Marie Curie biography

Radio and Polonius perfect harmony

7 November 1867
July 4, 1934
Marie Sklodowska Curie was born on 7 November 1867 in Warsaw by a very large Catholic family, so much so that the future scientist and Nobel Laureate was the youngest of five daughters. The mother (d, inter alia due to tuberculosis when she was less than eleven years old), pianist, singer and Professor; the father, however, was practicing his profession as a teacher of mathematics and physics. The little Marie, convinced of his intelligence and his ability, he decided to study physics, in spite of the fact that this choice was initially very opposed. The idea that a woman could pursue a scientific career was inconceivable for that time. Therefore finished high school at the age of fifteen, for the eight subsequent works as preceptress and teacher in order to be able to bear the costs.
In fact, in November 1891, considering that the University of Warsaw was forbidden to women, Marie and her older sister Bronia moved to France to register and study at the famed Sorbonne, the prestigious Paris University. During your free time is also not happy with the already difficult tasks that the program of the University the submitted, try to move forward as much as possible independently studying mathematics and physics. In Paris, however, Marie will do an important meeting, to Pierre Curie, a professor at the school of physics, that on 26 March 1895 became her husband and then, subsequently, "lab partner" in scientific research. In 1897 the first daughter Irène and the second in December 1904, Eve. In the study of radioactivity, conducted with rudimentary means and without aides, the couple discovered two new elements, radium and polonium.
Marie also includes that radioactivity is an atomic phenomenon, demolishing with this brilliant idea the conviction of physics by then that the atom was the smallest particle of matter. How does however Marie Curie to this fundamental discovery? First set up a lab in a room of rue Lohmond. His idea is to study the phenomenon of radioactivity in a quantitative way accurate. First it analyzes systematically the behavior of uranium in several compounds and in different conditions (using an experimental method very ingenious consisting in offsetting on a sensitive electrometer the quantity of electricity carried by the current to that which can be provided by a piezoelectric quartz). Turns out that atomic radiation is a property of the element uranium. Immediately after, performs a search on many other substances in order to determine whether there are other chemical elements that, in addition to uranium, show that strange behavior. Decided to give a name to this phenomenon and calls it "radioactivity".
During the quest to uncover other radioactive substances, therefore, the captain in his hands two other minerals, the torbenite and the pitchblende. Immediately finds out that they are much more radioactive than they should be based on the content of uranium. Are even more radioactive than uranium. The torbenite and the pitchblende, think of Marie Curie, must therefore contain another chemical element, hitherto unknown. Prepare a communication for the French Academy of Sciences, which on 12 April 1898 is presented by Gabriel Lippmann, his former Professor and member of the Academy, and as such, has the right to speak at the meetings of the Academy. In the spring of 1898, Marie decides to focus on pitchblende.
Begins the long process to isolate the new element from the pitchblende, with chemical search method based on radioactivity, "is to perform separations with the usual means of chemical analysis, and measuring, under appropriate conditions, the radioactivity of all separate products. In this way you can give an account of the chemical characteristics of the radioactive element sought, which is concentrated in portions that become progressively more radioactive as separations go. " In his publication of July 1898, appearing simultaneously in France in the Bulletin of Academy of Sciences and in Poland on the magazine "Swiatlo" announces his hypothesis "we believe that the substance that we have drawn from the pitchblende contains a metal not yet reported, close to the bismuth for its analytic properties. If the existence of this metal is confirmed, we propose to call it polonium, named after the country of one of us. " Very soon she notices with husband in pitchblende there is another unknown substance, even more radioactive polonium.
He called it radio. The discovery is announced on 26 December 1898 at the Academy of Sciences in Paris and, in 1902, he received the Nobel Prize in physics with Becquerel. After the tragic death of her husband in 1906, Marie Curie continues to work in his laboratory, Professor at the Sorbonne (the same one that was of her husband) and manages to isolate pure polonium and radium. For this achievement, in 1911, was awarded with the Nobel Prize in chemistry. Also in that year is established, on a proposal by Marie Curie, the standard unit of international radio. Spouses Curie could earn much from the discoveries they made and their intellectual potential. Instead, throughout his life preferred to pursue a highly disinterested science conception: Marie and Pierre gave to humanity the results of their research, without expecting anything in return.
During World War I, Marie Curie also has excelled in many ways to ease the plight of fighters. It went to the front with her daughter Irène to assist the wounded, invented the famous Petit Curie, cars equipped with x-ray equipment. In 1912 he founded the Institut du Radium, which he directed until 1932 when management passed to his daughter, Irène. Institut Curie, is still today named an important scientific institution for research on cancer. Marie Curie, ironically, died on 4 July 1934 of pernicious anemia as a result of long exposure to radioactive substances.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.