Marie Curie

PHYSICIST NAME: Marie Curie
STUDENT NAME: Angela Mari Peralta

BIOGRAPHY

- At a time when women scientists were rare, Marie Curie probed the mysteries of radioactivity and X rays.
- Marie Curie was born as Maria Sklodowska in Poland in 1867. Though Maria excelled in school, no university in Poland at that time allowed female students.
- Maria Sklodowska was born as the fifth child of a patriotic Polish family.
- Born in Warsaw, Poland, Marie Curie was the first woman appointed to teach at La Sorbonne (University of Paris) and the first woman in France to achieve her doctoral degree.
- In 1891, Maria traveled to Paris, France. She called herself Marie, the French form of Maria.
- She attended the Sorbonne, a famous college in Paris. Marie studied physics and mathematics and graduated at the top of her class!
- She also met a French chemist named Pierre Curie. They married in 1895.
- In 1903, she and her husband won the Nobel Prize in physics, one of the most important awards in science.
- In 1911, Marie Curie won a second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry.
- She is one of very few people in history to win two Nobel prizes.
- Marie Curie is known for her work with radioactivity and her discovery of radium.
Death
- Skłodowska–Curie visited Poland a last time in the spring of 1934. Only a couple of months later, Skłodowska-Curie died.
- Her death on 4 July 1934 at the Sancellemoz Sanatorium in Passy, in Haute-Savoie, eastern France, was from aplastic anemia, almost certainly contracted from exposure to radiation.
- The damaging effects of ionizing radiation were not then known, and much of her work had been carried out in a shed, without taking any safety measures.
- She had carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket and stored them in her desk drawer, remarking on the pretty blue-green light that the substances gave off in the dark.
- She was interred at the cemetery in Sceaux, alongside her husband Pierre.
- Sixty years later, in 1995, in honor of their achievements, the remains of both were transferred to the Paris Panthéon.
- She became the first - and so far only - woman to be honored in this way.
- Her laboratory is preserved at the Musée Curie.
- Due to their levels of radioactivity, her papers from the 1890s are considered too dangerous to handle.
- They are kept in lead-lined boxes, and those who wish to consult them must wear protective clothing.
- As one of the most famous female scientists to date, Marie Curie has been an icon in the scientific world and has inspired many tributes and recognitions.
- In 1995, she was the first woman laid to rest under the famous dome of the Paris Panthéon, alongside her husband, Pierre Curie.
- The curie (symbol Ci), a unit of radioactivity, is named in honour of her and Pierre, as is the element with atomic number 96 — curium.
- Three radioactive minerals are named after the Curies: curite, sklodowskite, and cuprosklodowskite.

CONTRIBUTIONS

During World War I, Skłodowska-Curie pushed for the use of mobile radiography units, which came to be popularly known as petites Curies ("Little Curies"), for the treatment of wounded soldiers.
-These units were powered using tubes of radium emanation, a colorless, radioactive gas given off by radium, later identified as radon.
-Skłodowska-Curie provided the tubes of radium, derived from the material she purified. Also, promptly after the war started, she donated the gold Nobel Prize medals she and her husband had been awarded, to the war effort.
-In 1921, Skłodowska-Curie was welcomed triumphantly when she toured the United States to raise funds for research on radium.
-These distractions from her scientific labors and the attendant publicity, caused her much discomfort, but provided resources needed for her work.
-Her second American tour in 1929 succeeded in equipping the Warsaw Radium Institute, founded in 1925 with her sister, Bronisława, as director.
-In her later years, Skłodowska-Curie headed the Pasteur Institute and a radioactivity laboratory created for her by the University of Paris.

Radium
- Radium is one of the major inventions of Marie Curie which revolutionized the world.
- After doing some initial research on the subject, Marie concluded that there are elements other than Uranium which exhibited the phenomenon of radioactivity.
- Her finding that radiation is an atomic property itself was revolutionary. Soon she found that the element Thorium exhibits radioactivity. Pierre constantly guided her in all these endeavors.
- The couple experimented with pitch blende, an ore of Uranium which was cheaply available.
- They detected the presence of a radioactive element which is very similar to barium in its properties, but much more powerful than Uranium in radioactivity.
- They worked with great zest and found out two elements- Polonium and Radium, the latter being the powerful radioactive element.
- While Marie extracted and purified the radioactive elements, Pierre measured them. The amazing inventions of Marie Curie were duly recognized when both husband and wife were conferred the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and Marie Curie became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize
- Marie later realized that what she isolated was not pure Radium.
- Her next attempt was to extract pure Radium. She succeeded in isolating pure Radium and determining its atomic weight.
- She discovered that one mole of radium has a mass of 226 grams. For these findings, she was awarded the Nobel Prize again in 1911, this time in chemistry.
- Pierre Curie did not live to see the happy moment; he died in an accident in 1906. After his death, Madam Curie was appointed as the Director of physics laboratory in Sorbonne.
- She found that radiation can kill normal human cells.
- Marie gave the idea of X-ray machines and designed them.

OBJECT OF INTEREST

Marie Curie was a famous scientist who studied radioactivity. She is also the first woman who awarded a noble prize. I chose Marie Curie because she used her intelligence in discovering new things that contributed in many inventions and discoveries of today.

Sources:
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
http://www.intellectualvillage.com/inventors/inventions-of-marie-curie/
http://www.inventions.org/culture/science/women/curie.html