilson
• 1928: O. Richardson
• 1929: De Broglie
• 1930: Raman
• 1931
• 1932: Heisenberg
• 1933: Schrödinger / Dirac
• 1934
• 1935: Chadwick
• 1936: Hess / C. D. Anderson
• 1937: Davisson / G. P. Thomson
• 1938: Fermi
• 1939: Lawrence
• 1940
• 1941
• 1942
• 1943: Stern
• 1944: Rabi
• 1945: Pauli
• 1946: Bridgman
• 1947: Appleton
• 1948: Blackett
• 1949: Yukawa
• 1950: Powell

1951–1975

• 1951: Cockcroft / Walton
• 1952: Bloch / Purcell
• 1953: Zernike
• 1954: Born / Bothe
• 1955: Lamb / Kusch
• 1956: Shockley / Bardeen / Brattain
• 1957: C. N. Yang / T. D. Lee
• 1958: Cherenkov / Frank / Tamm
• 1959: Segrè / Chamberlain
• 1960: Glaser
• 1961: Hofstadter / Mössbauer
• 1962: Landau
• 1963: Wigner / Goeppert Mayer / Jensen
• 1964: Townes / Basov / Prokhorov
• 1965: Tomonaga / Schwinger / Feynman
• 1966: Kastler
• 1967: Bethe
• 1968: Alvarez
• 1969: Gell-Mann
• 1970: Alfvén / Néel
• 1971: Gabor
• 1972: Bardeen / Cooper / Schrieffer
• 1973: Esaki / Giaever / Josephson
• 1974: Ryle / Hewish
• 1975: A. Bohr / Mottelson / Rainwater

1976–2000

• 1976: Richter / Ting
• 1977: P. W. Anderson / Mott / Van Vleck
• 1978: Kapitsa / Penzias / R. Wilson
• 1979: Glashow / Salam / Weinberg
• 1980: Cronin / Fitch
• 1981: Bloembergen / Schawlow / K. Siegbahn
• 1982: K. Wilson
• 1983: Chandrasekhar / Fowler
• 1984: Rubbia / Van der Meer
• 1985: von Klitzing
• 1986: Ruska / Binnig / Rohrer
• 1987: Bednorz / Müller
• 1988: Lederman / Schwartz / Steinberger
• 1989: Ramsey / Dehmelt / Paul
• 1990: Friedman / Kendall / R. Taylor
• 1991: de Gennes
• 1992: Charpak
• 1993: Hulse / J. Taylor
• 1994: Brockhouse / Shull
• 1995: Perl / Reines
• 1996: D. Lee / Osheroff / R. Richardson
• 1997: Chu / Cohen-Tannoudji / Phillips
• 1998: Laughlin / Störmer / Tsui
• 1999: 't Hooft / Veltman
• 2000: Alferov / Kroemer / Kilby

2001–
present

• 2001: Cornell / Ketterle / Wieman
• 2002: Davis / Koshiba / Giacconi
• 2003: Abrikosov / Ginzburg / Leggett
• 2004: Gross / Politzer / Wilczek
• 2005: Glauber / Hall / Hänsch
• 2006: Mather / Smoot
• 2007: Fert / Grünberg
• 2008: Nambu / Kobayashi / Maskawa
• 2009: Kao / Boyle / Smith
• 2010: Geim / Novoselov
• 2011: Perlmutter / Schmidt / Riess
• 2012: Wineland / Haroche
• 2013: Englert / Higgs
• 2014: Akasaki / Amano / Nakamura
• 2015: Kajita / McDonald
• 2016: Thouless / Haldane / Kosterlitz
• 2017: Weiss / Barish / Thorne
• 2018: Ashkin / Mourou / Strickland
• 2019: Peebles / Mayor / Queloz
• 2020: Penrose / Genzel / Ghez
• 2021: Parisi / Hasselmann / Manabe
• 2022: Aspect / Clauser / Zeilinger

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People whose names are used in chemical element names

• Vasili Samarsky-Bykhovets
• Johan Gadolin
• Amerigo Vespucci
• Marie Curie
• Pierre Curie
• George Berkeley
• Albert Einstein
• Enrico Fermi
• Dmitri Mendeleev
• Alfred Nobel
• Ernest Lawrence
• Ernest Rutherford
• Glenn T. Seaborg
• Niels Bohr
• Lise Meitner
• Wilhelm Röntgen
• Nicolaus Copernicus
• Georgy Flyorov
• Robert Livermore
• Yuri Oganessian

Scientists whose names are used as SI units · non SI units · Physical constants

• v
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• e

Scientists whose names are used as unitsSI base units

• André-Marie Ampère (ampere)
• William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin (kelvin)

SI derived units

• Henri Becquerel (becquerel)
• Anders Celsius (degree Celsius)
• Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (coulomb)
• Michael Faraday (farad)
• Louis Harold Gray (gray)
• Joseph Henry (henry)
• Heinrich Hertz (hertz)
• James Prescott Joule (joule)
• Isaac Newton (newton)
• Georg Ohm (ohm)
• Blaise Pascal (pascal)
• Werner von Siemens (siemens)
• Rolf Maximilian Sievert (sievert)
• Nikola Tesla (tesla)
• Alessandro Volta (volt)
• James Watt (watt)
• Wilhelm Eduard Weber (weber)

Non-SI metric (cgs) units

• Anders Jonas Ångström (angstrom)
• Peter Debye (debye)
• Loránd Eötvös (eotvos)
• Galileo Galilei (gal)
• Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (gauss)
• William Gilbert (gilbert)
• Heinrich Kayser (kayser)
• Johann Heinrich Lambert (lambert)
• Samuel Langley (langley)
• James Clerk Maxwell (maxwell)
• Hans Christian Ørsted (oersted)
• Jean Léonard Marie Poiseuille (poise)
• Sir George Stokes, 1st Baronet (stokes)
• John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh (rayl)

Imperial and US
customary units

• Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (degree Fahrenheit)
• Johann Heinrich Lambert (foot-lambert)
• William John Macquorn Rankine (degree Rankine)

Non-systematic units

• Alexander Graham Bell (bel)
• Marie Curie (curie)
• Pierre Curie (curie)
• John Dalton (dalton)
• Michael Faraday (faraday)
• Heinrich Mache (Mache)
• John Napier (neper)
• René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (degree Réaumur)
• Wilhelm Röntgen (roentgen)
• J. J. Thomson (thomson)
• Evangelista Torricelli (torr)

List of scientists whose names are used as units · Scientists whose names are used in physical constants · People whose names are used in chemical element names Authority control General

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National libraries

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• Australia
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• Netherlands
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Biographical dictionaries

• Germany

Scientific databases

• CiNii (Japan)
• Mathematics Genealogy Project
• zbMATH
  • 2

Other

• Faceted Application of Subject Terminology
• MusicBrainz artist
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• RERO (Switzerland)
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Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marie_Curieoldid=1121344617p>My writing interests are general, with expertise in science, history, biographies, and how-to topics. I have written over 70 books.

Who Was Marie Curie?

Marie Curie struggled against difficult circumstances in Russian controlled Poland to achieve her dreams of becoming a scientist. She was bright young woman and did well in school, but because she was a woman, she was not able to attend the university. Undeterred, she worked for six years as a governess to save money for her education and to help fund her older sister’s education in France. Finally, her time came to study in Paris where she would live on a pauper’s wage, sometimes fainting in class from hunger, while a physics student at Sorbonne University. Here she would graduate first in her class in physics and second in mathematics, passing by the young men and women of her day.

Continuing her education toward a doctorate in physics, she struggled, with only the help of her husband, Pierre, to process thousands of pounds of ore to obtain just one gram of the highly radioactive element radium. Processing the ore involved months and months of back breaking labor stirring pots with long iron rods full of a boiling brew of chemicals and ore. Her hard work and dedication paid off as she is the only women who has received two Nobel Prizes, though the years of exposure to radiation would eventually cause her death from cancer. Her story is truly inspirational, a classic battle against the odds to achieve greatness that will be remembered for countless generations to come.

Growing Up in Poland

Marie Sklodowska was born in Warsaw, Poland, on November 7, 1867. She received her early education and scientific training from her father, who was a physics teacher in a government controlled secondary school. Marie later wrote of her father, “I found…ready help [in mathematics and physics] from my father, who loved science and had to teach it to himself.” Marie was a very bright young lady and did very well in her studies. Poland at the time was under strict control of the Russian czar Alexander II, and the Sklodowska family suffered under the harsh hand of the Russians. Marie’s father lost his job as a teacher and they were forced to take in boarders to survive financially. Her mother, also a teacher, died of tuberculosis in Marie’s youth, which devastated the family.

Education for young women past high school was not possible in Poland at that time. The Tsarist policy insisted on higher education being conducted in the Russian language, with a tight control on the textbooks and curriculum. Lack of subservience to the policies was met with swift retribution from the Russian officials. Hungry for knowledge, 17-year-old Marie sought out higher education in the secret Polish Floating University. In this informal school, students were given instruction in biology and sociology in private homes, out of the watchful eye of the Russian overlords.

Her older brother and sister left for Paris in search of an education while Marie stayed behind working as a governess and helping with her ailing father. She taught herself as best she could with books and saved her money to join her siblings in Paris.

Paris and Pierre Curie

In 1891 she had enough money and moved to Paris to study physics at Sorbonne University. She lived very frugally during her time at the school and on occasion fainted in class from hunger. As much as possible, she did her school work in the public library where it was warm and well lit. After library hours, she returned to her small attic apartment in the Latin quarter. For much of the time she got by on buttered bread and tea, supplemented by a few eggs from a creamery. She graduated in 1893 at the top of her class in physics and continued her education to be awarded a Master’s degree in mathematics a year later.

Marie’s professor had found some work for her doing industrial research on the magnetic properties of various types of steel. She was given the name of a young chemistry teacher named Pierre Curie, who had done research on magnetism and might be of help. Pierre Curie had already made a name for himself with his discovery of piezoelectricity; that is, that an electric potential will appear across certain crystals when they are put under mechanical pressure. When the two met, Marie was a twenty-six-year-old graduate student and Pierre, eight years her senior, was an established physics and chemistry teacher who was starting to build a reputation as an international man of science.

Pierre was a tall man who dressed in loose, unfashionable clothes, spoke softly, and possessed a brilliant mind and a lonely heart. He was fascinated by this young Polish woman who understood physics—something he found terribly exciting and quite unusual. He wasted no time in asking to see her again and the two became very close. They were married in a civil ceremony on July 26, 1895. This simple ceremony would begin a life-long personal and professional relationship that would launch a scientific dynasty.

Wilhelm Rontgen’s serendipitous discovery of X-rays rocked the scientific world. Rays emitted from a cathode tube that were able to see through solid objects was indeed something worthy of further investigation. Shortly after the discovery of X-rays, the French physicist Henri Becquerel discovered rays, much like X-rays, that emanated from uranium salts. When Becquerel made his discovery of the strange rays coming from uranium salts, the phenomenon was very much a mystery.

The Curies settled into a minimal three-room flat with few furnishings. Before long, Marie found herself pregnant and gave birth to a daughter, Irène, in September of 1897. With a young baby under her arm, Marie began to search for a topic for her Ph.D. research. After learning of the discovery of the fellow Parisian, Marie decided to investigate further Becquerel’s new rays as a possible topic for a Ph.D. thesis. However, without funding or a place to work, it would be an uphill struggle. Pierre wanted to help his wife and was able to locate an unheated storeroom in which she could work near him at the School of Physics and Chemistry.

The Study of Radiation

Pierre was very talented with construction of scientific instruments, and he devised a method of measuring the radioactivity of a material by the amount of ionization the material produced in the air. The more intense source of radiation caused a higher level of ionization in the air around the sample, which in turn increased the conductivity of the air, thus allowing the Curies’ instrument to measure the tiny amount of electrical current that flowed through the electrified air around the sample. They now had a way of quantitatively measuring radioactive material to determine its strength. By studying various uranium compounds using the instrument, she showed that a sample’s radioactivity was in proportion to the amount of uranium contained in the material. This pointed the way to proving that radioactivity was a property of the atom rather than that of a compound.

Marie launched into a systematic investigation of other compounds that might have this strange new property and found that thorium also emitted rays of the same type as those of uranium. She rationalized that if this property belonged to two types of atoms, it might belong to many more and coined the term radioactivity.

The Hunt for Radium

Marie made an interesting discovery in connection with uranium minerals pitchblende and chalcolite as some samples seemed to be much more radioactive than could be explained by the amount of uranium present. She concluded that there must be an unknown element in the ore that was much more radioactive than uranium. Since all the known elements, with the exception of uranium, in the pitchblende ore were not radioactive, this led her to conclude that there was a small amount of a very intense radioactive material present—thus the search began for this mystery element.

Professor Lippmann, who oversaw Marie’s work, communicated the observation to the Academy of Sciences. In April 1898, a note appeared in the Proceedings announcing Marie’s discovery of a new highly radioactive element probably present in pitchblende. Pierre, realizing the importance of the discovery of a new element, abandoned his own research to assist his wife, giving her as much of his free time as he could outside of his teaching duties.

By July of 1898 the couple had isolated enough of this new element from the pitchblende, which was hundreds of times more radioactive than uranium. They called the new element polonium after Marie’s homeland of Poland. Even the discovery of the radioactive polonium did not account for the still unknown element that produced so much radiation within the ore, however, so the search continued.

Late in 1898 they detected a sill more radioactive substance within the ore and named it radium. Unfortunately, the amount of the radium contained in the ore was extremely small. To prove that they had discovered a new element, the Curies had to provide enough of this new element so that it could be spectroscopically verified, and the physical and chemical properties could be determined. To produce enough radium to prove their discovery, tons of the ore would need to be refined just to obtain a small quantity, less than a gram, of the radium.

The Hard Work Begins

The mines at St. Joachimsthal in Bohemia had been mined for centuries for their silver and other precious ores. As a result of mining, there was tons of waste ore piled up in heaps that was rich in uranium. The mine owners were very happy to give the waste material to the Curies if they only paid the shipping cost, which they gladly did from their savings.

The couple set up a refining operation in an old wooden shed with a leaky roof, no floor, and very little heating. One chemist described their workshop as “it looks more like a stable or a potato cellar.” The physics school allowed them to use the shed for three years so they could process the ore. The couple worked tirelessly to purify the ore to extract the more intense radioactive material found in the ore. Processing the ore involved months and months of hard labor tending to simmering pots of ore and chemicals. Each pot contained forty pounds of radioactive mineral ore and chemicals used to reduce the ore. Marie and Pierre would spend many hours stirring the boiling pots with long iron rods. Over that period, Marie lost 15 pounds due to the hard manual labor.

Marie wrote about that time: “One of our pleasures was to enter our workshop at night; then, all around us, we would see the luminous silhouettes of the beakers and capsules that contained our products.” During this time, they also had to care for their daughter, Irène, who would follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a great scientist. By 1902 they had succeeded in preparing a tenth of a gram of radium after processing several thousand pounds of ore. Eventually they would process eight tons of the pitchblende ore to obtain a full gram of radium salt. Despite the possibility of obtaining wealth from patenting the refining process, they gave the secret away as part of their dedication to science. During this time, they also made numerous discoveries regarding the properties of the new element. To finance their research, Pierre kept his job as a chemistry teacher and Marie taught part-time at a girl’s school.

World War I

As the First World War washed across Europe in 1914, Marie saw the need to put the technology of X-rays and radiation to work to save the lives of the wounded soldiers. The X-ray images would help locate shrapnel and bullets, assisting the surgeons greatly as they attempted to save lives. Just as she had put her determined spirit into the hunt for radium, she constructed a mobile radiography unit, which came to be known as petites Curies or “Little Curies.” Much of her work on the X-ray machines was accomplished at the Radium Institute.

By the end of 1914, she had become the director of the Red Cross Radiology Service and set up France’s first military radiology center. With the assistance of military doctors and 17-year-old Irène, she directed the installation of 20 mobile radiological vehicles and 200 radiological units at field hospitals. Though her own research had to be put on hold during the war, it has been estimated that over a million wounded soldiers were treated with her X-ray units, saving countless lives. After the war, she wrote about her war-time experiences in her 1919 book Radiology in War.

Throughout the war effort, Irène was Marie’s premier assistant in the frantic effort to bring the military doctors up to speed on the use of radiology. Irène took the work seriously by earning a nursing diploma. By the fall of September 1916, she was working with other nurses and training a radiological team. A woman of many talents like her mother, she managed during the war years to complete her studies at the Sorbonne with distinction in mathematics, physics, and chemistry—Irène was becoming her mother.

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

— Marie Curie

The Nobel Prize

1903 was a big year for the Curies, with Marie writing her doctoral dissertation and she and Pierre sharing the Nobel Prize in physics with Henri Becquerel for their work on radioactivity. They also visited London where they were hosted by the emanate scientist Lord Kelvin. While there, Pierre gave a lecture at the Royal Institution. While Marie was not allowed to give the presentation, she was the first woman to attend a session of the distinguished organization.

Tragedy struck the family in 1906 as Pierre was accidentally killed when he was run over by a heavy horse-drawn wagon during a rainstorm. Marie and, by now, her two daughters were overwhelmed by the death of Pierre. Marie wrote in her journal of the horrific scene as her husband’s body was brought from the accident into their home to be prepared for burial, “Pierre, my Pierre, there you are calm like a poor wounded one sleeping with his head wrapped up. And your face is still sweet and serene, it’s still you enclosed in a dream from which you cannot emerge.”

During the midst of her mourning, the Sorbonne appointed Marie to succeed her husband at the university, making her the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne. She wrote in her journal, “They have offered that I should take your place, my Pierre…I accepted.” She knew Pierre would have wanted her to continue with the work they both loved.

Marie vigorously pursued additional research and was awarded a second Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1911 for her work on radium and its compounds. In 1914 she was placed in charge of the radioactivity laboratory of the new Institute of Radium at the Sorbonne—a position she would hold until her final days.

Madame Curie Story: How Radium Was Discovered in a Shed

Final Years and Legacy

After the end of the war, Marie returned to her unfinished business at the Radium Institute. Under Marie’s guidance the Radium Institute became a thriving research center. She picked the researchers herself and could be a tough taskmaster. One new assistant said that she told him, “You will be my slave for a year, then you will begin work on a thesis under my direction, unless I send you to specialize in a laboratory abroad.” Marie would do anything to advance the cause of the Institute, even submitting herself to two things she detested: travel and publicity.

By 1921, Marie was an international scientific celebrity whose name was only eclipsed by that of Albert Einstein. France now had their modern Joan of Arc and her name was Madame Curie. She undertook a trip to the United States to raise funds for her radium research and was received at the White House by President Warren Harding, who presented her with a gram of radium. This was no small gift as the value of the ultra-rare radium was around a $100,000. During her visit to the U.S., an editorial appearing in the magazine the Delineator greatly exaggerated Curie’s work, stating, “The foremost American scientists say that Madame Curie, provided with a single gram of radium, may advance science to the point where cancer to a very large extent may be eliminated.”

The years of exposure to radioactive materials and the radiation from X-rays during World War I had taken a toll on her body. Before her death, she was nearly blind from cataracts and was chronically ill. On July 4, 1934, at age sixty-six, she died at the Sancellemoz Sanatorium in Passy, Haute-Savoie, from aplastic anemia and was buried next to her husband. Her exposure to radiation was so extreme that even today, some of her books and clothes are too radioactive to be handled without safety equipment.

In 1995, in recognition of their many contributions, Marie and Pierre Curie’s ashes were enshrined in the Pantheon in Paris. Marie was the first woman to receive this honor for her own achievements. Her office and laboratory in the Curie Pavilion of the Radium Institute have been preserved as part of the Curie Museum.

Marie Curie’s work prepared the way for the discovery of the neutron by Sir James Chadwick, the unraveling of the structure of the atom by Ernest Rutherford, and the discovery of artificial radiation in 1934 by her daughter Irène and her husband Frederic Joliot. Madame Curie was a trailblazer for young women, encouraging them to enter the physical sciences as equals to their male peers. The knowledge brought to the world by the Curies, of the radioactive nature of atoms, would go on to provide an unlimited safe source of energy via nuclear power plants and provide invaluable diagnostic tools for medical doctors; however, there was a dark side to nature’s potent secret as it unleashed the most destructive force man has ever known, the atom bomb.

References

• Asimov, Isaac. Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. Second Revised Edition. Doubleday Company, Inc. 1982.
• Crowther, J.R. Six Great Scientists: Copernicus Galileo Newton Darwin Marie Curie Einstein. Barnes Noble Books. 1995.
• Brian, Denis. The Curies: A Biography of the Most Controversial Family in Science. John Wiley Sons, Inc. 2005.
• Cropper, William H. Great Physicists: The Life and Times of Leading Physicists from Galileo o Hawking. Oxford University Press. 2001.
• Pflaum, Rosalynd. Grand Obsession: Madame Curie and Her World. Doubleday. 1989.

© 2018 Doug West

Readmikenow on November 15, 2018:

Absolutely fantastic article! I truly enjoyed reading it. Marie curie is an inspiration on many different levels. Very well written.

Doug West (author) from Missouri on November 15, 2018:

Mary:

Marie Curie did overcome so many obstacles to accomplish so much. Makes my life looks simple.

Mary Norton from Ontario, Canada on November 15, 2018:

Yes, it was hard for a woman, a Polish woman to make her mark so it was honourable of Pierre not to accept the prize unless they give it to both of them. She is truly admirable.

Doug West (author) from Missouri on November 14, 2018:

Tim:

Thanks. She gave the ultimate sacrifice for science. Her daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, followed in her footsteps and also died of cancer due to the years of exposure to radiation she experienced during her research.

Tim Truzy from U.S.A. on November 14, 2018:

Great article about an important scientific figure who sacrificed her life to discover so many interesting things for us today. I didn't know she had won two Nobel Peace Prizes, but Marie Curie was definitely unique and dedicated.

Thanks, Doug for a great article which is inspiring and informative.

Much respect,

Tim