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... off immense radiation. Radium is extremely powerful and, unless used with care and in a controlled environment, very dangerous. Unfortunately, this was not known in the days of the Curies. While working with radioactive materials, both Pierre and Marie suffered from many illnesses and pains. They encountered aching arms and legs, sores, colds and blisters that never seemed to go away.
They often pinned these problems to their lack of rest due to being in the laboratory. Only later did the two connect their improvement in health with their absence from the radium. The Curie's great discovery prompted scientists and doctors to work and further develop its uses. It was found that radiation could be used to destroy unhealthy growth in the human body, thus helping to stop cancer.
Besides being able to cure, radium can also kill. Handling and controlling the radium is the first and foremost dilemma. The Curie's found this out the hard way... The discovery of radium did, however, bring the Curies something they were proud of. In 1903, Marie Curie was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science.
At the awards ceremony, Marie showed how grateful she was by wearing a new dress. The Curies were then showered with awards and honors from then on. That same year, Pierre was invited to London to give a lecture on radium. In November of that year, the Royal Society, Britain's leading association of scientists, presented Pierre and his wife with one of its highest awards, the Davy Medal. Not a month later, they heard from the Academy of Sciences in Sweden that the Nobel Prize for physics was to be awarded to the Curies along with Henri Becquerel. Marie and Pierre felt too ill to make the journey to Sweden to accept the prize in person, so Becquerel accepted the medals for them.
The Nobel Prize included a rather large sum of money... 70, 000 gold francs. The Curies accepted the money finance for their experiments. This released Pierre from his teaching so that he could concentrate on research and to repay to kindness and support they had received from their friends and family over the years. They also gave gifts to poor Polish students and made a few improvements to their small apartment. One new comer that the Curies didn't mind was Eve, their second daughter, born in December in 1904.
Her arrival didn't disrupt the Curies research and teaching, as their first child Irene had threatened. The Curie's lust for science still lingered. In the year of 1905, Pierre was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences and became a Professor of Physics at the Sorbonne. Early in the following year, tragedy struck. Crossing the road in a shower of rain, Pierre stepped out from behind from a cab straight into the path of a heavy horse drawn wagon. The driver tried to stop the wagon, but all was in vain.
The weight of his load was too great for him to stop, and the left back wheel crushed Pierre as he lay stunned in the road. Pierre Curie died instantly. Marie was shattered by the news of her husband's death but soon recovered the determination to carry on with her work. The French government proposed to recognize Pierre's work to the nation by granting Marie a pension for herself and her children.
She refused saying, "I am young enough to earn my living and that of my children... " The Sorbonne agreed with her because The Faculty of Science voted unanimously that she should succeed Pierre as Professor. It was a unique tribute, for she became not only the first woman professor at Sorbonne but the first at any French university. Marie had felt it was her duty to succeed her husband. He had always said he would have liked to see Marie teach a class at Sorbonne. Marie at last showed her final feeling on the matter by the way in which she gave her first public speech lecture to a packed crowd. In the year of 1910, four years after Pierre's death, Marie published a long account of her discoveries of radioactivity.
This led to her being awarded a second Nobel Prize. Not for another fifty years would anyone accomplish such a remarkable honor. This time, Marie went to Stockholm in Sweden to accept her prize in person. 1911 should have been a year of triumph, but it turned out to be a awful year of anguish, however. The awarding of Marie's second Nobel Prize was controversial because many say it was given to her out of pity of her husband.
That same year, Marie failed by two votes to be elected to be in the Academy of Sciences. Worse yet, some newspapers said that her close friendship with the scientist Paul Langevin was wrong because he was a married man with four children. Marie received many spiteful letters and became distressed. A spell in the nursing home and a trip to England helped her to recover. Marie's real cure for her problems was definitely her work. The Sorbonne at last decided to give her what she needed to do it properly - a special institute for the study of radium, newly-built on a road renamed in honor of her husband, "Rue Pierre Curie. " Marie was thrilled with this new project and gave it, as her own personal gift, the precious radium she and Pierre had prepared with their own hands.
This radium was precious in every sense. It was vital for further scientific research. It was essential for it's use in medicine and it was worth more than a million gold francs. The Radium Institution was finished on July 13, 1914.
Less than a week later, World War I broke out. Marie gave up all thought of scientific work in her new institute and threw herself behind the cause of her adopted country. Before dedicating herself to the war, Marie made a special trip to Bordeaux, in western France and put the precious gram of radium away in a bank vault. Marie donated all her money toward the war efforts including her own personal savings in gold to be melted down. She even offered her medals, but the bank refused them. Marie quickly saw that there was one service that she could do for France that no one else could - organize a mass x-ray service for the treatment of wounded soldiers.
During the course of the war, Marie, along with volunteers, equipped 20 cars as mobile x-ray units and set up more than 200 hospital rooms with x-ray equipment. Over a million men were x-rated, which saved tens of thousands of lives and prevented an untold number of amputations. Between 1916 and 1918, Marie Curie trained 150 people including 20 American Expeditionary Force members in x-ray technology of radiology. After the war ended, Marie continued to train radiologists for another two years. Marie disliked reporters and kept away from journalists. One American reporter, Mrs.
Marie Melaney was persistent. Marie finally gave in to her and agreed to an interview. The two quickly became friends. Mrs. Melaney understood how Marie had put aside her scientific work during the war and knew that in the whole of France there was only one gram of radium that Marie had presented to the newly-established institute. Mrs.
Melaney went back to the United States and asked the country for a sum of $ 100, 000 for another gram of radium for Marie's research. Marie was widely known and millions dutifully complied. In 1921, Marie was invited to the United States to receive her radium. After stepping out into the public just once, the world fell in love. She became sort of and ambassador for science, traveling to other countries, educating as well as still receiving honors. In 1925, the Polish government erected another radium institute, this time in her honor - The Marie Sklodowska/Curie Institute.
The President of Poland laid the first corner stone while Marie laid the second. The women of the United States acknowledged her a second time and collected enough money to produce yet another gram of radium to be presented to the Polish Institute for its research and treatment program. In may of 1934, Marie Curie was stricken to her bed due to the flu. Being too weak to fight against the virus, she died in a sanitarium in the French Alps.
She was quietly buried on July 6, 1934 and laid to rest next to her husband Pierre. Marie Curie was a woman of the ages. She represented true humanity in the pursuit of perfection. Marie found humanity's perfection in chemistry and her work. Loving what she did and devoting herself to the sciences is what made her happy in the sense that true perfection was found. Bibliography:
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Research essay sample on Academy Of Sciences Marie Curie
