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MARIE

CURIE

BY

ANIRUDDHA K.V 6.U

A BIOGRAPHY



1

INTRODUCTION

Rarely has a woman made such a name in history as Marie Curie did. The

accomplishments of Marie Curie provide ample evidence as to how

perseverance and hard work can work wonders

Marie Curie was a very renowned physics and chemist, mainly known for

being a pioneer in the field of radioactivity. She was the female professor

at the University of Paris and till date, is the first and only person

honoured with Nobel Prizes in two different sciences. Wife of fellow-Nobel-laureate Pierre Curie, she was also the founder of the Curie Institutes in

Paris and Warsaw. Though Curie was born and brought up in Poland, she

later gained French citizenship. Being proud of her Polish roots, she

named the first new chemical element that was discovered by her as

"polonium", after her native country.

Born on: November 7, 1867

Born in: Warsaw, Poland

Nationality: Polish, French

Career: Physicist and Chemist

Died on: July 4, 1934

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.



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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.



3

EARLY YEARS

Marie Curie was

born as ‗Maria

Skodowska‘ on 7th

November 1867, in

Warsaw, Poland.

She was born to

Bronisawa

Skodowski and

WadysawSkodowski, both of

them teachers,

with the latter

teaching

mathematics and

physics. Her father

and mother both

were teachers

who gave thehighest priority

towards the

education of their

children. Maria

was a precocious

child and was the

most brilliant

among them.

Though she displayed exceptional talents, the lifelong accomplishments

of Marie Curie were purely a result of hard work and patience.

Maria's paternal grandfather Józef Skłodowski had been a respected

teacher in Lublin, where he taught the young Bolesław Prus, who would

become one of the leading figures in the history of Polish literature. Her

father Władysław Skłodowski taught mathematics and physics, subjects

that Maria was to pursue, and was also director of two Warsaw gymnasia

for boys.[3] After Russian authorities eliminated laboratory instruction

from the Polish schools, he brought much of the lab equipment home, andinstructed his children in its use. He was eventually fired by the Russian



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supervisors for pro-Polish sentiments, and forced to take lower paying

posts; the family also lost money on a bad investment, and eventually

chose to supplement the income by lodging boys in their house.Maria's

mother Bronisława operated a prestigious Warsaw boarding school for

girls; she resigned from the position after Maria was born. She died fromtuberculosis when Maria was twelve. Maria's father was an atheist; her

mother — a devout Catholic.

Maria‘s childhood was not a prosperous one. The family often struggled

financially. Nevertheless, her parents maintained their focus on educating

their children well. Maria easily learnt most of the things from her parents.

Marie had four siblings, all of whom were older to her, Zofia (born 1862),

Józef (1863), Bronisawa (1865) and Helena (1866). She experienced

tragedy at a very young age, when she first lost her sister Zofia to typhus

and later, suffered from the death of her mother, from tuberculosis.

Following these events, she lost faith in her Roman Catholic religion and

become an agnostic. Right from her childhood, Marie exhibited an

exceptionally strong memory. At the same time, she was so much

interested in study that at times, she used to forget to eat food or even

have her sleep. She graduated from a Russian lyceum at the age of

sixteen and came first in her class. She also received a gold medal on

completion of her secondary education.

Though Marie was a brilliant student, her gender as well as the Russian

reprisals, following Polish 1863 uprising against Tsarist Russia, resulted in

her admission being denied by a regular university. She attended Warsaw's

illegal Polish Floating University, while working as a teacher alongside, in

order to support her family financially. She also worked as a governess for

some time. She used the money earned from her jobs to supportBronisawa‘s medicine study, in Paris.



5

THE PERSONAL JOURNEY

In 1891, Marie went to Paris, to join her sister, and enrolled herself at the

University of Paris. There, she studied mathematics, physics and

chemistry. She got her undergraduate degree in 1893, coming first. Shecompleted her master's degree in mathematics, from University of Paris,

in 1895.

It was while she was in Paris that she met and shared lab space with one

Pierre Curie, her future husband and collaborator. Ten years her elder,

Pierre was Lab Chief for the Paris Municipal School of Industrial Physics

and Chemistry, and he had a background in magnetism and crystals. Marie

was doing post-graduate research on the magnetic properties of various

types of steel, a project financed by an industrial company. The two notonly encouraged each other's work beneficially, but fell in love. They

married in July 1885. Both of them shared common interests and started

doing research together. When Marie met Pierre Curie at the University of

Paris, he was an instructor in the School of Physics and Chemistry, the

École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de

Paris (ESPCI). The couple had two daughters - Irène Joliot-Curie and Ève

Curie. The elder one (Irène) won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935,

while, the younger one (Ève) wrote the biography on her mother called,

Madame Curie, after her mother's death.



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Marie was a "go-getter", a woman with tremendous drive and ambition.

She was a product of the school system, racking up many firsts by the

time she met Pierre. Pierre, on the other hand, was a school system drop-

out. His parents had him home-schooled with some capable tutors in the

more advanced courses. Like Albert Einstein and Neils Bohr, Pierre mayhave had a learning disability. Nevertheless, he passed his entrance exam

for the Sorbonne and obtained his Masters degree, the licence es

sciences, at the age of 18. Working with his brother, he began

investigating crystals. This research led to the discovery of piezo-

electricity three years later. He published a number of important papers,

but his unorthodox schooling and his failure to write up his thesis and

finish his doctorate virtually barred him from positions at all the top

schools in France. Pierre was the "ultimate outsider" as one biographer

has described him.

Marie still had

serious

reservations

about marrying

Pierre. For one

thing, she didn't

want to give up

her

independence

as a single

woman. Married

to Pierre, she

would have to

do the usual cooking and cleaning, leaving less time for physics. Another major obstacle was the fact that Pierre was not Polish. If she married him,

she would have to give up her patriotic dream of returning home to

liberate Poland. Pierre then offered to emigrate to Poland and live with her

there. As the months passed, Marie realized that she and Pierre were

compatible, and that they shared a positivist political and scientific vision.

Slowly, she fell in love with this eccentric idealist.



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What Is Radioactivity? What is

Radiation?

Unstable atomic nuclei will

spontaneously decompose to form

nuclei with a higher stability. The

decomposition process is called

radioactivity. The energy and

particles which are released

during the decomposition process are called radiation. When

unstable nuclei decompose in

nature, the process is referred to

as natural radioactivity. When the

unstable nuclei are prepared in

the laboratory, the decomposition

is called induced radioactivity.

Alpha, beta, and gamma radiation

also accompany induced radioactivity. Radioactive isotopes

are prepared in the lab using

bombardment reactions to convert

a stable nucleus into one which is

radioactive.

THE SCIENTIFIC JOURNEY

Marie Curie got in touch with a

factory in Austria that removed the

Uranium from pitchblende for

industrial use and bought several

tonnes of the worthless waste

product, which was even more

radioactive than the original

pitchblende, and was much

cheaper. Marie set about

processing the pitchblende toextract the tiny quantities of

Radium. This involved working on a

much larger scale than before, with

20 kg batches of the mineral -

grinding, dissolving, filtering,

precipitating, collecting,

redissolving, crystallising and

recrystallizing.

Marie and Pierre were working on

the theory that pitchblende must

contain traces of an unknown

substance far more radioactive

than Uranium. Two months later,

they published an article, telling the world about the existence of an

element, which they named Polonium. Later that year, in December, they

announced the existence of a second element, named Radium for itsintense radioactivity. In the next few years, the couple processed tons of

pitchblende, mainly concentrating the radioactive substances and

eventually isolating the chloride salts. In April 1902, they managed to

refine Radium Chloride. However, the isolation of Polonium was still not a

reality.



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The work was heavy and physically demanding - and involved dangers the

Curies did not appreciate. During this time they began to feel sick and

physically exhausted; today we can attribute their ill-health to the early

symptoms of radiation sickness. At the time they persevered in ignorance

of the risks, often with raw and inflamed hands because they werecontinually handling highly radioactive material.

Of those years Paul Appell, president of the Academy of Paris, wrote as

follows:

"M. and Mme. Curie, not being able to pursue their chemical experiments

in a schoolroom which had been placed at their disposal, arranged for these in a sort of abandoned warehouse opposite their atelier. In this

place, with its asphalt floor, its broken and patched glass roof, hot in

summer, heated by a cast-iron stove in winter, they performed their

wonderful work.

"The equipment consisted of some

old and worn deal tables, upon which

Mme. Curie prepared the material for the production of radium. She was

laboratory chief assistant and handy

boy at the same time. In addition to

her intellectual labour it was

frequently necessary for her to

perform severe manual toil. On many

an afternoon she stirred in a great

caldron with a heavy iron rod the

molten mass of the radioactiveproducts, reaching home at evening

exhausted by fatigue but delighted to

see that her labours had led to a

luminous product of concentration."

The couple, in an unusual gesture, did

not patent the radium-isolation process, with the aim of letting the

scientific community do research in the field, totally unhindered. In 1903,



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Marie received the first Nobel Prize of her life, in Physics, which she

shared with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel. With this, she became the

first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize. The same year, she received her

Doctorate in Science from the University of Paris, under the supervision of

Henri Becquerel. She became the first woman in France to complete adoctorate.

In 1902 Marie eventually isolated radium (as radium chloride), determining

its atomic weight as 225.93. The journey to the discovery had been long

and arduous.

In 1911, Marie received the second Nobel Prize of her life, this time inChemistry. With this, she became the first person to win or share two

Nobel Prizes. In fact, till date,

she is one of only two people to

be awarded a Nobel Prize in two

different fields. To add to it,

Marie is also the only woman to

have won two Nobel Prizes and

the only person to have won

Nobel Prizes in two differentscience fields.

She donated her and her husband's gold Nobel Prize medals for the war

effort. After the war, Marie was finally able to turn her attention to the

Radium Institute, but the world-class research facility that she envisioned

would require more funding to become fully equipped. Convinced by an

American journalist that Americans would be sympathetic to her cause,

Marie agreed to make appearances in the United States in 1921. She was

greeted by enthusiastic crowds.An impressive $100,000 was raised, enabling Marie to purchase the

Radium needed for her research. A highlight of the trip was meeting

President Warren Harding, who personally handed the radium to her.

Thanks to Marie Curie's oversight and tireless fund-raising efforts, the

institute grew in both size and status throughout the 1920s and beyond.

On her second tour, she managed to garner enough funds to equip the

Warsaw Radium Institute, which she founded in 1925, with her sister

Bronisawa as director. In her later years, Marie headed the Pasteur



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Institute, along with a radioactivity laboratory, which was created for her

by the University Paris.

The Curie's research was crucial in the development of x-rays in surgery.During World War I, she encouraged the use of mobile radiography units,

known as petites Curies ("Little Curies"), for the treatment of wounded

soldiers. The International Red Cross made her head of its radiological

service and she held training courses for medical orderlies and doctors in

the new techniques.

Curie chose her teenage daughter

Irène as her first assistant. For a year Irène worked by her mother‘s side.

Like her mother, she refused to show

emotion at the sight of the terrible

wounds. Soon Curie allowed Irène to

direct an X-ray station by herself.

Meanwhile Marie thought of another

way for radioactivity to help save

soldiers‘ lives. At the Radium

Institute she prepared tiny glasstubes containing a radioactive gas

(radon) that comes from minerals

containing radium. Hospital doctors inserted the tiny tubes into patients

at spots where the radiation would destroy diseased tissue

Curie then tried to find other substances that were radioactive. As a result

of this search, she found that thorium was also radioactive. However,

credit for this discovery had already gone to a German scientist, GerhardSchmidt.

Several years passed, however, before the general public knew of radium.

A watch-case containing a speck of the rare element was exhibited at the

Paris Exposition in 1900. It was labelled, "Radium, discovered by Mme.

Curie." In 1901 the French Academy of Sciences awarded the La Caze

Prize of 10,000 francs to the Curies.



11

MARIE - THE SCIENTIST

Marie Curie distinguished herself as one of the leading scientists of alltime during an era when few

women attended college and

fewer still became scientists.

With the help of her husband

Pierre Curie, she discovered

two new elements: polonium

and radium. The Curies' study

of radioactivity led to

advances in the treatment of cancer as well as the

development of nuclear power.

Curie‘s later writings make it

perfectly clear that she made

these discoveries and that

they were not shared with her

husband. In her biography of

Pierre, written years after thisdiscovery, Marie twice

emphasised that they were her discoveries. She was influenced most

certainly, back to the time she applied for a place as a student at Krakow

University but was rejected because she was female. Marie almost

certainly wanted these discoveries to be ‗attached‘ to a woman – and not

shared with a man, even if he was her husband.

In 1905, election took place for membership to French Academy of Sciences. Marie lost by just one vote, mainly because of the academy‘s

prejudice against women. In May 1906 she was appointed to head the

laboratory that her late husband had run. Marie became the first women to

be made a Professor at the Sorbonne.

With her fame, she persuaded the French government into building the

Radium Institute (now the Institut Curie). The centre concentrated its

work on Chemistry, Physics and Medicine and it was to produce four more

Nobel Prize winners.



12

PUBLICATIONS AND HONOURS

She wrote a good deal, among her works being "Recherches sur les

Proprietes Magnetiques des Aciers Trempes," "Recherches sur les

Substances Radioactives," "L'Isotropie et les Elements Isotropes" and

"Pierre Curie," the life and work of her husband. Her most celebrated

work, however, which is regarded as a classic in scientific literature, was

her "Traite de Radioactivite," which was published in 1910.

The frail little woman was overwhelmed by honours. She was feted andlaudatory speeches were made everywhere she went. She received

honorary university degrees from Columbia, the University of

Pennsylvania, Woman's

Medical College,

University of

Pittsburgh, Yale,

Wellesley, North-

western and Smith.

President Nicholas

Murray Butler, in

presenting the

Columbia award, said

it honoured the woman

"to who‘s skill,

scientific might and

trained powers of imagination it has been given to enrich mankind by thepriceless gift of radium, winning thereby a place on the immortal list of

scientific discoverers."

Dr. William Lyon Phelps of Yale said:

"There is one thing rarer than genius. That is radium. Mme. Curie

illustrates the combination of both."



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In 1922 Mme. Curie was elected a member of the Academy of Medicine in

Paris, and the next year the French Government unanimously voted her an

annual pension of 40,000 francs. That was on the occasion of the twenty-

fifth anniversary of the discovery of radium.

Mme. Curie was never eager to mix in political or social matters. She did,

however, urge woman suffrage, and she advocated international

scholarships in pure science.

Mme. Curie received an honorary degree from St. Lawrence University and

dedicated Hepburn Hall of Chemistry there. She received the gold medal

of the New York City Federation of Women's Clubs and many other marksof honor and esteem. As a guest of Henry Ford, Mme. Curie went to

Dearborn, Mich., for the Edison jubilee.

An asteroid, 7000 Curie, bears her name. And Curium, the 96th element in

the periodic table, is named in honour of both Marie and Pierre Curie. In

addition she has been the inspiration for innumerable young scientists,

and was of great influence on her peers including Albert Einstein.



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USES OF MARIE CURIE‘S RESEARCH

Madam Curie is one of the most revered female physicists and is well

known for her discovery of several radioactive metals including Radium

and Polonium. Together with her husband, she studied the x-rays they

emitted. She discovered that the harmful rays could kill tumours. Her

popularity grew along with her discoveries and peaked by the end of the

First World War. At that time, Madam Curie was one of the most famous

names worldwide. The discovery of radium will easily be among the top

20th century inventions, and is arguably one of the inventions that

changed the world forever.

IGNORED URANIUM RAYS appealed to Marie Curie. Since she would nothave a long bibliography of published papers to read, she could begin

experimental work on them immediately. The director of the Paris

Municipal School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry, where Pierre was

professor of physics, permitted her to use a

crowded, damp storeroom there as a lab.

A clever technique was her key to success. About

15 years earlier, Pierre and his older brother,

Jacques, had invented a new kind of electrometer, device for measuring extremely low

electrical currents. Marie now put the Curie

electrometer to use in measuring the faint

currents that can pass through air that has been

bombarded with uranium rays. The moist air in

the storeroom tended to dissipate the electric

charge, but she managed to make reproducible

measurements.

Marie tested all the known elements in order to determine if other

elements or minerals would make air conduct electricity better, or if

uranium alone could do this. In this task she was assisted by a number of

chemists who donated a variety of mineral samples, including some

containing very rare elements. In April 1898 her research revealed that

thorium compounds, like those of uranium, emit Becquerel rays. Again the

emission appeared to be an atomic property. To describe the behaviour of



15

uranium and thorium she invented the word ―radioactivity‖ --based on the

Latin word for ray. She found that radiation can kill normal human cells.

Based on the fact, she stated that it can be manipulated to treat cancer

where it destroys the tumour cells.

Even though the inventions of Marie Curie could have fetched her a

fortune, she never tried to patent the inventions. Albert Einstein said,

―Marie Curie is, of all celebrated beings, the only one whom fame has not

corrupted‖.



16

HER LAST DAYS

Curie‘s research was not

without problems, no one

understood at the time –

Radiation Poisoning.

Almost on a daily basis,

Marie and Pierre worked in

normal research clothing.

Anything bordering on

protective clothing was

unheard of them unless itinvolved avoiding chemical

splashes on clothes.

In April 1906, Pierre Curie

was killed in a street

accident. Later some

thought he did not survive

the accident because hisbody had been weakened

as a result of his exposure

to radiation. However, this

has never been proved and

it does seem that he died

simply because in heavy

rain, he slipped under the

wheels of a horse-drawn carriage. His death was a devastating blow to

Marie. However, it is generally accepted that her body, by the 1930‘s, wassuffering the effects of radiation exposure. Her writings had commented

on how pretty she had found the blue-green colours given off by the

radioactive isotopes she frequently carried around in her pockets. When

they were not in her pockets, she simply kept them in desk drawers. There

was not any knowledge of the dangers then.

Marie Curie died on July 4th, 1934. The cause of death was Aplastic

Anaemia. This was probably caused by radiation exposure. Oninvestigating her laboratory notebooks, traces of radioactivity are



17

discovered in the fingerprints that are all over the pages. Her books are

still radioactive to this very day.

She was 67 when she died. Her great life came to an end in 1934 after

saving millions of human lives. As an honour, her mortal remains were

moved to the dome of Pantheon in Paris later. In 1995, Marie and Pierre

Curie were reburied in the Pantheon - the Paris mausoleum reserved for

France's most revered dead - on the orders of French President M.

Mitterand.

Marie Curie was the first woman to be awarded a place in the Pantheon

for her own achievements.

Marie Curie's life as a scientist was one which flourished because of her

ability to observe, deduce and predict. She is also arguably the first

woman to make such a significant contribution to science.



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HER FAMOUS QUOTES

One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to

be done.

• Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.

• We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it

would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. Andthis is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point

of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the

beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific

discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity.

• I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in

his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before

natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.

• A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician: he is also a child

confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were

fairy tales.

• You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the

individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement,and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our

particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most

useful.

• Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and,

without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But

humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development

of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to



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devote their care to their own material profit. Without doubt, these

dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a

well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means

of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely

consecrated to research.

• I have frequently been questioned, especially by women, of how I could

reconcile family life with a scientific career. Well, it has not been easy.

• We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at

whatever cost, must be attained.

• I was taught that the way of progress is neither swift nor easy.

• Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have

perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that

we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.

• Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.

• I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more

good than evil from new discoveries.

• There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of

establishing the truth.

• When one studies strongly radioactive substances special precautions

must be taken. Dust, the air of the room, and one's clothes, all become

radioactive.

• After all, science is essentially international, and it is only through lack

of the historical sense that national qualities have been attributed to it.



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BIBLIOGRAPHY

inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blMarieCurie.htm

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie

www.nobelprize.org › Nobel Prizes › Nobel Prize in Physics

inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blMarieCurie.htm

www.aip.org/history/curie

www.biography.com › People

www.infoplease.com/biography/var/mariecurie.html



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TABLE OF CONTENT

INTRODUCTION

EARLY YEARS

PERSONAL JOURNEY

SCIENTIFIC JOURNEY

MARIE – THE SCIENTIST

PUBLICATIONS AND HONOURS

USES OF MARIE CURIE‘S RESEARCH

LAST DAYS

HER FAMOUS QUOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

marie curie 1

Documents