Scientific Marie Curie. Marie Curie. Mother of modern physics
The eldest daughter of Marie Curie was raised by her grandfather, because Marie was too busy. © flick.com
Today is the birthday of Marie Curie, one of the most famous chemists. Do you know everything about this famous woman? Let's check, find out 10 amazing facts from the life of Marie Curie.
1. Marie Curie wore her permanent talisman on her chest - an ampoule with radium. Working with radioactive substances, Marie Curie did not take any security measures. At the same time, the great woman lived to 66 years.
2. Marie Curie - twice Nobel Prize winner: in physics in 1903 and in chemistry in 1911.
3. Marie Curie - founder of the Curie Institutes in Paris and Warsaw.
4. One of the elements that Marie Curie discovered with her husband is called polonium - in honor of Marie's homeland - Poland.
5. The second element, on the discovery of which Marie Curie worked with her husband for 12 years, is called radium.
6. Marie Curie was a member of 85 scientific societies from all over the world and the owner of 20 scientific honorary degrees.
7. Marie Curie had two daughters, despite the fact that she worked with radioactive substances all her life.
8. The eldest daughter of Marie Curie - Irene Joliot-Curie, like her mother, married a chemist and, 24 years after Marie Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize, she herself became a Nobel laureate in chemistry. By the way, Irene received the award, like her mother, together with her husband and for her work on radioactive elements.
9. Marie Curie became the first female teacher in the history of the Sorbonne University.
10. During the First World War, Marie Curie, along with eldest daughter, who was then a teenager, traveled to hospitals with the first x-ray machine and taught doctors how to take x-rays in order to more successfully perform operations on the wounded.
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Find your soul mate
Maria Sklodowska-Curie (born November 7, 1867 - death July 4, 1934) - French (Polish) experimental scientist, physicist and chemist, one of the creators of the theory of radioactivity. The first woman to receive Nobel Prize, the first person to receive the Nobel Prize twice and the only person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in two different sciences - physics and chemistry. Together with her husband Pierre, Curie discovered the elements radium and polonium. Founder of the Curie Institutes in Paris and Warsaw.
Not a single woman in the world has been able to achieve such popularity in the field of science, which she got during the life of Marie Curie. Meanwhile, when you peer into the details of her biography, you get the impression that this scientist did not have sharp surges and failures, failures and sudden ups and downs that usually accompany genius. It seems that her success in physics is only the result of titanic work and the rarest, almost unbelievable luck. It seems that the slightest accident, a zigzag of fate - and there would be no great name of Marie Curie in science. But maybe it just seems.
Childhood
And her life began in Warsaw, in the modest family of the teacher Joseph Sklodovsky, where, in addition to the youngest Manya, two more daughters and a son were growing up. They lived very hard, the mother died for a long time and painfully from tuberculosis, the father was exhausted to treat his sick wife and feed five children. He may not have been very lucky; he did not stay long in profitable places. He himself explained this by the fact that he did not know how to get along with the Russian authorities of the gymnasiums. In fact, the spirit of nationalism dominated the family, much was said about the oppression of the Poles. Children grew up under strong influence patriotic ideas, and for the rest of her life Maria had a complex of an undeservedly humiliated nation.
For lack of earnings, the Sklodovskys gave part of the house to boarders - children from nearby villages who studied in Warsaw - because the rooms were constantly noisy and restless. Early in the morning, Manya was raised from the sofa, because the dining room in which she slept was necessary for the boarders' breakfast. When the girl was 11 years old, her mother and older sister. However, the father, who closed in on himself and immediately aged sharply, did everything so that the children would fully enjoy life. One by one they graduated from the gymnasium and all with gold medals. Manya was no exception, she showed excellent knowledge in all subjects. As if anticipating that his daughter would face serious trials in the future, the father sent the girl to whole year to the village to visit relatives. Perhaps this was her only vacation in her life, the most carefree time. “I can’t believe that there is some kind of geometry and algebra,” she wrote to a friend, “I completely forgot them.”
Pierre and Marie Curie
Education
In Paris, Maria, who was already 24 years old, entered the Sorbonne, and a life full of hardships began. She plunged headlong into her studies, refused all entertainment - only lectures and libraries. There was a catastrophic lack of funds even for the most necessary. In the room where she lived, there was no heating, no lighting, no water. Maria herself carried bundles of firewood and buckets of water to the sixth floor. She had given up hot food a long time ago, because she didn’t know how to cook herself, and didn’t want to, and she didn’t have money for restaurants. Once, when her sister's husband came to Mary, she fainted from exhaustion. I had to somehow feed a relative. But in a few months, the girl was able to overcome the most difficult material of a prestigious French university. This is unbelievable, because over the years of living in the countryside, despite persistent studies, she is very behind - self-education is self-education.
Mary became one of best female students University, received two diplomas - physics and mathematics. However, it cannot be said that in four years she was able to do anything significant in science or that any of the teachers later recalled her as a student who showed outstanding abilities. She was just a conscientious, diligent student.
Acquaintance with Pierre Curie
In the spring of 1894, perhaps the most significant event in her life took place. She met Pierre Curie. By the age of twenty-seven, Maria was unlikely to harbor illusions about her personal life. All the more wonderful is this unexpectedly come love. By that time, Pierre had turned 35, he had long been waiting for a woman who could understand his scientific aspirations. Among people of genius, where ambitions are so strong, where relationships are burdened by the complexities of creative natures, the case of Pierre and Maria, who created amazingly harmonious couple, the rarest, unparalleled. Our heroine pulled out happy ticket.
Marie Curie with her daughters Eva and Irene in 1908
A new direction - radiation
Marie Curie began writing her doctoral dissertation. After looking latest articles, she is interested in the discovery of Becquerel's uranium radiation. The topic is completely new, unexplored. After consulting with her husband, Maria decided to take up this job. She pulls out a lucky ticket for the second time, not yet knowing that she hit the peak scientific interests XX century. At that time, Maria could hardly have imagined that she was entering the nuclear age, that she would become the guide of humanity in this new complex world.
Scientific work
The work began rather prosaically. The woman methodically studied the samples containing uranium and thorium, and noticed deviations from the expected results. This is where Maria's genius manifested itself, she expressed a daring hypothesis: these minerals contain a new, hitherto unknown radioactive substance. Soon Pierre joined her work. It was necessary to isolate this unknown chemical element, to determine its atomic weight, in order to show the whole world the correctness of their assumptions.
For four years, the Curies lived as recluses, they rented a wrecked shed, in which it was very cold in winter and hot in summer, streams of rain poured through cracks in the roof. For 4 years, at their own expense, without any assistants, they isolated radium from ore. Maria took on the role of laborer. At the time when her husband was engaged in staging subtle experiments, she poured liquids from one vessel into another, stirred the boiling material in a cast-iron basin for several hours in a row. During these years, she became a mother and took care of all household chores, since Pierre was the only breadwinner in the family and was torn between experiments and lectures at the university.
The work progressed slowly, and when the main part of it was completed - it remained only to make accurate measurements on the latest instruments, but there were none - Pierre gave up. He began to persuade Maria to suspend the experiments, to wait for better times, when necessary appliances. But the wife did not agree and, having made incredible efforts, in 1902 isolated a decigram of radium, a white shiny powder, which she subsequently did not part with all her life and bequeathed it to the Radium Institute in Paris.
Museum of Marie Skłodowska-Curie in Warsaw
Glory. First Nobel Prize
Glory came quickly. At the beginning of the 20th century, radium seemed to naive mankind a panacea for cancer. From different ends the globe The Curie spouses began to receive tempting offers: the French Academy of Sciences released a loan for the isolation of radioactive substances, they began to build the first factories for the industrial production of radium. Now their house was full of guests, correspondents of fashion magazines strove to interview Madame Curie. And the pinnacle of scientific glory is the Nobel Prize! They are rich and able to afford to maintain their own laboratories, recruit staff and buy the latest devices, despite the fact that the Curies refused to obtain a patent for the production of radium, giving their discovery to the world disinterestedly.
Husband's death
And so, when life seemed to be settled, filled, comfortably accommodating personal life, cute little daughters, and favorite work, everything collapsed into one part. How unsteady is earthly happiness.
April 19, 1906 - Pierre, as always, went to work in the morning. And he never returned ... He died terribly ridiculous, under the wheels of a horse-drawn carriage. Fate, miraculously gave Mary a loved one, as if greedy, took him back.
How she was able to survive this tragedy is hard to imagine. It is impossible to read the diary lines written in the first days after the funeral without excitement. “... Pierre, my Pierre, you are lying there, like a poor wounded man, with a bandaged head, forgotten by sleep ... We put you in a coffin on Saturday morning, and I supported your head when they carried you. We kissed your cold face with the last kiss. I put a few periwinkles from our garden in your coffin and a small portrait of the one whom you called “dear reasonable student” and loved so much ... The coffin is boarded up, and I don’t see you. I won't allow it to be covered with a horrible black rag. I cover it with flowers and sit down next to it ... Pierre is sleeping in the earth with his last sleep, this is the end of everything, everything, everything ... "
Lecture at the Sorbonne
But this was not the end, Maria had another 28 years of life ahead of her. She was saved by work and a strong character. A few months after Pierre's death, she gave her first lecture at the Sorbonne. There were far more people than the small auditorium could accommodate. According to the rules, it was supposed to begin a course of lectures with words of gratitude to the predecessor. Maria appeared on the lectern to a flurry of applause, nodded her head dryly in salute, and, looking straight ahead, began in a flat voice: “When you stand face to face with the successes achieved by physics…” This was the phrase on which he ended his course last semester. Pierre. Tears rolled down the cheeks of the audience, and Maria monotonously continued the lecture.
Nobel laureates
1911 - Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize twice, and a few years later her daughter Irene received the same award.
During the First World War, Maria created the first mobile X-ray machines for field hospitals. Her energy knew no bounds, she carried out tremendous scientific and social work, she was a welcome guest at many royal receptions, with her, as with a movie star, they sought to get acquainted. But one day she will say to one of her immoderate admirers: “There is no need to lead such an unnatural life as I led. I devoted a lot of time to science because I had a passion for it, because I loved Scientific research… All I wish for women and young girls is a simple family life and work that interests them.
Death
Marie Curie became the first person in the world to die from radiation exposure. Years of work with radium had taken their toll. Once upon a time, she shamefacedly hid her burnt, mangled hands, not fully understanding how dangerous their child and Pierre were. Madame Curie died on July 4 of pernicious anemia, due to the degeneration of the bone marrow from prolonged exposure to radiation.
Name: Marie Curie-Sklodovskaya
Age: 66 years old
Place of Birth: Warsaw
Place of death: Sancellmosa, France
Activity: French physicist
Family status: was married
Maria Sklodowska-Curie - Biography
By becoming the world's first Nobel Prize winner (twice!), Marie Skłodowska-Curie broke the stereotype that only men can do science. She gave humanity a new element, radium, which eventually destroyed her.
Warsaw, late XIX century. In a poor Sklodovsky family, a mother recently died of tuberculosis, and before her, one of her daughters. The father of the family barely managed to feed the remaining four children. And two teenage daughters, Maria Salomeya and Bronislava, so wanted to become doctors!.. It seemed that dreams would remain dreams, and not only because there was no money to study. AT Russian Empire, which included Poland, women were not admitted to higher educational institutions. But the sisters had a plan: Maria would work as a governess for five years in order to enable her sister to graduate medical institute in Paris. And then Bronislava will pay for Maria's accommodation and education in the French capital.
Maria Skłodowska-Curie is the best student
Going to France in 1891, 23-year-old Maria Sklodowska had already changed her mind about becoming a doctor. She was interested in physics, mathematics and chemistry, and it was these that she began to study at the Sorbonne. Armor, as agreed, helped her with money, but almost everything was "eaten up" by the tuition fee. There was barely enough money to live on: Maria rented a tiny attic room in the Latin Quarter and could only eat a few radishes all day.
However, even in those days when she had enough food, the girl could forget about them, immersed in books and notes. Several times it ended with hungry fainting spells and harsh reprimands from doctors, but the student did not become more attentive to herself. How can you think about some kind of food or sleep when so many amazing secrets are hidden in textbooks on physics and chemistry!
Maria Sklodowska-Curie - biography of personal life
After graduating, Skłodowska became the first female teacher at the Sorbonne. At the same time, she was also engaged in scientific research. In those years, Maria was interested in the magnetic properties of alloys. For example, why do magnetized substances behave differently with increasing temperature, and at a certain temperature they sharply lose their magnetic properties? ..
However, there were no suitable conditions in the Sorbonne laboratory to study magnetism, and one of Sklodowska's colleagues decided to introduce her to the young physicist Pierre Curie, who led the laboratory at the Municipal School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry. When she first saw Pierre, Maria felt that she wanted to be close to this calm, thoughtful man. At that moment, she was not a physicist, but a romantic woman who met her fate...
Pierre Curie felt the same way. “To love is not to look at each other. To love means to look together in the same direction, ”the French writer and pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupery would write many years later. The Curies can be called perfect example that kind of love. After exchanging their first words, they realized that they were looking in the same direction - in the direction of the secrets that nature hides and which they want to unravel.
Pierre and Maria began working together and less than a year later, in July 1895, they played a very modest wedding. In 1897, their daughter Irene was born - in the future she will continue their work and also become Nobel laureate with her husband Frederic Jo-liot. And a year later, Maria, the initiator of everything new in the family, invited her husband to do research on the recently discovered and completely unexplored phenomenon of radioactivity at that time. However, this term did not yet exist: later Maria herself would propose it.
Marie Sklodowska-Curie - the highest award
The study of radioactivity without special protective equipment is extremely dangerous, but at that time it was not yet known. Maria with my own hands sorted out powdered uranium minerals and cleaned them of impurities in a wooden shed. The consequences of this manifested themselves later in the form of ulcers and burns on her hands, due to which Maria did not take off her gloves in public until the end of her life.
But even in the midst of her research, Sklodowska-Curie did not forget to make time for her beloved. On weekends, they rode their bikes out of town and had a picnic. In her youth, Maria almost never cooked for herself, but now she has learned to cook Pierre's favorite dishes. At the same time, she tried to spend as little time as possible on household chores, devoting every free minute to work.
The efforts of the Curies were rewarded: in 1903, together with Henri Becquerel, who discovered radioactive radiation, they received an invitation to Stockholm to receive the highest award. scientific world- The Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery and study of this phenomenon.
Maria and Pierre could not come to the award ceremony: both were sick. However, the Nobel Committee repeated the ceremony for them six months later. For Maria, this was one of the rare "outings" when she could dress not in a lab coat, but in an evening dress and make a beautiful hairstyle. Compared to other ladies who attended the award ceremony, she looked very modest: from the jewelry she wore only a thin gold chain, almost imperceptible against the backdrop of sparkling precious stones around ...
Maria Sklodowska-Curie - alone again
The happiness of the Curie spouses ended in 1906, when Pierre died an absurd death - he fell under the carriage. By that time, their second daughter Eva Denise, the future biographer of Mary, had already been born with Maria.
From the outside, it might seem that Maria was not so worried about the death of her husband: she did not become depressed, did not cry, did not refuse to communicate with people. She just continued to work and take care of children - the same way as before. But in fact, this is precisely what testifies to what she felt for Pierre true love, and not frivolous love and not selfish passion. After his death, Maria behaved as he probably would have liked: she continued their work and raised her daughters as worthy people.
Skłodowska-Curie received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911. Again there were magnificent outfits and sparkling jewelry around, loud words were again heard that she “contributed to the birth new area science - radiology". Only her beloved husband was no longer around. Curie received her second Nobel Prize for the discovery of radium and polonium. For the first time she isolated the salts of these chemical elements together with Pierre, and later calculated their atomic weight and described their properties, and also managed to obtain pure radium, which became the international standard for this substance. Maria and Pierre dreamed that the new metal they discovered would be of an unusual color, but radium, like most metals, turned out to be silvery. But it glowed in the dark, and the couple often admired its cold glow...
Before the First World War, Maria closely studied the possibilities of using radiology in medicine, and at the beginning of the war she proposed using x-rays in hospitals to determine exactly where bullets and shrapnel were stuck in the bodies of the wounded. Remembering her youthful dream of becoming a doctor, she, along with her daughter Irene, began to travel to military hospitals with a mobile X-ray machine and show doctors how to use it. And later it turned out that radioactivity can help in the treatment of cancer.
Until the end of her life, Maria kept diaries in which she addressed her late husband as if she were alive, shared her thoughts, successes, and problems. She considered her main brainchild to be the Radium Institute established in 1914 in Paris, which later spawned similar institutions in other countries, including Russia. The scientist died in 1934 from aplastic anemia, becoming the first person on Earth to die from radiation exposure. She was buried next to her husband in the Paris Pantheon.
Even at the beginning of the 20th century, before the First World War, when time was measured and unhurried, ladies wore corsets, and women who were already married had to observe decency (housekeeping and staying at home), Curie Marie was awarded two Nobel Prizes: in 1908 - in physics, in 1911 - in chemistry. She did a lot of things first, but perhaps the main thing is that Mary made a real revolution in the public mind. Women after her boldly went into science, without fear from the scientific community, which at that time consisted of men, of ridicule in their direction. Amazing person was Marie Curie. The biography below will convince you of this.
Origin
The maiden name of this woman was Sklodowska. Her father, Vladislav Sklodovsky, graduated in his time Petersburg University. Then he returned to Warsaw to teach mathematics and physics at the gymnasium. His wife, Bronislava, ran a boarding school where schoolgirls studied. She helped her husband in everything, was a passionate lover of reading. In total, the family had five children. Maria Sklodowska-Curie (Manya, as she was called in childhood) is the youngest.
Warsaw childhood
All her childhood passed under the cough of her mother. Bronislava suffered from tuberculosis. She died when Mary was only 11 years old. All the children of the Sklodovskys were distinguished by curiosity and learning abilities, and it was simply impossible to tear Manya away from the book. The father encouraged the passion for learning in his children as best he could. The only thing that upset the family was the need to study in Russian. In the photo above - the house in which Maria was born and spent her childhood. Now there is a museum here.
The situation in Poland
Poland at that time was part of the Russian Empire. Therefore, all the gymnasiums were controlled by Russian officials who ensured that all subjects were taught in the language of this empire. Children even had to read in Russian, and not in their native language, in which they prayed and spoke at home. Vladislav often got upset because of this. After all, sometimes a student capable of mathematics, who perfectly solved various problems in Polish, suddenly became "stupid" when it was required to switch to Russian, which he did not speak well. Having seen all these humiliations since childhood, Maria future life, however, like the rest of the inhabitants of the state, torn apart at that time, she was a fierce patriot, as well as a conscientious member of the Parisian Polish community.
Sisters Persuasion
It was not easy for a girl to grow up without a mother. Dad, always busy at work, pedantic teachers at the gymnasium ... Manya was best friends with Bronya, her sister. They agreed as teenagers that they would definitely study further, after graduating from the gymnasium. In Warsaw higher education it was impossible for women to get at that time, so they dreamed of the Sorbonne. The agreement was as follows: Bronya will be the first to start her studies, since she is older. And Manya will earn money for her education. When she learns to be a doctor, Manya will immediately begin to study, and her sister will help her as best she can. However, it turned out that the dream of Paris had to be postponed for almost 5 years.
Work as a governess
Manya became a governess at the Pike estate, to the children of a wealthy local landowner. The owners did not appreciate the bright mind of this girl. At every step they let her know that she was just a poor servant. In Pike, the girl's life was not easy, but she endured for the sake of Armor. Both sisters graduated from the gymnasium with a gold medal. Brother Jozef (also, by the way, a gold medalist) went to Warsaw, enrolling in Faculty of Medicine. Elya also received a medal, but her claims were more modest. She decided to stay with her father, run the household. The 4th sister in the family died as a child when her mother was still alive. In general, Vladislav could rightfully be proud of his remaining children.
First lover
Maria's employers had five children. She taught the younger ones, but Kazimierz, the eldest son, often came for holidays. He drew attention to such an unusual governess. She was very independent. In addition, which was very unusual for a girl of that time, she ran on skates, perfectly handled the oars, skillfully drove the carriage and rode. And also, as she later admitted to Kazimierz, she was very fond of writing poetry, as well as reading books on mathematics, which seemed to her poetry.
After a while, a platonic feeling arose between the young people. Manya was plunged into despair by the fact that the arrogant parents of his lover would never allow him to connect his fate with a governess. Kazimierz came to summer vacation and holidays, and the rest of the time the girl lived in anticipation of a meeting. But now it's time to quit and go to Paris. Manya left Pike with a heavy heart - Kazimierz and the years illuminated by first love remained in the past.
Then, when Pierre Curie appears in the life of 27-year-old Maria, she will immediately understand that he will become her. faithful husband. Everything will be different in the case of him - without violent dreams and outbursts of feelings. Or maybe Maria will just get older?
Device in Paris
The girl arrived in 1891 in France. Armor and her husband, Kazimierz Dlussky, who also worked as a doctor, began to patronize her. However, the determined Maria (in Paris she began to call herself Marie) opposed this. She rented a room on her own, and also signed up for the Sorbonne, natural faculty. Marie settled in Paris in the Latin Quarter. Libraries, laboratories and the university were in the neighborhood with him. Dlussky helped his wife's sister to carry modest belongings on a handcart. Marie resolutely refused to settle down with any girl in order to pay less for a room - she wanted to study until late and in silence. Its budget in 1892 was 40 rubles, or 100 francs a month, that is, 3 and a half francs a day. And it was necessary to pay for a room, clothes, food, books, notebooks and university studies ... The girl cut herself off in food. And since she studied very hard, she soon fainted right in the classroom. A classmate ran to ask for help to the Dlusskys. And they again took Marie to them so that she could pay less for housing and eat normally.
Acquaintance with Pierre
One day, a fellow student of Marie invited her to visit a famous physicist from Poland. Then the girl first saw the man with whom she was destined to subsequently win world fame. At that time, the girl was 27, and Pierre was 35 years old. When Marie entered the living room, he was standing in the balcony opening. The girl tried to examine it, and the sun blinded her. This is how Maria Sklodowska and Pierre Curie met.
Pierre was devoted to science with all his heart. Parents have already tried several times to introduce him to a girl, but always in vain - they all seemed to him uninteresting, stupid and petty. And that evening, after talking with Marie, he realized that he had found an equal interlocutor. At that time, the girl was doing work commissioned by the Society for the Promotion of National Industry, about magnetic properties different grades of steel. Marie had just begun her research in Lipmann's lab. And Pierre, who worked at the School of Physics and Chemistry, already had research on magnetism and even the "Curie law" discovered by him. The young people had a lot to talk about. Pierre was so carried away by Marie that early in the morning he went to the fields in order to pick daisies for his beloved.
Wedding
Pierre and Marie got married on July 14, 1895 and went to Ile-de-France to Honeymoon. Here they read, rode bicycles, discussed scientific topics. Pierre, even to please his young wife, began to learn Polish ...
Fateful acquaintance
By the time of the birth of Irene, their first daughter, Marie's husband had already defended his doctoral dissertation, and his wife graduated first in her graduation from the Sorbonne University. At the end of 1897, a study on magnetism was completed, and Curie Marie began to look for a topic for a dissertation. At this time, the couple met a physicist. He discovered a year ago that uranium compounds emit radiation that penetrates deeply. It was, unlike X-ray, intrinsic property uranium. Curie Marie, infatuated mysterious phenomenon decided to study it. Pierre set aside his work in order to help his wife.
The first discoveries and the award of the Nobel Prize
Pierre and Marie Curie discovered two new elements in 1898. They named the first of them polonium (in honor of Marie's homeland, Poland), and the second - radium. Since they did not isolate either one or the other element, they could not provide evidence of their existence to chemists. And for the next 4 years, the couple extracted radium and polonium from Pierre and Marie Curie from morning to night worked in a crevice barn, being exposed to radiation. The couple suffered burns before realizing the dangers of the research. However, they decided to continue them! The couple received 1/10 gram of radium chloride in September 1902. But they failed to isolate polonium - as it turned out, it was a decay product of radium. Radium salt gave off warmth and a bluish glow. This fantastic substance attracted the attention of the whole world. In December 1903, the couple was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in collaboration with Becquerel. Curie Marie was the first woman to receive it!
Loss of a husband
Their second daughter, Eva, was born to them in December 1904. By that time financial situation families have improved significantly. Pierre became a professor of physics at the Sorbonne, and his wife worked for her husband as the head of the laboratory. A terrible event happened in April 1906. Pierre was killed by the crew. Maria Sklodowska-Curie, having lost her husband, colleague and best friend fell into a depression for several months.
Second Nobel Prize
However, life went on. The woman concentrated all her efforts on isolating pure radium metal, and not its compounds. And she received this substance in 1910 (in collaboration with A. Debirn). Marie Curie discovered it and proved that radium is a chemical element. They even wanted to accept her for this as a member of the French Academy of Sciences in the wake of great success, but debates unfolded, persecution began in the press, and eventually won. In 1911, Marie was awarded the 2nd She became the first laureate to be awarded it twice.
Work at the Radiev Institute
The Radiev Institute was established for research on radioactivity shortly before the First World War. Curie worked here in the area fundamental research radioactivity and medical use. During the war years, she taught radiology to military doctors, for example, to detect shrapnel in the body of a wounded person using X-rays, and delivered portable ones to the front line. Irene, her daughter, was among the doctors she taught.
last years of life
Even in her advanced years, Marie Curie continued her work. short biography these years is marked by the following: she worked with doctors, students, wrote scientific work and also released a biography of her husband. Marie traveled to Poland, which finally gained independence. She also visited the USA, where she was greeted with triumph and where she was presented with 1 g of radium to continue the experiments (its cost, by the way, is equivalent to the cost of more than 200 kg of gold). However, interaction with radioactive substances made itself felt. Her health was deteriorating, and on July 4, 1934, Curie Marie died of leukemia. It happened in the French Alps, in a small hospital located in Sansellemosa.
Marie Curie University in Lublin
In honor of the Curies, the chemical element curium (No. 96) was named. And the name great woman Mary was immortalized in the name of the University in Lublin (Poland). It is one of the largest state-owned institutions of higher education in Poland. The Maria Curie-Skłodowska University was founded in 1944, in front of it there is a monument shown in the photo above. The first rector and organizer of this educational institution Associate Professor Heinrich Raabe Today it consists of the following 10 faculties:
Biology and biotechnology.
Arts.
Humanities.
Philosophy and sociology.
Pedagogy and psychology.
Geosciences and Spatial Planning.
Mathematics, physics and computer science.
Rights and management.
Political Science.
Pedagogy and psychology.
More than 23.5 thousand students have chosen the Marie Curie University, of which about 500 are foreigners.
Pierre and Marie Curie, a married couple, were the first physicists to study the radioactivity of elements. Scientists became Nobel Prize winners in physics for their contribution to the development of science. After her death, Marie Curie received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of an independent chemical element - radium.
Pierre Curie before meeting Marie
Pierre was born in Paris, the son of a doctor. The young man received an excellent education: at first he studied at home, then became a student at the Sorbonne. At the age of 18, Pierre received the academic degree of licentiate physical sciences.
Pierre CurieAt the beginning scientific activity a young man, together with his brother Jacques, discovered piezoelectricity. During the experiments, the brothers concluded that as a result of compression of a hemihedral crystal with oblique faces, an electric polarization of a specific direction arises. If such a crystal is stretched, electricity is released in the opposite direction.
After that, the Curie brothers discovered the opposite effect on the deformation of crystals under the influence of an electrical voltage on them. Young people created piezoquartz for the first time and studied its electrical deformations. Pierre and Jacques Curie learned how to use piezoelectric quartz to measure weak currents and electric charges. The fruitful cooperation of the brothers lasted five years, after which they dispersed. In 1891, Pierre made experiments on magnetism and discovered the law on the dependence of paramagnetic bodies on temperature.
Maria Sklodowska before meeting Pierre
Maria Sklodowska was born in Warsaw, in the family of a teacher. After graduating from high school, the girl entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Sorbonne. One of the best students of the university, Sklodowska studied chemistry and physics, and devoted her free time to independent research.
Maria Skłodowska-Curie
In 1893, Maria received the degree of licentiate of physical sciences, and in 1894 the girl became a licentiate of mathematical sciences. In 1895 Marie married Pierre Curie.
Studies by Pierre and Marie Curie
The couple began to study the radioactivity of the elements. They clarified the significance of the discovery of Becquerel, who discovered the radioactive properties of uranium and compared it with phosphorescence. Becquerel believed that the radiation of uranium is a process resembling the properties of light waves. The scientist did not manage to reveal the nature of the discovered phenomenon.
Becquerel's work was continued by Pierre and Marie Curie, who began to study the phenomenon of radiation from metals, including uranium. The couple introduced the word "radioactivity" into circulation, revealing the essence of the phenomenon discovered by Becquerel.
New discoveries
In 1898, Pierre and Maria discovered a new radioactive element and named it "polonium" after Poland, Maria's homeland. This silvery white soft metal filled one of the empty windows. periodic table chemical elements of Mendeleev - the 86th cell. At the end of that year, the Curies discovered radium, a shiny alkaline earth metal with radioactive properties. He took the 88th cell of the periodic table of Mendeleev.
After radium and polonium, Marie and Pierre Curie discovered a number of other radioactive elements. Scientists have found that all heavy elements, located in the lower cells of the periodic table, have radioactive properties. In 1906, Pierre and Maria discovered that an element contained in the cells of all living things on Earth, an isotope of potassium, has radioactivity. Click to learn more about the discoveries that made scientists world-famous.
Contribution to the development of science
In 1906, Pierre Curie was run over by a cart and died on the spot. After the death of her husband, Maria took his place at the Sorbonne and became the first female professor in history. Skłodowska-Curie lectured on radioactivity to university students.
Monument to Marie Curie in Warsaw
During the First World War, Maria worked on the creation of X-ray equipment for the needs of hospitals and worked at the Radium Institute. Skłodowska-Curie died in 1934 due to a severe blood disorder caused by long-term exposure to radioactive radiation.
Few contemporaries of the Curies understood how important scientific discoveries were made by physicists. Thanks to Pierre and Mary, a great revolution took place in the life of mankind - people learned how to extract atomic energy.