Marie Curie
Marie Curie
Marie Salomea Skłodowska–Curie, born Maria Salomea Skłodowska, Polish: ; 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 a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. Her husband, Pierre Curie, was a co-winner of 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.
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
Marie Curie, the Scientist
Marie Curie is remembered for her discovery of radium and polonium, and her huge contribution to finding treatments for cancer. This work continues to inspire our charity's mission to help people and their families living with a terminal illness make the most of the time they have together by delivering expert care, emotional support and research.
The Curies became research workers at the School of Chemistry and Physics in Paris and there they began their pioneering work into invisible rays given off by uranium – a new phenomenon which had recently been discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel.
He had shown that the rays were able to pass through solid matter, fog and photographic film and caused air to conduct electricity.
Marie also noticed that samples of a mineral called pitchblende, which contains uranium ore, were a great deal more radioactive than the pure element uranium. Further work convinced her the very large readings she was getting could not be caused by uranium alone – there was something else in the pitchblende. Since nobody had ever found it before, it could only be present in tiny quantities, and it seemed to be very radioactive. Marie was convinced she had found a new chemical element – other scientists doubted her results.
Pierre and Marie Curie set about working to search for the unknown element. They ground up samples of pitchblende, dissolved them in acid, and began to separate the different elements present, using the standard analytical chemistry techniques of the time. Eventually, they extracted a black powder 330 times more radioactive than uranium, which they called polonium . Polonium was a new chemical element, atomic number 84.
When the Curies investigated further, they found that the liquid left behind after they had extracted polonium was still extremely radioactive. They realised that pitchblende contained another new element, far more radioactive than polonium, but present in even smaller quantities.
In 1898, the Curies published strong evidence supporting the existence of the new element – which they called radium – but they still had no sample of it. Pitchblende is an expensive mineral, because it contains valuable uranium, and Marie needed a lot of it.
She got in touch with a factory in Austria that removed the uranium from pitchblende for industrial use and bought several tonnes of the worthless waste product, which was even more radioactive than the original pitchblende, and was much cheaper. Marie set about processing the pitchblende to extract the tiny quantities of radium. This involved working on a much larger scale than before, with 20kg batches of the mineral – grinding, dissolving, filtering, precipitating, collecting, redissolving, crystallising and recrystallising.
The work was heavy and physically demanding – and involved dangers the Curies did not appreciate. During this time they began to feel sick and physically exhausted; today we can attribute their ill-health to the early symptoms of radiation sickness. At the time they persevered in ignorance of the risks, often with raw and inflamed hands because they were continually handling highly radioactive material.
In 1902 Marie eventually isolated radium (as radium chloride), determining its atomic weight as 225.93. The journey to the discovery had been long and arduous.
In 1903 Marie and Pierre were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics jointly with Henri Becquerel for their combined, though separate, work on radioactivity.
In the same year, Marie passed her doctorate thesis in Physics.
In 1906 Marie's life was struck by tragedy when Pierre was killed in a street accident after being knocked down by a horse and cart. Her indomitable spirit, however, kept her working and she went on to succeed him in his Chair as Professor at the Sorbonne, as well as carrying on lecturing where he had left off.
Her determination and remarkable endeavours led to a second Nobel Prize in 1911, this time in chemistry for creating a means of measuring radioactivity. Not long after, Sorbonne built the first radium institute with two laboratories; one for study of radioactivity under Marie Curie's direction, and the other for biological research into the treatment of cancer.
Sources
Marie Curie, the Scientist - https://www.mariecurie.org.uk/who/our-history/marie-curie-the-scientist#:~:text=Marie%20Curie%20is%20remembered%20for,to%20finding%20treatments%20for%20cancer.
Marie Curie - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie
Photo #2 - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/Marie_Curie_c._1920s.jpg/800px-Marie_Curie_c._1920s.jpg