CURIE, MARIE

CURIE, MARIE (1867–1934), Polish physicist and chemist.

Maria Sklodowska was born in Warsaw, Poland, the youngest of six children. Maria's father taught mathematics and physics and her mother ran a private girls' school. Although Maria was obviously a brilliant student, advanced studies were not accessible to women in Poland, then a part of the Russian Empire. Knowing that their family could not afford to send them to study abroad, Maria and her sister Bronya agreed that Maria would work as a governess so that Bronya could study medicine in Paris. When Bronya graduated, Maria would join her and enroll at the Sorbonne.

In 1891, Maria Sklodowska moved to Paris to study mathematics and physics. While a student at the Sorbonne, she adopted the French form of her name. Within three years she had earned master's degrees in physics and mathematics, placing first among the candidates in physics and second in mathematics. Before meeting French physicist Pierre Curie (1859–1906), Sklodowska planned to earn a teaching certificate and return to Poland. One year later, in July 1895, Marie and Pierre Curie were married in a simple civil ceremony. Marie Curie gave birth to Irène in 1897 and Ève in 1904.

the discovery of radioactivity, polonium, and radium

In 1896, when French physicist Antoine Henri Becquerel (1852–1908) attempted to determine whether X-rays, which had been discovered the previous year by the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen (1845–1923), were related to

the phenomenon known as luminescence, he discovered a new type of radiation emitted by uranium salts. Although Becquerel's discovery attracted little attention at first, Marie Curie decided that a systematic investigation of "Becquerel rays" would be a suitable topic for her doctoral research. After investigating the radiation released by uranium compounds, Curie systematically tested other materials to see which elements might give off similar radiation. Only thorium and uranium produced spontaneous radioactivity, but certain natural ores, including pitchblende and chalcolite, seemed to give off more radiation than predicted by measurements of their uranium and thorium content. Curie concluded that these ores must contain unknown elements that were intrinsically more radioactive than uranium and thorium.

From her initial studies of uranium and thorium, Marie Curie arrived at a remarkable theoretical insight, one that challenged long-held beliefs about the nature of the atom. Curie realized that the strength of radiation was a function of the amount of uranium or thorium in a sample, and it was independent of the specific chemical compound being studied. Ordinarily, an element exhibits very different chemical and physical properties when it combines with other elements to form chemical compounds. Curie concluded that the release of radioactivity was an intrinsic property of the interior of the atom, rather than a function of the arrangement of atoms in a molecule. It was Marie Curie who introduced the term radioactivity ("ray action").

In 1898, the Curies announced the existence of two new radioactive elements, which they called polonium and radium. These elements were orders of magnitude stronger sources of radioactivity than uranium and thorium, but they were present in crude ores in very minute amounts. In order to isolate sufficient quantities of the new elements for the determination of their chemical properties and atomic weights, the Curies needed tons of pitchblende. (A ton of uranium ore contains about one ounce of radium.) Marie Curie's isolation of minute quantities of radium took years of extremely arduous labors under difficult conditions.

While processing tons of pitchblende, the Curies worked in a large, unoccupied shed. Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald (1853–1932), an eminent German chemist, described it as more like a stable or a potato shed than a laboratory. Marie Curie later said that the years she and Pierre spent in that unheated, drafty, leaky, malodorous shed were the best and happiest of their lives. She also treasured memories of coming back to the shed at night and seeing their partially purified preparations glowing in the dark with a lovely pale blue light. Nevertheless, the four years of drudgery involved in the isolation of radium left both of the Curies perpetually ill and fatigued from what was later called radiation sickness. Marie Curie presented her findings as a doctoral dissertation in June 1903. Members of her thesis committee commended her discoveries and theoretical insights as probably the most significant scientific contributions ever made in a doctoral dissertation. For her work on radium, Marie Curie, the first woman in Europe to receive a doctorate in science, was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science "with great distinction."

The potential uses of radium, especially in medicine, were quickly recognized and entrepreneurs built factories for large-scale production. The Curies generously supplied samples of radium to fellow researchers and gave advice about its preparation to industrialists. Because they believed that scientific knowledge should be shared with the world at large, the Curies did not patent their discoveries. During the last decades of her life, Marie Curie apparently had some regrets about this decision. Years of arduous fund-raising activities forced her to realize how much her work would have been expedited by a reliable source of funding. She actively supported a resolution developed by the Commission on Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations to protect the intellectual property rights of scientists and inventors.

In 1903 the Academy of Sciences debated nominating Becquerel and Pierre Curie for the Nobel prize in Physics. Warned about these proceedings by a colleague, Pierre Curie made it clear that a Nobel prize for research in radioactivity that failed to acknowledge Marie would be a travesty. Although both Curies shared the 1903 Nobel prize in Physics with Becquerel, they were too ill from radiation sickness to attend the award ceremony. Despite their poor health and constant fatigue, the Curies did not believe that radiation could have a detrimental effect on human health. Researchers at the time handled radioactive substances without any precautions. In 1905, the Curies made the trip to Stockholm, where Pierre delivered the Nobel Lecture. The Nobel Institution was pleased by the universal interest in the romantic story of the Curies, but Marie was intensely disturbed by the media attention and invasion of privacy.

In 1904, Pierre Curie was finally granted an appointment to a professorship at the Sorbonne, and Marie was given the title Chief of the Laboratory, as well as a small salary. When university officials offered to nominate Pierre for the prestigious Legion of Honor, he refused the award and said he would rather have a laboratory. Tragically, Pierre died before the laboratory was completed. On 19 April 1906, he was struck and killed by a horse-drawn cart while crossing the street. Marie Curie was devastated, but when she was offered a pension she refused it, insisting that she wanted to work. Marie Curie took over Pierre's courses, thus becoming the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne. Nevertheless, it took two years for the university to officially appoint her as Professor. She also became Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris.

the nobel prize in chemistry

When Marie Curie won the 1911 Nobel prize in Chemistry for the discovery of radium and polonium, and the isolation and characterization of pure radium, she became the first person to receive two Nobel prizes. In her Nobel Lecture, Curie clearly enunciated her own ideas and discoveries, as well as her unique collaboration with Pierre Curie. Despite her remarkable scientific achievements, the year in which Curie received her second Nobel prize was one of great distress. She was attacked in the right-wing French press for becoming a candidate for the Academy of Sciences and her relationship to Paul Langevin (1872–1946), a French physicist, who was married and the father of four children. The medical work carried out by Curie and her daughter Irène during World War I was significant in restoring her place as a muchloved icon in French history. Curie worked ceaselessly to equip vehicles that acted as mobile field hospitals, as well as X-ray installations near the battlefront. She also trained people to use diagnostic X-ray technology.

After the end of World War I in 1918, Curie's Radium Institute became France's premier research laboratory, but Curie had to devote a lot of time and energy to the task of raising funds for the Institute. Tours of the United States in 1921 and 1929, supported by the Federation of American Women's Clubs, raised enough money to purchase radium for Marie Curie's Institute in France and for a Radium Institute in Warsaw. Marie Curie was the author or co-author of many scientific articles and books including Investigations on Radioactive Substances (1904), Treatise on Radioactivity (1910), Radioactivity and the War (1921), Pierre Curie (including autobiographical notes by Marie Curie, 1923), Radioactivity (1935), and a collection of Pierre's work (1908).

Marie Curie died of leukemia on 4 July 1934. In keeping with her desire for privacy, she was buried next to Pierre Curie in a simple private ceremony. Albert Einstein (1879–1955) paid tribute to Marie Curie as "the only person to be uncorrupted by fame." On 20 April 1995, the bodies of Marie and Pierre Curie were ceremoniously transferred to the Panthéon in Paris. French President François Mitterrand (1916–1996) sponsored this honor as a way of acknowledging the equality of women and men. Marie Curie was the first woman to receive this honor on her own merit.

See alsoChemistry; France; Science and Technology.

bibliography

Primary Sources

Curie, Marie. Recherches sur les Substances Radioactives. Paris, 1903. Marie Curie's doctoral dissertation, presented at the Sorbonne in 1903.

——. Pierre Curie. Translated by Charlotte and Vernon Kellogg. New York, 1923. Only the American edition received Marie Curie's permission to include her autobiographical notes.

——. Oeuvres de Marie Sklodowska Curie. Edited by Irène Joliot-Curie. Warsaw, 1954.

Secondary Sources

Brush, Stephen G. "Women in Physical Science: From Drudges to Discoverers." The Physics Teacher 23 (January 1985): 11–19. This classic article explores the "Marie Curie Syndrome" and the negative effects caused by stereotypical descriptions of female scientists.

Curie, Eve. Madame Curie, A Biography. Translated by Vincent Sheean. New York, 1937. Intensely personal, moving biography, published by her daughter only three years after Curie's death. A new edition, with a preface by Mitchell Wilson, was published in London, 1968.

Giroud, Françoise. Marie Curie, a Life. Translated by Lydia Davis. New York, 1986. Not intended as a scholarly biography but as a way of presenting Giroud's own interpretation of Curie's personality and her role in the history of science and France.

Goldsmith, Barbara. Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie. New York, 2005. A biography that emphasizes personal relationships rather than science.

McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch. Nobel Prize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles, and Momentous Discoveries. Secaucus, N.J., 1993. Allows readers to compare the work and world of Marie Curie with other women who became Nobel Laureates.

Pflaum, Rosalynd. Grand Obsession: Madame Curie and Her World. New York, 1989. Emphasizes the exhausting and laborious nature of the work conducted by Marie and Pierre Curie, as well as their daughter Irène and son-inlaw Frédéric Joliot. Also explains the technical aspects of their work in clear and accessible terms.

Quinn, Susan. Marie Curie: A Life. London, 1995. Uses newly available archival material to provide new insights into the emotional life of the legendary scientist.

Reid, Robert. Marie Curie. London, 1974. This comprehensive and well-documented biography was the basis for the BBC five-part miniseries Marie Curie (1978).

Lois N. Magner