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Marie Sklodowska Curie Polish-French Chemist (1867 - 1934) Marie Sklodowska Curie was born on November 7, 1867 in Warsaw, Poland. Her father was a physics teacher and her mother was a principal at a girls school in Warsaw. She had three sisters (Sofia, Helena, Bronislaw a) and a brother Joseph. Marie, ever since her earliest years, was interested in reading and physics since her father was a physics teacher.
After finishing high school, Marie went on to Paris because of the fact that she couldn t obtain any form of a higher education in Poland. There, while living in poverty and working hard, she graduated in physics from the Sorbonne in 1893. Marie met Pierre Curie in 1894 and married him a year after. Pierre was also a physicist who had already made some important discoveries.
Since Marie was at this time looking for a topic for research for a higher degree, Pierre was in full sympathy. Due to this she chose to study radioactivity. Another reason why she chose this topic is because in 1896 Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity in uranium; Marie had reason to believe that there might be a new element in the uranium ore that Becquerel had worked with. After extensive studies, Marie S. Curie found that thorium is likewise radioactive.
The following discovery that she made was, in a multitude of ways, the most fundamental. Marie tried to see if different compounds of uranium or thorium posses varying levels of radioactivity. When she was done experimenting, Marie concluded that it made no difference what she mixed the uranium with, whether it was wet or dry, in a powder form or a solution; the only factor that mattered was the amount of uranium present. Due to this, she noted that radioactivity had to be an atomic property.
The next advance that Marie S. Curie made was in 1898; she found that two uranium ores, pitchblende and chalcocite, emitted a greater level of radioactivity than uranium itself. To her this meant mainly one thing, that the ores must contain new radioactive elements. Henceforth she started to look for them. When done, Marie S. Curie had discovered two new elements, radium and polonium (which was named after her home country Poland).
It was at this time when Marie Sklodowska Curie was awarded her first Nobel Prize. Then, after discovering these elements, Marie aimed to produce some pure radium. This was a long, grueling, and monotonous job that she had to perform in an old dissecting room. After obtaining some pitchblende from the Bohemian mines, she spent nearly 4 years processing it into pure radium. The product of all this work was a mere one-tenth of a gram of radium. She went to Eugene Demarcy to determine its atomic weight which was 225. 93.
Then, in 1911, came the offspring of all this hard and grueling work a Nobel Prize along with an advanced scientific degree in France. Due to this, Marie Sklodowska Curie was the first woman to obtain a Nobel Prize for the second time. Even though the first one that she obtained was awarded to her jointly with her husband and Henri Becquerel, it was still an astounding achievement for a woman in that time. When Marie s husband received a chair at the Sorbonne in 1904, she was asked to be a part time teacher at an all girls school in Paris. Then two years later, Pierre Curie was killed instantly when he was accidentally recover by a heavy, horse driven wagon. After this happened the Sorbonne elected Marie to fill her husband s chair.
The position at the Sorbonne was where she would spend most of the rest of her life in organizing research for others and raising funds. Marie Sklodowska Curie also made two extensive trips to the US, one in 1921 and another in 1929. On the first trip she received a single gram of radium, which at the time cost 100, 000 dollars, all to herself. Then in 1929, while on the second trip, Marie obtained 50, 000 dollars from the Carnegie Institute.
These gifts enabled her laboratory, the Curie Laboratory for the study of radioactivity (founded in 1912), to become one of the foremost research centers in the world. I chose to write about Marie Sklodowska Curie because throughout her life she worked towards enhancing the human society s knowledge of radioactivity. Another reason why I took it upon myself to write about her is because Marie Sklodowska Curie pioneered a field of work that was male dominated. She was also the first person to be awarded two Nobel Prizes.
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