Marie And Pierre Curie
Marie Sklodowska ( a.k.a.) was born in Warsaw in 1867. Her parents were
teachers
who believed strongly in the importance of education. Marie had her
first
lessons in physics and chemistry from her father. She had a brilliant
aptitude
for study and a great thirst for knowledge; however, advanced study
was not
possible for women in Poland. Marie dreamed of being able to study at
the
Sorbonne in Paris, but this was beyond the means of her family. To
solve the
problem, Marie and her elder sister, Bronya, came to an
arrangement: Marie
should go to work as a governess and help her sister with
the money she managed
to save so that Bronya could study medicine at the
Sorbonne. When Bronya had
taken her degree she, in her turn, would contribute
to the cost of Marie's
studies. So it was not until she was 24 that Marie
came to Paris to study
mathematics and physics. Bronya was now married to a
doctor of Polish origin,
and it was at Bronya's urgent invitation to come and
live with them that Marie
took the step of leaving for Paris. By then she had
been away from her studies
for six years, nor had she had any training in
understanding French. But her
keen interest in studying and her joy at being
at the Sorbonne with all its
opportunities helped her surmount all
difficulties. To save herself a two-hour
journey, she rented a little attic
in the Quartier Latin. There the cold was so
intense that at night she had to
pile on everything she had in the way of
clothing so as to be able to sleep.
But as compensation for all her privations
she had total freedom to be able
to devote herself completely to her studies.
After two years, in 1893,
she took her degree in physics, and in the following
year, in 1894, she came
second in a degree in mathematics. After three years she
had brilliantly
passed examinations in physics and mathematics. Her goal was to
take a
teacher's diploma and then to return to Poland. There occurred an event
that
was to be of decisive importance in her life. She met Pierre Curie. He
was
35 years old, eight years older, and an internationally known
physicist, but an
outsider in the French scientific community a serious
idealist and dreamer whose
greatest wish was to be able to devote his life to
scientific work. He was
completely indifferent to outward distinctions and a
career. He earned a living
as the head of a laboratory at the School of
Industrial Physics and Chemistry
where engineers were trained and he lived
for his research into crystals and
into the magnetic properties of bodies at
different temperatures. His father,
who was a physician, educated him with
the help of a private teacher. Pierre
with help from his brother discovered
piezoelectricity, which means that a
difference in electrical potential is
seen when mechanical stresses are applied
on certain crystals, including
quartz. Such crystals are now used in
microphones, electronic apparatus and
clocks. Marie and Pierre discovered that
they had a fondness for each other.
They married at the town hall at Sceaux,
where Pierre's parents lived. They
were given money as a wedding present, the
invested it for some bikes. The
two mostly study and often took bike rides to
relax. With persuasion by Marie
and Pierre’s father, Pierre submitted his
doctoral thesis in 1895. It
concerned "different types of magnetism, and
contained a presentation of the
connection between temperature and magnetism
that is now known as Curie's
Law". In 1896 Marie passed her teacher's diploma,
coming first in her group.
Pierre and Marie had a daughter Irene who was born in
September 1987.
Pierre had managed to arrange that Marie should be allowed to
work in the
school's laboratory, and in 1897 she finished a number of
investigations into
the magnetic properties of steel on behalf of an industrial
association.
Deciding after a time to go on doing research, Marie looked around
for a
subject for a doctoral thesis. Marie decided to make a
systematic
investigation of the mysteries "uranium rays, after fellow
colleague
Becquerel’s discovered that gases through which the rays pass
become able to
conduct electricity. She had an excellent help at her disposal
an electrometer
for the measurement of weak electrical currents, which was
constructed by Pierre
and his brother, and was based on the piezoelectric
effect. Just after a few
days Marie discovered that thorium gives off the
same rays as uranium. Her
lasting systematic studies of the different
chemical compounds gave the
surprising result that the strength of the
radiation did not depend on the
compound that was being studied. It depended
only on the amount of uranium or
thorium. Chemical compounds of the same
element generally had very different
chemical and physical properties: one
uranium compound is a dark powder, the
another is a transparent yellow
crystal. But Marie wondered what was affective
for the radiation they gave
off. What was only the amount of uranium they
contained. The she drew the
conclusion that the ability to radiate did not
depend on the order of the
atoms in a molecule, it must be linked to the
interior of the atom itself.
This discovery was absolutely revolutionary. From a
conceptual point of view
it is her most important contribution to the
development of physics. She now
went through the whole periodic system. Her
findings were that only uranium
and thorium gave off this radiation. Marie's
next idea, simple but brilliant,
was to study the natural ores pitchblende
contain uranium and thorium. She
got samples from geological museums and found
that the ores were four to five
times more active than the amount of uranium. It
was her guess that a new
element was far more active and than uranium was
present in small amounts in
the ore. Interesting new ideas were opening up.
Pierre gave up his
research into crystals and symmetry in nature, which he was
strongly,
involved in and joined Marie in her project. They found that the
strong
activity came with the fractions containing bismuth or barium. When
Marie
continued her analysis of the bismuth fractions, she found that every
time she
managed to take away an amount of bismuth, a residue with greater
activity was
left. At the end of June 1898, they had a substance that was
about 300 times
more strongly active than uranium. In the work they published
in July 1898, they
write, ' We thus believe that the substance that we have
extracted from
pitchblende contains a metal never known before, akin to
bismuth in its analytic
properties. If the existence of this new metal is
confirmed, we suggest that it
should be called polonium after the name of the
country of origin of one of us'.
It was also in this work that they used
the term radioactivity for the first
time. After another few months of work,
the Curies informed the l'Académie des
Sciences, on 26 December 1898,
that they had demonstrated a reason for having
come upon an additional very
active substance that behaved chemically almost
like pure barium. They
suggested the name of radium for the new element. In
order to prove the new
elements, the Curies would have to produce them in
reliable amounts, they
would have to determine their atomic weight and
preferably isolate them. To
do this the Curies would need tons of the costly
pitchblende. Marie
considered that radium ought to be left in the residue. A
sample was sent to
them from Bohemia and the slag was found to be even more
active than the
original mineral. Several tons of pitchblende was later put at
their disposal
through the good offices of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. It
was now that
there began the heroic époque in their life that has become
legendary. The
two needed more room for their research, the principle at the
school Pierre
used to work at helped him. He let them use a large shed, which
was not being
used. They’re the work of separation and analysis began. Marie
performed the
chemical separations, while Pierre did the measurements after each
successive
step. Physically it was heavy work for Marie. She processed 20 kilos
of raw
material at a time. She had to clear away pine needles and debris, then
she
had to undertake the work of separation. In that shed they performed
their
experience and Marie writes that they spent the best times of their
lives.
Sometimes they could not do their processing outdoors, so the
harmful gases had
to be let out through the open windows. The only furniture
was an old, worn pine
table where Marie worked with her costly radium
fractions. Since they did not
have any shelter in which to store their
precious products the latter were
arranged on tables and boards. The
dangerous gases contained, among other
things, radon - the radioactive gas
which is a matter of concern to us today
since small amounts are emitted from
certain kinds of building materials. Marie
finally from several tons of the
original material - isolated one decigram of
almost pure radium chloride and
had determined radium's atomic weight as 225.
She presented the findings
of this work in her doctoral thesis on 25 June 1903.
Later the two were
to receive the Nobel Prize a few years later: Marie’s
former teacher that
they showed their work to expressed the opinion that the
findings represented
the greatest scientific contribution ever made in a
doctoral thesis. Pierre
had been invited to the Royal Institution in London
where Pierre gave a
lecture. Before the crowded auditorium he showed how radium
rapidly affected
photographic plates wrapped in paper, how the substance gave
off heat in the
semi-darkness he demonstrated the spectacular light effect. He
described the
results that he got after trying them out on himself. He had
wrapped a sample
of radium salts in a thin rubber covering and bound it to his
arm for ten
hours, then had studied the wound, which resembled a burn, day by
day. After
52 days a permanent gray scar remained. Pierre mentioned that
this
observation maybe a treatment for cancer. Fifty years afterwards the
presence of
radioactivity was discovered on the premises and certain surfaces
had to be
cleaned. Pierre was ill. His legs shook and sometimes he found it
hard to stand
upright. He was in much pain. He consulted a doctor who
diagnosed neurasthenia
and prescribed strychnine. And the skin on Marie's
fingers was cracked and
scarred. Both of them constantly suffered from
fatigue. Evidently they had no
idea that the radiation could have a harmful
effect on their general state of
health. Nobel Prize In 1903 Marie and Pierre
Curie were awarded half the Nobel
Prize in Physics. The citation was, in
recognition of the extraordinary services
they have completed by their
researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by
Professor Henri
Becquerel'. Henri Becquerel was awarded the other half for his
discovery of
spontaneous radioactivity. The health of both Marie and Pierre
Curie gave
rise to concern. Their friends tried to make them work less. Their
dearest
wish was to have a new laboratory but no such laboratory was in
prospect.
They never got a new laboratory they always worked in empty room at
schools.
On 19 April 1906 Pierre Curie was run over by a horse-drawn wagon near
the
Pont Neuf in Paris and was killed. Now Marie was left alone with
two
daughters, Irene aged 9 and Eve aged 2. She was in shock. When she was
offered
support, she refused it. She then became the first woman ever
appointed to teach
at the Sorbonne. After some months, in November 1906, she
gave her first
lecture. The large amphitheater was packed. As well as
students, her audience
included people from far and near, journalists and
photographers were in
attendance. Many people had expected something unusual
to occur. Perhaps some
demonstration of the historic occasion. When Marie
entered, thin, pale and
tense, she was met by an ovation. However the
expectations of something other
than a clear and factual lecture on physics
were not fulfilled. But Marie's
personality, her aura of simplicity and
competence made a great impression.
Irene was now 9 years old. Marie had
definite ideas about the upbringing and
education of children that she now
wanted to put into practice. Marie organized
a private school with the
parents themselves acting as teachers. Professors
accordingly taught a group
of some ten children. The little group became a kind
of school for the elite
with a great emphasis on science. In 1908 Marie, as the
first woman ever, was
appointed to become a professor at the Sorbonne. Marie had
opened up a
completely new field of research: radioactivity. Various aspects of
it were
being studied all over the world In 1914, Marie was in the process
of
beginning to lead one of the departments in the Radium Institute
established
jointly by the University of Paris and the Pasteur Institute,
After the Peace
Treaty in 1918, her Radium Institute, which had been
completed in 1914, could
now be opened. It became France's most
internationally celebrated research
institute in the inter-war years.. She
had to devote a lot of time to
fund-raising for her Institute because she
could not afford the uranium. She
also became deeply involved when she had
become a member of the Commission for
Intellectual Cooperation of the
League of Nations and served as its
vice-president for a time. There she met
Missy Wiskell In the last ten years of
her life Marie had the joy of seeing
her daughter Irène and her son-in-law
Frederic Joliet do successful
research in the laboratory. She lived to see their
discovery of artificial
radioactivity, but not to hear that they had been
awarded the Nobel Prize in
Chemistry for it in 1935. Marie Curie died of
leukemia on 4 July 1934. Pierre
and Marie Curie’s work is greatly respected in
Physics and in
Chemistry.
Bibliography
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