Marie (Madam) Curie

Marie (Madam) Curie was born in Warsaw, Congress Kingdom of Poland, a Russian Empire.  She died in Sallanches, France. Curie is most remembered in the scientific community for her work on radioactivity and twice a winner of the Nobel Prize. 

Curie was awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics, which was the third Nobel awarded since the first in 1901. She was the sole winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and she is the only woman to win the award in two different fields. 

From childhood, she was remarkable for her prodigious memory. At the age of 16, she won a gold medal on completion of her secondary education at the Russian lycée. Because her father, a teacher of mathematics and physics, lost his savings through bad investment. She had to take work as a teacher as a result. At the same time, she took part clandestinely in the nationalist “free university,” reading in Polish to women workers.

 At the age of 18, she took a post as governess, where she suffered an unhappy love affair. From her earnings, she was able to finance her sister Bronisława’s medical studies in Paris. 

She was appointed as lecturer in physics, at the École Normale Supérieure for girls in Sèvres (1900).  There she introduced a method of teaching based on experimental demonstrations. In December 1904, she was appointed chief assistant in the laboratory directed by Pierre Curie, her husband.

Their marriage (July 25, 1895) marked the start of a partnership that was soon to achieve results of world significance. Most notable was the discovery of polonium (so called by Marie in honor of her native land) in 1898. A few months later they discovered radium. 

Following Henri Becquerel’s discovery (1896) of a new phenomenon called “radioactivity”, Curie decided, as a subject for a thesis, to find out if the property discovered in uranium was to be found in other matter. She discovered that this was true for thorium. 

Marie Curie received her Doctor of Science in June 1903. With Pierre, she was awarded the Davy Medal of the Royal Society. Also in 1903, they shared with Becquerel the Nobel Prize for Physics for the discovery of radioactivity.

The death of Pierre Curie in 1906 was a bitter blow to Marie Curie. It was also a decisive turning point in her career. She was to devote all her energy to completing alone the scientific work that they had undertaken. On May 13, 1906, she was appointed to the professorship that had been left vacant on her husband’s death. She was the first woman to teach in the Sorbonne.

In 1908, she became titular professor, and in 1910, her fundamental treatise on radioactivity was published. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1911 in Chemistry, for the isolation of pure radium. In 1914, she saw the completion of the building of the laboratories of the Radium Institute (Institute du Radium) at the University of Paris.

Accompanied by her two daughters in 1921, Curie made a triumphant journey to the United States, where President Warren G. Harding presented her with a gram of radium bought as the result of a collection among American women. She gave lectures, especially in Belgium, Brazil, Spain, and Czechoslovakia. She was made a member of the International Commission on Intellectual Co-operation by the Council of the League of Nations.

In addition, she had the satisfaction of seeing the development of the Curie Foundation in Paris. The was also there for the inauguration of her sister Bronisława as director of the Warsaw of the Radium Institute in 1932. 

Throughout World War I, Curie, with the help of her daughter Irène, devoted herself to the development of the use of X-radiography. In 1918, the Radium Institute began to operate in earnest, and it was to become a universal center for nuclear physics and chemistry.

Curie, a member of the Academy of Medicine in 1922, committed her research to the study of the chemistry of radioactive substances and the medical applications of these substances.

Marie Curie, together with Irène Joliot-Curie, wrote the entry on radium for the 13th edition (1926) of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

One of Curie’s outstanding achievements was to have understood the need to accumulate intense radioactive sources.  The stockpile was needed not only to treat illness, but also to maintain an abundant supply for research in nuclear physics.  The resultant stockpile was an unrivaled instrument until the appearance after 1930 of particle accelerators.

The Paris at the Radium Institute ultimately accumulated a stock of 1.5 grams of radium over a period of several years. The stock of radium D and polonium made a decisive contribution to the success of the experiments undertaken in the years around 1930. In particular were of those performed by Irène Curie in conjunction with Frédéric Joliot, her husband. This work prepared the way for the discovery of the neutron by Sir James Chadwick and, above all, for the discovery in 1934 by Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie of artificial radioactivity.

A few months after this discovery, Marie Curie died of aplastic anemia caused by the action of radiation. Her contribution to physics had been immense, not only in her own work, the importance of which had been demonstrated by the award to her of two Nobel Prizes, but because of her influence on subsequent generations of nuclear physicists and chemists.

In 1995, Marie Curie’s ashes were enshrined in the Panthéon in Paris. She was the first woman to receive this honor for her own achievements.

 

 

Her office and laboratory in the Curie Pavilion of the Radium Institute are preserved as the Curie Museum.

We are privileged to include her in our ECG Library & Hall of Fame – Women of Science.

 

Sources: Britannica / Wikipedia / Nobel Prize.org