Marie Curie was a Polish-born physicist and chemist who discovered radioactivity and pioneered the study of radioactive elements. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only person to receive two Nobel Prizes in different fields. She achieved remarkable feats in the world of science. Therefore, the biography of Marie Curie and her discoveries are quite interesting to explore.
In this article we are going to tell you the entire biography of Marie Curie, her most important exploits and discoveries.
Biography of Marie Curie
She was the youngest of five children of Bronislawa Boguska and Wladyslaw Sklodowski, a teacher of mathematics and physics. She began attending the J. Sikorska boarding school when she was 10 years old. Later, she attended a girls' school and graduated with a gold medal on June 12, 1883.
Possibly due to depression, she fell ill and spent a year in the countryside with her father's relatives, and the following year in Warsaw with her father, where she was tutored because she was barred from higher education institutions due to her gender. Along with her sister Broniswara, she enrolled in the secretive Uniwersytet Latajacy, a higher education institution for female students. In 1891, she went to Paris and changed her name to Marie . Also in 1891, she enrolled in the science program at the Sorbonne in Paris. Two years later, she graduated with a degree in physics, ranking first in her class. She also studied and acted in amateur theater, balancing her studies with acting.
Married to Pierre Curie
In 1894, she met Pierre Curie. At the time, they were both working in the field of magnetism. Pierre Curie, 35, was a rising star in the French physics community. He immediately fell in love with the elegant and almost austere 27-year-old Polish woman who shared his altruistic beliefs about science. After Pierre proposed and persuaded her to live in Paris, they celebrated their wedding on July 26, 1895, in a surprisingly simple way: no party, no wedding rings, no white dress . The bride, dressed in a simple blue suit, began her honeymoon cycling with the groom along a French road.
The couple had two daughters, one of whom also won the Nobel Prize: Irène Joliot-Curie and her husband Frédéric received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 for the acquisition of new radioactive elements.
What did Marie Curie discover?
Marie Curie was intrigued by the newly discovered type of radiation. Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays in 1895, and Antoine-Henri Becquerel discovered in 1896 that uranium emits a similar, invisible radiation. Nevertheless, she began to study uranium radiation and, using the piezoelectric technique invented by Pierre, carefully measured the radiation in pitchblende, a uranium-containing mineral. When she saw that the mineral's radiation was more intense than that of uranium itself, she realized that there must be an unknown element, even more radioactive than uranium. Marie Curie was the first to use the term "radioactive" to describe an element that emits radiation when its nucleus decays.
The director of Pierre Curie accepted that Marie set up as a laboratory a unit of the Municipal School of Physics and Chemistry that served as a warehouse and engine room. Marie Curie began her research there, using the electrometer invented by Pierre and his brother to measure the intensity of the current caused by the various uranium and thorium compounds, immediately verifying that the activity of the uranium salts depended only on the amount of uranium present, regardless of any other circumstances.
From a scientific standpoint, this was her most important discovery, as it demonstrated that radiation could only originate from the atom itself, independent of any added substance or chemical reaction. But Marie Curie didn't dwell on this result ; she extended her investigations to pitchblende and chalcolite, finding that they were more active than uranium. From this, she deduced the existence in these minerals of another new substance responsible for this greater activity.
Her husband completed his study of magnetism, joined his wife's, and in 1898 the couple announced the discovery of two new elements: polonium (named after her country of birth) and radium. For the next four years, the couple worked under highly unstable conditions, processing a ton of pitch amphibole, from which they isolated one gram of radium.
First female Nobel laureate
In 1903, they shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Becquerel for their discovery of radioactive elements. For them, however, this glory was a "disaster"—both very reserved, consumed by the same passion for research—when they found themselves sidelined from research and saw their laboratories swept away by anachronisms. They all suffered when the public besieged them and their modest Paris pavilion was invaded by journalists and photographers. Increasingly, they found themselves working in post offices, taking on tasks that bored them on Sundays. Marie Curie became the first woman to receive the prize.
In 1904, Pierre Curie was appointed professor of physics at the University of Paris, and in 1905, he became a member of the French Academy of Sciences. These positions were not usually held by women, and Marie did not enjoy the same support. On April 19, 1906, Pierre was killed by a carriage as he crossed Dauphin Street. Since then, Marie has been in charge of his courses and continued her own research.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
In 1911, Marie was involved in a scandal when she entered into a relationship with the married physicist Paul Langevin. Some media point to "husband thieves" and "foreigners." That same year, she received the second Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her research on radium and its compounds. In 1914, she was appointed dean of the Paris Broadcasting Institute and the Curie Institute was established.
In May 1921, thanks to the American journalist Mary Meloney, she and her daughters moved to the United States, where, thanks to funds raised by the Polish community and some American millionaires, they were able to support the Radium Institute. One gram of radium was obtained. In addition, she received extra money to purchase laboratory equipment.
Marie Curie suffered from pernicious anemia from prolonged exposure to radiation. After going blind, she died on July 4, 1934 at the Sancellemoz clinic near Passy, ​​Haute-Savoie, France. She is buried in the Sceaux cemetery, a few kilometers south of Paris, next to her husband.
I hope that with this information you can learn more about the biography of Marie Curie and her exploits.
