Marie Skłodowska Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a physicist and chemist of Polish upbringing and, subsequently, Frenchcitizenship. She was a pioneer in the field of radioactivity, the first person honored with two Nobel Prizes,receiving one in physics and later, one in chemistry. She was the first woman to serve as professor at the University of Paris.
She was born Maria Skłodowska in Warsaw (then Vistula Land, Russian Empire; now Poland) and lived there until she was twenty-four years old. In 1891 she followed her elder sister, Bronisława, to study in Paris, where she obtained her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and Warsaw. Her husband, Pierre Curie, was a Nobel co-laureate of hers, being awarded a Nobel prize in physics at the same time. Her daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, and son-in-law, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, also received Nobel prizes.
Her achievements include the creation of a theory of radioactivity (a term she coined ), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two new elements, polonium and radium. Under her direction, the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms (cancers), using radioactive isotopes.
Early life:
Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw, Poland, on 7 November 1867, the fifth and youngest child of well-known teachers Bronisława and Władysław Skłodowski. Maria's older siblings were Zofia (born 1862), Józef (1863), Bronisława (1865), and Helena (1866).
Maria's grandfather Józef Skłodowski had been a respected teacher in Lublin, where he had taught the youngBolesław Prus.[4] Her father Władysław Skłodowski taught mathematics and physics, subjects that Maria was to pursue, and he successively, was director of two Warsaw gymnasia for boys, in addition to lodging boys in the family home. Her mother, Bronisława, operated a prestigious Warsaw boarding school for girls. She suffered from tuberculosis and died when Maria was twelve.
Maria's father was an atheist and her mother a devout Catholic Two years earlier, Maria's oldest sibling, Zofia, had died oftyphus. The deaths of her mother and sister, according to Robert William Reid, caused Maria to give up Catholicism and becomeagnostic
When she was ten years old, Maria began attending the boarding school that her mother had operated while she was well; next Maria attended a gymnasium for girls, from which she was graduated on 12 June 1883. She spent the following year in the countryside with her father's relatives, and the next with her father in Warsaw, where she performed some tutoring.
On both the paternal and maternal sides, the family had lost their property and fortunes through patriotic involvements in Polish national uprisings. This condemned each subsequent generation, including that of Maria, her elder sisters, and brother to a difficult struggle to get ahead in life.
Paris, in exchange for similar assistance two years later In connection with this, she took a position as governess. First with a lawyer's family in Kraków, then for two years inCiechanów with a landed family, the Żorawskis, who were relatives of her father. While working for the latter family, she fell in love with their son, Kazimierz Żorawski, which was reciprocated by this future eminent mathematician. His parents, however, rejected the idea of his marrying the penniless relative and Kazimierz was unable to oppose them. Maria lost her position as governess She found another with the Fuchs family in Sopot, on the Baltic Sea coast, where she spent the next year, all the while financially assisting her sister.
New elements:
In 1896 Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium salts emitted rays that resembled X-rays in their penetrating power. He demonstrated that this radiation, unlike phosphorescence, did not depend on an external source of energy, but seemed to arise spontaneously from uranium itself. Becquerel had, in fact, discovered radioactivity.
Skłodowska–Curie decided to look into uranium rays as a possible field of research for a thesis. She used a clever technique to investigate samples. Fifteen years earlier, her husband and his brother had invented the electrometer, a sensitive device for measuring electrical charge. Using the Curie electrometer, she discovered that uranium rays caused the air around a sample to conduct electricity. Using this technique, her first result was the finding that the activity of the uranium compounds depended only on the quantity of uranium present. She had shown that the radiation was not the outcome of some interaction of molecules, but must come from the atom itself. In scientific terms, this was the most important single piece of work that she conducted.
Skłodowska–Curie's systematic studies had included two uranium minerals, pitchblende and torbernite. Her electrometer showed that pitchblende was four times as active as uranium itself, and chalcolite twice as active. She concluded that, if her earlier results relating the quantity of uranium to its activity were correct, then these two minerals must contain small quantities of some other substance that was far more active than uranium itself.
Nobel prizes:
In 1903, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Pierre Curie, Marie Curie and Henri Becquerel the Nobel Prize in Physics, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel."
Skłodowska–Curie and her husband were unable to go to Stockholm to receive the prize in person, but they shared its financial proceeds with needy acquaintances, including students.
On receiving the Nobel Prize, Marie and Pierre Curie suddenly became very famous. The Sorbonne gave Pierre a professorship and permitted him to establish his own laboratory, in which Skłodowska–Curie became the director of research.
In 1897 and 1904, respectively, Skłodowska–Curie gave birth to their daughters, Irène and Eve Curie. She later hired Polish governesses to teach her native language to them, and send or take them on visits to Poland.
A month after accepting her 1911 Nobel Prize, she was hospitalized with depression and a kidney ailment.Skłodowska–Curie was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize. Eight years later, she would receive the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, "in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element."
Skłodowska–Curie was the first person to win or share two Nobel Prizes. She is one of only two people who have been awarded a Nobel Prize in two different fields, the other being Linus Pauling (for Chemistry and for Peace). Nevertheless, in 1911 the French Academy of Sciences refused to abandon its prejudice against women, and she failed by two votes to be elected as a member. Instead, Édouard Branly, an inventor who had helped Guglielmo Marconi develop the wireless telegraph, was elected.[27] It would be her doctoral student, Marguerite Perey, who would become the first woman elected to the Academy — in 1962, over half a century later.
She was born Maria Skłodowska in Warsaw (then Vistula Land, Russian Empire; now Poland) and lived there until she was twenty-four years old. In 1891 she followed her elder sister, Bronisława, to study in Paris, where she obtained her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and Warsaw. Her husband, Pierre Curie, was a Nobel co-laureate of hers, being awarded a Nobel prize in physics at the same time. Her daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, and son-in-law, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, also received Nobel prizes.
Her achievements include the creation of a theory of radioactivity (a term she coined ), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two new elements, polonium and radium. Under her direction, the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms (cancers), using radioactive isotopes.
Early life:
Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw, Poland, on 7 November 1867, the fifth and youngest child of well-known teachers Bronisława and Władysław Skłodowski. Maria's older siblings were Zofia (born 1862), Józef (1863), Bronisława (1865), and Helena (1866).
Maria's grandfather Józef Skłodowski had been a respected teacher in Lublin, where he had taught the youngBolesław Prus.[4] Her father Władysław Skłodowski taught mathematics and physics, subjects that Maria was to pursue, and he successively, was director of two Warsaw gymnasia for boys, in addition to lodging boys in the family home. Her mother, Bronisława, operated a prestigious Warsaw boarding school for girls. She suffered from tuberculosis and died when Maria was twelve.
Maria's father was an atheist and her mother a devout Catholic Two years earlier, Maria's oldest sibling, Zofia, had died oftyphus. The deaths of her mother and sister, according to Robert William Reid, caused Maria to give up Catholicism and becomeagnostic
When she was ten years old, Maria began attending the boarding school that her mother had operated while she was well; next Maria attended a gymnasium for girls, from which she was graduated on 12 June 1883. She spent the following year in the countryside with her father's relatives, and the next with her father in Warsaw, where she performed some tutoring.
On both the paternal and maternal sides, the family had lost their property and fortunes through patriotic involvements in Polish national uprisings. This condemned each subsequent generation, including that of Maria, her elder sisters, and brother to a difficult struggle to get ahead in life.
Paris, in exchange for similar assistance two years later In connection with this, she took a position as governess. First with a lawyer's family in Kraków, then for two years inCiechanów with a landed family, the Żorawskis, who were relatives of her father. While working for the latter family, she fell in love with their son, Kazimierz Żorawski, which was reciprocated by this future eminent mathematician. His parents, however, rejected the idea of his marrying the penniless relative and Kazimierz was unable to oppose them. Maria lost her position as governess She found another with the Fuchs family in Sopot, on the Baltic Sea coast, where she spent the next year, all the while financially assisting her sister.
New elements:
In 1896 Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium salts emitted rays that resembled X-rays in their penetrating power. He demonstrated that this radiation, unlike phosphorescence, did not depend on an external source of energy, but seemed to arise spontaneously from uranium itself. Becquerel had, in fact, discovered radioactivity.
Skłodowska–Curie decided to look into uranium rays as a possible field of research for a thesis. She used a clever technique to investigate samples. Fifteen years earlier, her husband and his brother had invented the electrometer, a sensitive device for measuring electrical charge. Using the Curie electrometer, she discovered that uranium rays caused the air around a sample to conduct electricity. Using this technique, her first result was the finding that the activity of the uranium compounds depended only on the quantity of uranium present. She had shown that the radiation was not the outcome of some interaction of molecules, but must come from the atom itself. In scientific terms, this was the most important single piece of work that she conducted.
Skłodowska–Curie's systematic studies had included two uranium minerals, pitchblende and torbernite. Her electrometer showed that pitchblende was four times as active as uranium itself, and chalcolite twice as active. She concluded that, if her earlier results relating the quantity of uranium to its activity were correct, then these two minerals must contain small quantities of some other substance that was far more active than uranium itself.
Nobel prizes:
In 1903, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Pierre Curie, Marie Curie and Henri Becquerel the Nobel Prize in Physics, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel."
Skłodowska–Curie and her husband were unable to go to Stockholm to receive the prize in person, but they shared its financial proceeds with needy acquaintances, including students.
On receiving the Nobel Prize, Marie and Pierre Curie suddenly became very famous. The Sorbonne gave Pierre a professorship and permitted him to establish his own laboratory, in which Skłodowska–Curie became the director of research.
In 1897 and 1904, respectively, Skłodowska–Curie gave birth to their daughters, Irène and Eve Curie. She later hired Polish governesses to teach her native language to them, and send or take them on visits to Poland.
A month after accepting her 1911 Nobel Prize, she was hospitalized with depression and a kidney ailment.Skłodowska–Curie was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize. Eight years later, she would receive the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, "in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element."
Skłodowska–Curie was the first person to win or share two Nobel Prizes. She is one of only two people who have been awarded a Nobel Prize in two different fields, the other being Linus Pauling (for Chemistry and for Peace). Nevertheless, in 1911 the French Academy of Sciences refused to abandon its prejudice against women, and she failed by two votes to be elected as a member. Instead, Édouard Branly, an inventor who had helped Guglielmo Marconi develop the wireless telegraph, was elected.[27] It would be her doctoral student, Marguerite Perey, who would become the first woman elected to the Academy — in 1962, over half a century later.
Pierre's death:
On 19 April 1906 Pierre was killed in a street accident. Walking across the Rue Dauphine in heavy rain, he was struck by a horse-drawn vehicle and fell under its wheels, his skull was fractured. While it has been speculated that previously, he may have been weakened by prolonged radiation exposure, it has not been proven that this was the cause of the accident.
Skłodowska–Curie was devastated by the death of her husband. She noted that, as of that moment she suddenly had become "an incurably and wretchedly lonely person". On 13 May 1906 the Sorbonne physics department decided to retain the chair that had been created for Pierre Curie and they entrusted it to Skłodowska–Curie together with full authority over the laboratory. This allowed her to emerge from Pierre's shadow. She became the first woman to become a professor at the Sorbonne, and in her exhausting work regime, sought a meaning for her life
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 inPassy, in Haute-Savoie, eastern France, was from aplastic anemia, almost certainly it was 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
On 19 April 1906 Pierre was killed in a street accident. Walking across the Rue Dauphine in heavy rain, he was struck by a horse-drawn vehicle and fell under its wheels, his skull was fractured. While it has been speculated that previously, he may have been weakened by prolonged radiation exposure, it has not been proven that this was the cause of the accident.
Skłodowska–Curie was devastated by the death of her husband. She noted that, as of that moment she suddenly had become "an incurably and wretchedly lonely person". On 13 May 1906 the Sorbonne physics department decided to retain the chair that had been created for Pierre Curie and they entrusted it to Skłodowska–Curie together with full authority over the laboratory. This allowed her to emerge from Pierre's shadow. She became the first woman to become a professor at the Sorbonne, and in her exhausting work regime, sought a meaning for her life
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 inPassy, in Haute-Savoie, eastern France, was from aplastic anemia, almost certainly it was 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
Awards:
Marie Skłodowska-Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel prize and the first person to win two Nobel Prizes.
Nobel Prize in Physics (1903)
Davy Medal (1903)
Matteucci Medal (1904)
Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911)
The life of famous scientists may not be luxurious. The Curies reportedly used part of their award money to replace wallpaper in their Parisian home and install modern plumbing into a bathroom
Marie Skłodowska-Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel prize and the first person to win two Nobel Prizes.
Nobel Prize in Physics (1903)
Davy Medal (1903)
Matteucci Medal (1904)
Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911)
The life of famous scientists may not be luxurious. The Curies reportedly used part of their award money to replace wallpaper in their Parisian home and install modern plumbing into a bathroom
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