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Maria
Sklodowska-Curie
(1867—1934)
Maria
(Marie Fr.) Sklodowska-Curie (born in Warsaw, Poland, on November 7, 1867) was
one of the first woman scientists to win worldwide fame, and indeed, one of the
great scientists of this century. She had degrees in mathematics and physics.
Winner of two Nobel Prizes, for Physics in 1903 and for Chemistry in 1911, she
performed pioneering studies with radium and polonium and contributed profoundly
to the understanding of radioactivity.
Perhaps
the most famous of all women scientists, Maria Sklodowska-Curie is notable for
her many firsts:
She
was the first to use the term radioactivity for this phenomenon.
She
was the first woman in Europe to receive her doctorate of science.
In
1903, she became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize for Physics. The award,
jointly awarded to Curie, her husband Pierre, and Henri Becquerel, was for the
discovery of radioactivity.
She
was also the first female lecturer, professor and head of Laboratory at the
Sorbonne University in Paris (1906).
In
1911, she won an unprecedented second Nobel Prize (this time in chemistry) for
her discovery and isolation of pure radium and radium components. She was the
first person ever to receive two Nobel Prizes.
She
was the first mother-Nobel Prize Laureate of daughter-Nobel Prize Laureate. Her
oldest daughter Irene Joliot-Curie
also won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1935).
She
is the first woman which has been laid to rest under the famous dome of the
Pantheon in Paris for her own merits.
She
received 15 gold medals, 19 degrees, and other honors. A truly remarkable figure
in the history of science !
Maria
Sklodowska-Curie became the first Pole to receive a Nobel Prize.
Maria
Sklodowska was born as the fifth and youngest child of Bronsilawa Boguska, a
pianist, singer, and teacher, and Wladyslaw Sklodowski, a professor of
mathematics and physics. When she was little and living in Poland, her nickname
was Manya. From childhood she was remarkable for her prodigious memory, and at
the age of 16 she won a gold medal on completion of her secondary education at
the Russian lycee. Because her father, a teacher of mathematics and physics,
lost his savings through bad investment, she had to take work as a teacher and,
at the same time, took part clandestinely
in the nationalist "free university," reading in Polish to women
workers. At the age of 18 she took a post as governess, where she suffered an
unhappy love affair. From her earnings she was able to finance her sister
Bronia's medical studies in Paris, on the understanding that Bronia would in
turn later help her to get an education.
In
1891 Maria Sklodowska went to Paris and began to follow the lectures of
Paul Appel, Gabriel Lippmann, and Edmond Bouty at the Sorbonne. There she
met physicists who were already well known—Jean Perrin, Charles Maurain, and
Aim Cotton. Sklodowska worked far into the night in her students' quarter
garret and virtually lived on bread and butter and tea.
She
came first in the licence of physical sciences in 1893. She began to work in
Lippmann's research laboratory and in 1894 was placed second in the licence of
mathematical sciences. It was in the spring of this year that she met Pierre
Curie.
Maria
Sklodowska is daughter of a Polish freethinker but reared by a Catholic mother.
She abandoned the Church before she was 20 and her marriage with Pierre Curie
was a purely civil ceremony because she says in her memoir of him, Pierre
belonged to no religion and I did not practice any.
Their
marriage (July 25, 1895) marked the start of a partnership that was
soon to achieve results of world significance, in particular the
discovery of polonium (so called by Maria in honour of Poland) in the summer of
1898, and that of radium a few months later. Following Henri Becquerel's
discovery (1896) of a new phenomenon (which she later called
"radioactivity"), Maria Curie, looking for a subject for a thesis,
decided to find out if the property discovered in uranium was to be found in
other matter. She discovered that this was true for thorium at the same time as
G.C. Schmidt did.
Turning
to minerals, her attention was drawn to pitchblende, a mineral whose
activity, superior to that of pure uranium, could only be explained by
the presence in the ore of small quantities of an unknown substance of very high
activity. Pierre Curie then joined her in the work that she had undertaken to
resolve this problem and that led to the discovery of the new elements, polonium
and radium. While Pierre Curie devoted himself chiefly to the physical study of
the new radiations, Maria Curie struggled to obtain pure radium in the metallic
state— achieved with the help of the chemist A.
Debierne, one of Pierre Curie's pupils. On the results of this research
Maria
Curie received her doctorate of science in June 1903 and, with Pierre,
was awarded the Davy Medal of the Royal Society. Also in 1903 they shared
with Becquerel the Nobel Prize for Physics for the discovery of radioactivity.
The
birth of her two daughters, Irene and Eve, in 1897 and 1904, did not
interrupt Maria's intensive scientific work. She was appointed lecturer
in physics. In December 1904 she was appointed chief assistant in the
laboratory directed by Pierre
Curie.
The
sudden death of Pierre Curie (April 19, 1906) was a bitter blow to Maria
Curie, but it was also a decisive turning point in her career: henceforth
she was to devote all her energy to completing alone the scientific work
that they had undertaken. On May 13, 1906, she was appointed to the
professorship that had been left vacant on her husband's death; she was the
first woman to teach in the Sorbonne. In 1908 she became titular professor, and
in 1910 her fundamental treatise on radioactivity was published. In 1911 she was
awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, for the isolation of pure radium. In 1914
she saw the completion of the building of the laboratories of the Radium
Institute (Institut du Radium) at the University of Paris.
Throughout
World War I, Maria Curie, with the help of her daughter Irene, devoted herself to
the development of the use of X-radiography. In 1918 the Radium Institute, the
staff of which Irene had joined, began to operate in earnest, and it was to
become a universal centre for nuclear physics and
chemistry. Maria Curie, now at the highest point of her fame, and, from
1922, a member of the Academy of Medicine, devoted her researches to the study
of the chemistry of radioactive substances and the medical
applications of these substances.
In
1921, accompanied by her two daughters, Maria Curie made a triumphant
journey to the United States, where President Warren G. Harding presented
her with a gram of radium bought as the result of a collection among American
women. She gave lectures, especially in Belgium, Brazil, Spain, and
Czechoslovakia. She was made a member of the International Commission on
Intellectual Co-operation by the Council of the League of Nations. In addition,
she had the satisfaction of seeing the Curie Foundation in Paris develop and the
inauguration in 1932 in Warsaw of the Radium Institute, of which her sister
Bronia became director.
On
July 4, 1934, near Sallanches (France), Maria Sklodowska-Curie died of
leukaemia, which has a number of standard consequences, one of which can
be aplastic anaemia caused by her exposure to the radium that made her famous.
Recognizing
Maria Sklodowska-Curie with perhaps its highest posthumous honor
in 1995, the French Government transferred her ashes, together with those
of Pierre, to the Pantheon in
Paris, making her the only woman (she is the first woman, again) to be
recognized in this way for her own achievements.
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