Many wonderful books have been written about the life of Marie Sklodowska Curie During her lifetime, she was elected an honorary member of 106 academies and scientific societies, and recent polls have shown that she still remains the most revered woman in the world.
This life was not rich in bright external events — it is simple and strict, like a pure harmonic tone, and all of it, without a trace, is devoted to the service of science.
For Marie Curie, science is not a means or even an end, but a natural way of existence.
No wonder she compared the decision to devote her life to science to going to a monastery.
Maria Sklodowska was 24 years old when she came from Poland to Paris and crossed the threshold of the Sorbonne — one
one of the few places in the world at that time where a woman could get a higher education.
Here she met Pierre
Curie is a man of rare talent and nobility, with whom
she connected her life and made her main scientific discoveries.
She gave birth to and raised two daughters, one of whom,
Irene, will later continue and multiply the life work of her parents.
In the spring of 1896, Marie Curie was finishing her studies at the Sorbonne and carefully chose the topic of her master's thesis.
("Choosing the topic of the first scientific research is like first love for life," she said half jokingly.)
Just at this time, the first results of Becquerel's research became known, among which she was particularly interested in one: the ability of" uranium rays " to ionize air.
This interest was not accidental: shortly before that, her husband Pierre Curie, together with his brother Jacques, invented a very convenient and sensitive electrometer based on the phenomenon of piezoelectricity (discovered by them).
It was much easier to work with an electrometer than with photographic plates, and besides, it allowed not only to state the presence of new radiation, but also to measure its intensity quite accurately.
It was this quantitative approach to the phenomenon of radioactivity that allowed Marie Curie to go further than others.
At first, Marie Curie wanted to find an answer to simple questions: "Is it only uranus that emits new rays?
And if so, what is its exclusivity?"
By that time, uranium had been known for more than a hundred years and did not stand out in any special way among other elements: metal as a metal, heavy, steel gray in color, it was rarely used at that time, mainly for painting glasses and ceramics in yellow green
colour.
With the help of an electrometer, Marie Curie patiently checked the radioactivity of almost all the elements known at that time (more than 80) and soon discovered that only thorium also has this property — and even to a greater extent than uranium (at the same time and independently, this fact was also established by the German scientist Erhard Karl Schmidt (1865-1949)).
This was an important result, because it immediately eliminated the question of the exclusivity of uranium: if there are two radioactive elements, then why canot there be more of them?
After a short break in research (she is expecting a child), two months after Irene's birth, in December 1897, Marie Curie returns to work with new energy.
Among the numerous chemicals and minerals, her special attention was attracted by a pitchblende from a mine near Joachimstal in the Czech Republic, from which uranium was extracted at that time.
The radioactivity of the pitchblende was four times higher than the uranium contained in it.
This was unexpected, since chemical analyses showed that there was no thorium in the resin blende.
Then Marie Curie suggested (it was a bold, although strictly logical hypothesis) that a previously unknown radioactive element is present in the resin blende in quantities inaccessible to conventional chemical analysis.
If this is true, then its activity should be thousands of times greater than the activity of uranium, which accounted for about 30 % of the total weight of the ore.
On December 16, 1897, the first entry of Marie Curie appeared in the laboratory journal.
In March 1898, Pierre Curie left his work and joined it.
By May 12, 1898, they were sure that they had discovered a new element, which would later be called "radium", which means"ray".
In July, they discovered another radioactive element in the ore waste, which they called polonium — in memory of Maria's homeland.
Finally, on December 26, 1898, they reported their results to the French Academy of Sciences.
At that time, Maria and Pierre were already able to demonstrate to the audience a preparation of radium, which was 900 times more active than an equal amount of uranium by mass.
From now on, all Marie Curie's thoughts focused on one desire: to isolate radium in its pure form, But how to do it?
Without a laboratory, without assistants, without ore, which is also expensive?
However, a clearly realized desire is usually feasible if it is based on a strong will and a willingness to hardships.
With the assistance of geophysicist Eduard Suess, then president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Austrian government agreed to give the Curies a ton of uranium tarblende.
We managed to find a suitable shed where this ore was dumped, as well as the other ten tons, which were paid for by the millionaire Baron Edmond Rothschild.
For Marie Curie, years of strenuous, monotonous and tedious work began: from day to day, for many years, to dissolve, evaporate and dissolve again.
She had to almost manually process 11 tons of ore and carry out several thousand crystallization alone.
Subsequently, Marie Curie recalled: "... the discovery of radium was made in miserable conditions: the shed in which this event took place is already covered with a legend.
But this romantic detail was not an advantage: it absorbed our strength and slowed down the implementation of the discovery..."
It was black and hard work, in hot and cold, in an old barn, without any precautions: the radiation meter still continues to click threateningly when a page from the laboratory journal of Marie and Pierre Curie of those years is brought to it.
"We were aware that our health was not up to par, that we were subjecting it to severe tests.
As happens to everyone who knows the value of living together, we were sometimes seized with fear of the irreparable.
Then some feeling, perhaps just courage, led Pierre invariably to the same conclusion: even if we seem to be soulless creatures, we still need to work, " wrote Marie Curie many years later.
Both of them died prematurely: Pierre in 1906 was hit on the streets of Paris by a dray driver, Maria died in 1934 from the effects of radiation exposure.
By 1902, Marie Curie isolated several tenths of a gram of concentrated radium preparation from a ton of ore, three years later she had 0.4 g of pure radium chloride, and only in 1910, 12 years after the start of work, her dream came true: she finally saw a silvery white drop of pure radium metal weighing 0.0085 g.
But this droplet radiated 3 million times more actively than the same drop of uranium.
The scientific feat of Pierre and Marie Curie was recognized throughout the world during their lifetime: in 1903, together with Henri Becquerel, they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
In 1911, after the death of Pierre Curie, the Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Marie Curie the second Nobel Prize (in chemistry) — only three researchers have been awarded this honor in the entire history of the Nobel Prizes.
