阿啵呲嘚 -
1. Marie Curie is known to the world as the scientist who discovered radioactive metals i.e. Radium & Polonium.
Marie Curie was a Polish physicist and chemist who lived between 1867-1934. Together with her husband, Pierre, she discovered two new elements (radium and polonium, two radioactive elements that they extracted chemically from pitchblende ore) and studied the x-rays they emitted. She found that the harmful properties of x-rays were able to kill tumors. By the end of World War I, Marie Curie was probably the most famous woman in the world. She had made a conscious decision, however, not to patent methods of processing radium or its medical applications.
Marie Curie was born November 7, 1867 in Poland and died on July 4, 1934. Her co-discovery with her husband Pierre Curie of the radioactive elements radium and polonium represents one of the best known stories in modern science for which they were recognized in 1901 with the Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1911, Marie Curie was honored with a second Nobel prize, this time in chemistry, to honor her for successfully isolating pure radium and determining radium"s atomic weight.
As a child, Marie Curie amazed people with her great memory. She learned to read when she was only four years old. Her father was a professor of science and the instruments that he kept in a glass case fascinated Marie. She dreamed of becoming a scientist, but that would not be easy. Her family became very poor, and at the age of 18, Marie became a governess. She helped pay for her sister to study in Paris. Later, her sister helped Marie with her education. In 1891, Marie attended the Sorbonne University in Paris where she met and married Pierre Curie, a well-known physicist.
After the sudden accidental death of Pierre Curie, Marie Curie managed to raise her two small daughters (Irène, who was herself awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935, and Eve who became an accomplished author) and continue an active career in experimental radioactivity measurements.
Marie Curie contributed greatly to our understanding of radioactivity and the effects of x-rays. She received two Nobel prizes for her brilliant work, but died of leukemia, caused by her repeated exposure to radioactive material.
2.Madame Curie
Madame Curie shared with her husband, Pierre Curie, the honors for discovering two radioactive elements, radium and polonium. The discovery of these elements laid the foundation for future discoveries in nuclear physics and chemistry.
Marie Sklodowska was born on November 7, 1867, in Warsaw, Poland. Her early years were strongly influenced by her parents, who were both educators. She later joined with Faculty of Sciences at the Sorbonne. This made Marie the first woman to teach at the university level in France.
The Nobel Prizes
1911
Marie Curie was the first woman to win two Nobel prizes. More
A Contribution to the French War Effort -- X-Rays
Marie devised advanced courses and radiology and taught doctors new techniques. More
Physician and Chemist
Marie and Pierre Curie worked together in an extended investigation of radioactivity.
Early Years in Poland
Poland was an occupied and divided country throughout much of Marie Curie"s life. Marie"s father lost his job for advocating independence from Russia.
Her Struggle for Higher Education
Under Russian control, Polish women could not attend college. Marie"s sister, Bronya went to Paris to study and later helped Marie with her education. Despite a limited knowledge of French, Marie succeeded with honors at the Sorbonne, where she graduated with degrees both in mathematics and chemistry. It was still very difficult, as a woman, for Marie to find work.
Pierre and Marie: Their Life Together
Pierre was a leader in science when he met Marie; he had discovered the principle of piezoelectricity which is used in the crystal pickup of a record player. Pierre and Marie were married on July 26, 1895. They later had two daughters, Irene and Eve.
Discovery of Polonium
1898
Marie"s legacy to science is that she correctly speculated that the radiation spontaneously released from the ore was nuclear rather than atomic.
Discovery of Radium
For four years they boiled, stirred, poured and distilled tons of pitchblends to produce a tiny amount of radium.
The First Nobel Prize
1903
The Curies and Henri Becquerel received the Nobel Prize for physics for their work on radioactivity, and Marie was granted her doctorate the same year.
Pierre"s Death
1906
On April 19, 1906, Pierre was killed in a street accident when he walked in front of a team of horses.
Trips to America
Marie founded the Radium Institute in Paris. Because the Curies had not patented the rights to Radium, or the process to produce it, Marie had to make several trips to America to raise funds.
Marie"s Philosophy
Marie was a "positivist," rejecting theoretical speculation about human problems in favor of positive, observable facts.
Marie"s Death
1934
Marie later had to cut back on her official duties, due to poor health. She died peacefully on July 4, 1934 in a nursing home.
3.Madame Curie was born Maria Sklodowski in Warsaw, Poland in 1867, the youngest of five children. When she was born, Poland was controlled by Russia. Her parents were teachers, and she learned at an early age the importance of education.
Her mother died when she was young, and when her father was caught teaching Polish - which had been made illegal under the Russian government. Manya, as she was called, and her sisters had to get jobs. After a couple of failed jobs, Manya became a tutor to a family in the countryside outside Warsaw. She enjoyed her time there, and was able to send her father money to help support him, and also send some money to her sister Bronya in Paris who was studying medicine.
Bronya eventually married another medical student and they set up practice in Paris. The couple invited Manya to live with them and study at the Sorbonne - a famous Parisian University. In order to fit in better at the school, Manya changed her name to the French "Marie." Marie studied physics and mathematics and quickly received her masters" degrees in both subjects. She remained in Paris after graduation and started research on magnetism.
For the research she wanted to do, she needed more space than her small lab. A friend introduced her to another young scientist, Pierre Curie, who had some extra room. Not only did Marie move her equipment into his lab, Marie and Pierre fell in love and married.
A friend of the Curies, A. Henri Becquerel, had been playing with recently discovered properties of the element uranium. He talked to Pierre and Marie about those properties and they became interested in them too. Marie Curie set about investigating the effect, which she named "radio-activity" for her Doctorate research.
Marie Curie checked many other elements to determine whether they too were radioactive. She found one, thorium, and also came across a source of radiation in a mixture called "pitch-blend," which was much more powerful than either thorium or uranium.
Working together, it took Marie and Pierre four years to isolate the radioactive source in the pitch-blend. Marie named it radium. For the discovery of radium, Marie and Pierre won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903, which they shared with their friend A. Henri Becquerel. Shortly, Marie found that what she had discovered was not pure radium, but she was able to isolate the element itself after quite a struggle. For this work, she was given the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1911.
During her work, Marie discovered radiation could kill human cells. She reasoned that if it could kill healthy human cells, it could kill diseased human cells and went about isolating radium for use in killing tumors.
In 1906 Pierre Curie was offered the position of director of the Physics Laboratory at the Sorbonne. Before he could take the position, however, he was run over by a carriage and killed. After her husband died, Marie was offered and took the position, the first woman to become director of a research laboratory.
During the first World War, Marie Curie went to work for the French building and designing X-ray machines. Knowing that moving soldiers to a hospital before they needed surgery was not always possible, she designed the first mobile X-ray machine and traveled with it along the front lines during the war.
On July 4, 1934, Marie Curie died in Paris, killed by her own experiments. She died of radiation poisoning and may have been the first person to do so. Marie Curie had brought herself up from poverty, struggling to get her education and succeeding brilliantly. The work she did, she did with patience, often getting results only after years of careful experimentation, while struggling for money to support her work. For her struggles, she received two Nobel Prizes - the first woman to win even one. Through the knowledge she gained, thousands of lives have been saved.
Great knowledge, however, is often a two-edged sword. Without the work she did we might not have many modern cancer treatments, or atomic clocks, or even the computer you"re viewing this on. But through her work on radioactivity she can also be thought of as the mother of the atomic bomb.