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Marie Sklodowska Curie
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Marie Sklodowska Curie
Marie Skłodowska Curie
Date of birth November 7, 1867
Place of birth Warsaw
Date of death July 4, 1934
Place of death Sansellmose
Citizenship of the Russian Empire, France, Poland
Type of activity science
Father Vladislav Sklodovsky
Husband Pierre
Children Irene and Eva
Maria Sklodowska Curie .
Geniuses and villains [25: 58]
Marie Curie Sklodowska (born Maria Sklodowska) is a French physicist, chemist, teacher, and public figure of Polish origin.
In 1898, she announced the possibility of the existence of a new, highly radioactive element in the ore of uranium resin.
Her husband Pierre Curie gave up his own research to help Maria, and in the same year they announced the existence of two radioactive elements: polonium and radium.
In 1902, they obtained one of these elements — radium.
Both scientists refused to take a patent for their discovery; together they were awarded the Davy Medal (1903) and awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (1903) together with Antoine Becquerel.
Marie Curie wrote A Treatise on Radioactivity (1910) and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911.
Content
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1 Biography 1.1 Moving to France 1.2 Marriage
2 Research of radioactivity 2.1 The first victim of radioactivity 2.2 The Nobel Prize in Physics.
Recognition 2.3 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
3 Maria Sklodowska Curie and Poland 4 Maria Sklodowska Curie at Lviv Polytechnic 5 Awards and scientific recognitions 6 Sources 7 Literature 8 References
[edit] Biography
Place of birth of Marie Curie
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 scientific work was held in high esteem.
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.
Already at a young age, she worked as a laboratory assistant in the chemical laboratory of her cousin.
The Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleev was a friend of her father.
Maria grew up at a time when the Kingdom of Poland was part of the Russian Empire, and actively participated in the movement of young intellectuals and anti clerical Polish nationalists.
[edit] Moving to France
Due to the poverty of the family and the ban on women entering the University of Warsaw, Maria Sklodowska could not get an education in the Russian Empire/Poland.
Together with her sister Bronya, they decided that Maria would work as a governess for five years to enable her sister to graduate from medical school, after which Bronya would take over the costs of her sister's higher education.
Bronya received a medical education in Paris and, becoming a doctor, invited her sister to her home.
At the age of 24, after leaving Poland (1891), Maria Sklodowska joined the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the University of Paris.
In 1893, Maria received a licentiate degree in physics from the Sorbonne (equivalent to a master's degree).
A year later, she became a licentiate in mathematics.
[edit] Marriage
Pierre Curie
In 1894, in the house of a Polish emigrant physicist, Maria Sklodowska met Pierre Curie.
Pierre was the head of the laboratory at the Municipal School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry.
By that time, he had done research on the physics of crystals and the dependence of the magnetic properties of substances on temperature.
Maria was investigating the magnetization of steel, and her Polish friend hoped that Pierre would give Maria the opportunity to work in his laboratory.
Having met on the basis of a passion for physics, Maria and Pierre got married a year later.
This happened shortly after Pierre defended his doctoral dissertation — on July 25, 1895.
Maria herself recalls this:
"Our first home — a small, very modest apartment of three rooms was on Glacier Street, near 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.
We couldnot afford servants.
I was almost completely 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 at first, to accept 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.
During the eleven years of our life together, we almost never parted, and therefore our correspondence over these years is only a few lines.
Rest days and holidays were devoted to walking or cycling, in a village in the vicinity of Paris, or on the seashore or in the mountains."
Their first daughter, Irene, was born in September 1897.
In three months, Curie completed her research on magnetism and began looking for a topic for her dissertation.
[edit] Radioactivity research
In 1896, Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium compounds emit deeply penetrating rays.
Unlike X rays, Becquerel rays were 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, Maria decided to start studying this radiation.
Starting work in early 1898, she first tried to establish whether there are other substances besides uranium compounds that emit the 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.
Curie later wrote:
"My experiments have shown that the radiation of uranium compounds can be accurately measured under certain conditions and that this radiation is a property of the atomic element uranium; its intensity is proportional to the amount of uranium contained in a particular composition, 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 discovered that among these substances, only thorium compounds had radiation, like uranium.
The radiation of thorium has an intensity of the same order as the radiation of uranium, and is also a property of the atoms of this element.
I had to look for a new word to denote this new property of 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 new discovery: uranium ore, known as uranium tarblende, emits stronger Becquerel radiation than uranium and thorium compounds, and at least emits 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.
Therefore, the Curies decided to extract two new elements from the uranium resin blende.
To get 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 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 to 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, because 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 radiated blue light and heat.
This fantastic substance has attracted the attention of the whole world.
Recognition and awards for his 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.
In the opinion of the committee, expressed when assigning Marie Curie scientific her work was the largest contribution ever made to science by a doctoral dissertation.
[edit] The first victim of radioactivity
Working with radioactive substances significantly affected the health of Marie Curie.
First, she underwent a severe kidney operation, then her vision deteriorated sharply, and hearing problems appeared.
In 1920, in a letter to her sister, she wrote:
"My eyesight is very weak, and there is probably little help for this.
As for hearing, I am haunted by a constant noise in my ears, sometimes very strong."
Between 1923 and 1930, Maria underwent four eye surgeries, which eventually restored her vision.
Maria Sklodovskaya Curie died on July 4, 1934 from acute malignant anemia caused by bone marrow degeneration.
In the medical report, Professor Rego wrote:
"Madame Curie can be considered one of the victims of the long term treatment of radioactive substances that her husband and herself discovered."
Marie Curie was buried with extreme care.
The wooden coffin was placed in a lead coffin, and that, in turn, in another wooden one.
When the remains of the outstanding scientist were transferred to the Pantheon in 1995, measurements of the radiation level of the inner coffin showed that its level was 30 times higher than the background indicators.
[edit] The Nobel Prize in Physics.
Confession
Pierre and Marie Curie in their laboratory
In December 1903, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics to Henri Becquerel and the Curies.
Marie and Pierre Curie received half of the award "in recognition... of their joint research on radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel"[1].
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 awarding 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 bonus was a significant 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 popularity 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 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 and radiation of the particles forming the nucleus, the nuclei of the atoms of radioactive elements undergo transmutation — they turn into the nuclei of atoms 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.
Nevertheless, in 1906, she agreed to accept Rutherford Soddy's theory as the most plausible explanation for radioactivity.
It was Maria who coined the words disintegration and transmutation.
The Curies noted the effect of radium on the human body (like Henri Becquerel, they received radioactive 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 process of extracting radium and use the results of their research for any commercial purposes.
In their opinion, obtaining commercial benefits does 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, Ev, 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 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 a close 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 loving mother to her two daughters.
One of them, Irene, who became a famous physicist, recalls:
"My mother loved to spend her free time walking in the country 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 only without looking.
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 was only in the homes of a few friends, and besides, 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 talking to her neighbors at the table about their specialty.
Developing this topic, one 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 it 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 Louis Debierne, 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.
Marie Curie developed a method for measuring radioactive emanation and produced 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 had to be compared.
At the end of 1910, at the insistence of a number of scientists, Marie 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.
At that time, throughout the history of the French Academy of Sciences, no woman was 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 controversy, in January 1911, the candidacy of Marie Curie was rejected in the elections by a majority of one vote.
[edit] Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Nobel Prize Diploma
A few months later, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Marie Curie the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for her 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"[2].
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, there are already their own institutes and journals."
Marie Curie made a lot of efforts to achieve a decent laboratory for the development of a new science of radioactivity.
Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, the University of Paris and the Pasteur Institute founded the 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, detecting shrapnel in the body of a wounded person with the help of 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 the sanatorium Sancellemoz in the city of Passy in the French Alps.
[edit] Maria Sklodowska Curie and Poland
Although Maria lived in France for most of her life, she always retained her dedication to the cause of the struggle for Polish independence.
Despite the intense creative activity, Sklodovskaya Curie always remembered her historical homeland — Poland.
Thus, after the opening of the Radium Institute in Paris, a similar institute was opened in Warsaw.
Sklodovskaya Curie presented Lviv, a city that was part of Poland between the World Wars, with 80 mg of radium.
Thus, for the first time, a radiological department was born in Lviv, which contributed, in particular, to the treatment of cancer patients[3].
[edit] Maria Sklodovskaya Curie at Lviv Polytechnic
The activities of Marie Sklodowska Curie several times concerned the Lviv Polytechnic.
In July 1912, she visited the Lviv Polytechnic School (then the name of the National University "Lviv Polytechnic").
On July 10, she gave a lecture there.
On the same day, the Academic Council of the Polytechnic awarded her the title of honorary Doctor of Technical Sciences.
Her name is immortalized on the board of honorary doctors honoris causa of the Lviv Polytechnic.
In a letter dated 1922, Sklodovskaya Curie informs about the possibility of providing financial assistance to the Polytechnic through the League of Nations.
The world famous physicist Maryan Smolukhovsky recalled that she helped organize internships for promising scientists in Lviv in leading European scientific institutions.
[edit] Awards and scientific recognitions
Maria Sklodovskaya Curie was awarded 10 scientific prizes and 16 medals.
She was an honorary member of 106 academies, scientific institutions and societies[4].
She became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize, and the first twice winner of this award.
Nobel Prize in Physics (1903) Davy Medal (1903) Matteucci Medal (1904) Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911)
Madame Curie was awarded the French Legion of Honor.
Her eldest daughter, Irene Joliot Curie, received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935.
The youngest daughter, Eva Curie, later wrote a biography of her mother.
In Poland, she received the title of honorary doctor of the Lviv Polytechnic 1912, the University of Poznan 1922, the Krakow Jagiellonian University 1924 and the Warsaw Polytechnic 1926.
In 1967, the Marie Sklodowska Curie Museum was established in Warsaw.
[edit] Sources
↑ The Nobel Prize In Physics 1903.
The Nobel Prize In Chemistry 1910.
Nobel Committee ↑ Ukrainian Scientific Internet Community / Maria Sklodovskaya Curie at the Lviv Polytechnic.
Голь Goldansky V. I., Chernenko M. B. Maria Sklodovskaya Curie (to the 100th anniversary of her birth).
Chemistry and Life, 1967, No. 12, p .
27.
[edit] Literature
Cerrato Simone.
Radioactivity in the family: The Non Fictional Lives of Maria and Irene Curie / Trans.
from Italian.
- M.: "K. I. S.", 2006.
- 104 p.: ill.
— (Women in Science).
Robert Reid, Marie Curie, New York, New American Library, 1974.
Teresa Kaczorowska, Córka mazowieckich równin, czyli Maria Skłodowska Curie z Mazowsza (Daughter of the Mazovian Plains: Maria Skłodowska Curie of Mazowsze), Ciechanów, 2007.
Wojciech A. Wierzewski, «Mazowieckie korzenie Marii» («Maria’s Mazowsze Roots»), Gwiazda Polarna (The Pole Star), a Polish American biweekly, no. 13, 21 June 2008, pp.
16-17.
L. Pearce Williams, Curie, Pierre and Marie, Encyclopedia Americana, Danbury, Connecticut, Grolier, Inc., 1986, vol. 8, pp.
331-32.
Barbara Goldsmith, Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie, New York, WW Norton, 2005 Naomi Pasachoff, Marie Curie and the Science of Radioactivity, New York, Oxford University Press, 1996 Eve Curie, Madame Curie: A Biography, translated by Vincent Sheean, Da Capo Press, 2001 Susan Quinn, Marie Curie: A Life , New York, Simon and Schuster, 1995 Françoise Giroud, Marie Curie: A Life, translated by Lydia Davis, Holmes & Meier, 1986 Ève Curie: Maria Curie.
Warszawa: Wydaw.
Naukowe PWN, 1997 Françoise Giroud: Maria Skłodowska Curie.
Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1987 Helena Bobińska, Maria Skłodowska Curie, Czytelnik, Warszawa 1965 Denis Brian: Rodzina Curie.
Warszawa: «Amber», 2006.
Susan Quinn: Życie Marii Curie.
Warszawa: Prószyński i S ka, 1997.
Barbara Goldsmith: Geniusz i obsesja: wewnętrzny świat Marii Curie.
Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, 2006.
Marie Curie, Irène Joliot Curie et Gillette G. Ziegler, Correspondance Marie Curie et Irène Joliot Curie, Prace Marii Skłodowskiej Curie Françoise Giroud, Une femme honorable, 1981 Per Olov Enquist, Blanche et Marie, roman, 2004 Xavier Laurent Petit, Marie Curie, 2005 Barbara Goldsmith, Marie Curie, portrait intime d’une femme d’exception, 2006 Brigitte Labbé et Michel Puech, Marie Curie, 2006 Henry Gidel, Marie Curie, Flammarion, 2008
[edit] Links
Curie's biography The discovery of Polonium and Radium Marie Curie "American Institute of Physics" Page dedicated to Curie's activities
Source — "http://cyclowiki.org/w/index.php?title=Maria Sklodovskaya Curie&oldid=579102"
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