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Marie Curie Famous Namesakes / Names / Patronymic names / First name and patronymic / Horoscopes / Tests/ Signs / Table of Contents / Names home Marie Curie Sklodowska biography
Marie Curie Sklodowska (1867-1934) was a French physicist and chemist, one of the founders of the doctrine of radioactivity, a foreign corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1907) and an honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1926).
The zodiac sign is Scorpio.
Polish by origin, since 1891 in France.
Discovered the radioactivity of thorium (1898).
Together with her husband, Pierre Curie, she discovered (1898) polonium and radium.
She introduced the term "radioactivity".
Nobel Prize in Physics for research on radioactivity (1903, together with Pierre Curie and Antoine Henri Becquerel).
She received (1910, together with A. Deburn) metallic radium, studied its properties (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1911).
She developed methods of radioactive measurements, for the first time applied radioactive radiation
for medical purposes.
Maria Sklodowska was born on November 7, 1867, in Warsaw.
She was the youngest of five children in the family of Vladislav and Bronislava Sklodovsky.
Maria was brought up in a family where science was respected.
Her father taught physics at the gymnasium, and her mother, until she fell ill with tuberculosis, was the director of the gymnasium.
Maria's mother died when the girl was eleven years old.
Maria studied brilliantly in both primary and secondary schools.
Even at a young age, she felt the attractive power of science and worked as a laboratory assistant in the chemical laboratory of her cousin.
The great Russian chemist Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev, the creator of the periodic table of chemical elements, was a friend of her father.
When he saw the girl working in the laboratory, he predicted a great future for her if she continued her studies in chemistry.
Having grown up under Russian rule, Maria took an active part in the movement of young intellectuals and anti clerical Polish nationalists.
Although Maria spent most of her life in France, she always retained her dedication to the cause of the struggle for Polish independence.
There were two obstacles on the way to the realization of Maria Sadowska's dream of higher education: the poverty of the family and the ban on the admission of women to the University of Warsaw.
Together with her sister, Bronya, they developed a plan: Maria will work as a governess for five years to enable her sister to graduate from medical school, after which Bronya should bear the costs of her sister's higher education.
Bronya received a medical education in Paris and, becoming a doctor, invited her sister to visit her.
After leaving Poland in 1891, Maria entered the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the University of Paris (Sorbonne).
It was then that she began to call herself Maria Sklodovskaya.
In 1893, after completing the first course, Curie received a licentiate degree in physics from the Sorbonne (equivalent to a master's degree).
A year later, she became a licentiate in mathematics.
But this time Maria was second in her class.
In the same year, 1894, Maria Sklodowska met Pierre Curie in the house of a Polish emigrant physicist.
Pierre was the head of the laboratory at the Municipal School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry.
By that time, he had conducted important research on the physics of crystals and the dependence of the magnetic properties of substances on temperature.
Maria was studying the magnetization of steel, and her Polish friend hoped that Pierre would be able to give Maria the opportunity to work in his laboratory Having become close at first on the basis of a passion for physics, Maria and Pierre married a year later.
This happened shortly after Pierre defended his doctoral dissertation — on July 25, 1895.
"Our first home," recalls Maria herself, " a small, extremely modest apartment of three rooms was on the Rue Glasier, not far from the School of Physics.
Its main advantage was the view of the huge garden.
The furniture — the most necessary — consisted of things that belonged to our parents.
I was almost entirely taken care of the household, but I was already used to it during my student life.
Professor Pierre Curie's salary was six thousand francs a year, and we did not want him, at least for the first time, to take additional work.
As for me, I began to prepare for the competitive exam necessary to take a place in a girls ' school, and I achieved this in 1896.
Our life was completely devoted to scientific work, and our days were spent in the laboratory, where Schutzenberger allowed me to work together with my husband...
We lived very amicably, our interests coincided in everything: theoretical work, research in the laboratory, preparation for lectures or for exams.
and for eleven years of our life together, we have almost never been separated, and therefore our correspondence over these years takes only a few lines.
Rest days and vacations were devoted to walking or cycling either in a village near Paris, or on the seashore or in the mountains."
The first daughter, Irene, was born in September 1897.
Three months later, Curie completed her research on magnetism and began looking for a topic for her dissertation.
In 1896, Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium compounds emit deeply penetrating radiation.
Unlike the X ray, discovered in 1895 by Wilhelm Roentgen, the Becquerel radiation was not the result of excitation from an external energy source, such as light, but an internal property of uranium itself.
Fascinated by this mysterious phenomenon and the prospect of starting a new field of research.
Curie decided to study this radiation.
Starting work in early 1898, she first tried to establish whether there are other substances besides uranium compounds that emit rays discovered by Becquerel.
Since Becquerel noticed that the air becomes electrically conductive in the presence of uranium compounds, Marie Curie measured the electrical conductivity near samples of other substances using several precision instruments designed and built by Pierre Curie and his brother Jacques.
"My experiments have shown," Curie later wrote — " that the radiation of uranium compounds can be accurately measured under certain conditions and that this radiation is an atomic property of the element uranium; its intensity is proportional to the amount of uranium contained in a particular compound, and does not depend either on the characteristics of the chemical compound or on external conditions, for example, on lighting or temperature.
After that, I started looking for whether there are other elements that have the same properties.
To do this, I checked all the elements known at that time, in pure form or in the form of compounds.
I found that among these substances, only thorium compounds emitted rays similar to those of uranium.
The radiation of thorium has an intensity of the same order as the radiation of uranium, and also represents an atomic property of this element.
I had to look for a new term to call this new property of matter inherent in the elements uranium and thorium.
I suggested the name radioactivity, and since then it has become generally accepted; radioactive elements have been called radio elements."
Soon Marie Curie made a much more important discovery: uranium ore, known as uranium tarblende, emits a stronger Becquerel radiation than uranium and thorium compounds, and at least four times stronger than pure uranium.
Curie suggested that the uranium resin blende contains an undiscovered and highly radioactive element.
In the spring of 1898, she reported her hypothesis and the results of experiments to the French Academy of Sciences.
Then the Curies tried to isolate a new element.
Pierre put aside his own research on crystal physics to help Maria.
In July and December 1898, Marie and Pierre Curie announced the discovery of two new elements, which they named polonium, in honor of Poland the birthplace of Mary, and radium.
Since the Curies had not isolated any of these elements, they could not provide chemists with decisive proof of their existence.
And the Curies started a very difficult task — extracting two new elements from a uranium resin blende.
To extract them in measurable quantities, the researchers had to process huge amounts of ore.
For the next four years, the Curies worked in primitive and unhealthy conditions.
During this difficult but exciting period, Pierre's salary was not enough to support his family.
Despite the fact that intensive research and a small child occupied almost all of her time, Marie Curie in 1900 began teaching physics at Sevres, an educational institution that trained secondary school teachers.
Pierre's widowed father moved in with Curie and helped look after Irene.
In September 1902, the Curies announced that they had managed to isolate one tenth of a gram of radium chloride from several tons of uranium tarblende.
They failed to isolate polonium, since it turned out to be a product of the decay of radium.
Analyzing the compound, Maria found that the atomic mass of radium is 225.
The radium salt emitted a bluish glow and heat.
This fantastic substance has attracted the attention of the whole world.
Recognition and awards for its discovery came to the Curies almost immediately.
After completing her research, Marie Curie wrote her doctoral dissertation.
The work was called "Studies of radioactive substances" and was presented at the Sorbonne in June 1903.
According to the committee that awarded Curie a scientific degree, her work was the greatest contribution ever made to science by a doctoral dissertation In December 1903, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics to Becquerel and the Curies.
Marie and Pierre Curie received half of the award "in recognition... their joint research of radiation phenomena, discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel".
Curie became the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize.
Both Marie and Pierre Curie were ill and could not go to Stockholm for the award ceremony.
They received it in the summer of the following year.
"The award of the Nobel Prize," wrote Curie, " was an important event for us because of the prestige associated with these prizes, established at that time quite recently (1901).
From a material point of view, half of this premium was a serious amount.
From now on, Pierre Curie could transfer the teaching at the School of Physics to Paul Langevin, his former student, a physicist with great erudition.
In addition, he invited the preparator personally for his work.
At the same time, the fame that this happy event brought turned out to be a heavy burden for a person who was not prepared and unaccustomed to it.
It was an avalanche of visits, letters, requests for lectures and articles constant causes of loss of time, excitement and fatigue."
Even before the Curies completed their research, their work prompted other physicists to also study radioactivity.
In 1903, Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy put forward the theory that radioactive radiation occurs during the decay of atomic nuclei.
During the decay (the emission of some particles forming the nucleus), radioactive nuclei undergo transmutation — transformation into the nuclei of other elements.
Curie did not accept this theory without hesitation, since the decay of uranium, thorium and radium occurs so slowly that she did not have to observe it in her experiments.
True, there were data on the decay of polonium, but Curie considered the behavior of this element atypical.
Yet in 1906, she agreed to accept Rutherford Soddy's theory as the most plausible explanation for radioactivity.
It was Maria who introduced the terms decay and transmutation.
The Curies noted the effect of radium on the human body (like Henri Becquerel, they received burns before they realized the danger of handling radioactive substances) and suggested that radium could be used to treat tumors.
The therapeutic value of radium was recognized almost immediately, and the prices of radium sources rose sharply.
However, the Curies refused to patent the extraction process and use the results of their research for any commercial purposes.
In their opinion, the extraction of commercial benefits did not correspond to the spirit of science, the idea of free access to knowledge.
Despite this, the financial situation of the Curies improved, as the Nobel Prize and other awards brought them a certain prosperity.
In October 1904, Pierre was appointed professor of physics at the Sorbonne, and a month later Maria became officially called the head of his laboratory.
In December, their second daughter, Eva, was born, who later became a concert pianist and biographer of her mother.
Marie Curie drew strength from the recognition of her scientific achievements, her favorite work, the love and support of Pierre.
As she herself admitted: "I have found everything in marriage that I could have dreamed of at the time of our union, and even more than that."
But in April 1906, Pierre died in a street accident.
Having lost her closest friend and workmate, Maria withdrew into herself.
However, she found the strength to continue working.
In May, after Maria refused a pension appointed by the Ministry of Public Education, the Faculty council of the Sorbonne appointed her to the Department of Physics, which was previously headed by her husband.
When Curie gave her first lecture six months later, she became the first female teacher at the Sorbonne.
After the death of her husband, Maria remained a gentle and devoted mother to her two daughters.
One of the daughters, Irene, who became a famous physicist, recalls: "My mother loved to spend her free time in country walks or working in the garden, and during her holidays she preferred the mountains or the sea.
Marie Curie was fond of physical exercises and always found an excuse to do them and make my sister and me do them.
She loved nature and knew how to enjoy it, but not contemplatively.
In the garden she was busy with flowers; in the mountains she liked to walk, stopping, of course, sometimes to relax and admire the landscape...
Marie Curie did not lead a social life.
She only visited the homes of a few friends, and even then quite rarely.
When she had to attend any receptions or official celebrations, it was always tiresome and boring for her.
But she found a way to make the best use of this time by starting conversations with her neighbors at the table about their specialty.
Developing this topic, any of them could almost always tell something interesting The fact that the mother did not seek either secular connections or connections with influential people is sometimes considered evidence of her modesty.
I believe that this is rather the opposite: she was very correct in her assessment of her importance and she was not at all flattered by meetings with titled persons or with ministers.
I think she was very pleased when she had the chance to meet the writer Joseph Rudyard Kipling, and the fact that she was introduced to the Queen of Romania did not make any impression on her."
In the laboratory, Marie Curie focused her efforts on the isolation of pure metallic radium, and not its compounds.
In 1910, in collaboration with Andre Debirn, she managed to obtain this substance and thereby complete the research cycle that had begun 12 years ago.
She convincingly proved that radium is a chemical element.
Curie developed a method for measuring radioactive emanations and prepared for the International Bureau of Weights and Measures the first international standard of radium — a pure sample of radium chloride, with which all other sources were to be compared.
At the end of 1910, at the insistence of many scientists, M. Curie was nominated for election to one of the most prestigious scientific societies — the French Academy of Sciences.
Pierre Curie was elected to it only a year before his death.
In the entire history of the French Academy of Sciences, no woman has ever been a member of it, so the nomination of Curie led to a fierce battle between supporters and opponents of this step.
After several months of insulting controversy, in January 1911, Curie's candidacy was rejected in the elections by a majority of one vote.
Pierre and Marie Curie
A few months later, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Marie Curie the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for outstanding achievements in the development of chemistry: the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element."
Curie became the first two time winner of the Nobel Prize.
Introducing the new laureate, E. V. Dahlgren noted that " radium research has led in recent years to the birth of a new field of science — radiology, which has already taken possession of its own institutes and journals."
Marie Curie spent a lot of work to achieve a decent laboratory for the development of a new science of radioactivity.
Shortly before the start
the First World War (First World War) The University of Paris and the Pasteur Institute have established a Radium Institute for radioactivity research.
Curie was appointed director of the Department of Basic Research and Medical Applications of Radioactivity.
During the war, she trained military doctors in the use of radiology, for example, the detection of shrapnel in the body of a wounded person using X rays.
In the frontline zone, Curie helped to create radiological installations, supply first aid stations with portable X ray machines.
She summarized the accumulated experience in the monograph "Radiology and War" in 1920.
After the war, Curie returned to the Radium Institute.
In the last years of her life, she supervised the work of students and actively promoted the use of radiology in medicine.
She wrote a biography of Pierre Curie, which was published in 1923.
Periodically, Curie made trips to Poland, which gained independence at the end of the war.
There she consulted Polish researchers.
In 1921, together with her daughters, Curie visited the United States to accept a gift of one gram of radium to continue the experiments.
During her second visit to the United States (1929), she received a donation, with which she purchased another gram of radium for therapeutic use in one of the Warsaw hospitals.
But as a result of many years of work with radium, her health began to deteriorate noticeably.
Marie Curie died on July 4, 1934 from leukemia in a small hospital in the town of Sansellemose in the French Alps.
(Samin D. K. 100 great scientists. - Moscow: Veche, 2000) See other famous women named Maria.
As well as the meaning and origin of the name Maria.
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