MARIE CURIE

Biography
Born Manya Sklodowska in Warsaw, Poland, November 1867, Madam Marie
Curie has become one of the most famous scientists that have ever lived.
Growing up during a time of racial and gender discrimination, she still
managed to become very highly educated and pursue her career in scientific
discovery for which she is most well known.
Marie graduated from high school at the age of fifteen at the top of her
class, but was refused entry into regular university because of her gender, so
she attended Clandestine „Floating University‟ while working as a housemaid.
In 1893, she graduated again first in her class in physical sciences. Marie lived
in Poland until the age of 24. In 1891 she moved to Paris, France and became a
French citizen.
Marie Sklodowska became Marie Curie when she married Pierre Curie,
a French physicist, in 1895. Their first daughter, Irene, was born in 1897, who
went on to become a scientist like her mother. Irene shared the Nobel Prize for
Marie Curie (1911) chemistry in 1935 with her husband, Frederic Joliot. Marie Curie gave birth to
http://nobelprize.org her second child, Eve, in 1904, but her husband died just two years later.
In 1934, Marie Curie died of aplastic anaemia due to exposure to
radiation from all her years of devoted research on Radium, Polonium and radioactivity. She took no safety
precautions while conducting experiments because the effects of radioactivity were not known at the time of
her research. Marie even commented on the “pretty blue green light” the radioactive isotopes shed, while
sitting in her desk draw in the dark.

Scientific Achievement
Marie Curie worked in a research team with her husband, Pierre, and another scientist, Henri Becquerel.
Together they discovered Radium and Polonium, calculated Radium‟s atomic weight, discovered that radium
emits alpha, beta and gamma rays and that radium gives off the radioactive gas, radon. They also studied other
radioactive materials such as pitchblende (uranium ore), isolated chloride salts and refined radium chloride.
Also, the unit of radioactivity, the Curie (Ci), and periodic element #96, Curium (Cm), were named in honour
of Marie and Pierre Curie.
In 1903, Pierre Curie, Marie Curie and Henri Becquerel received a joint Nobel Prize (Marie and Pierre
each received a quarter and Henri received the other half) in physics “in recognition of the extraordinary
services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Henri
Becquerel.” In 1911, Marie also received the Nobel Prize for chemistry, for her discovery of the elements
Radium and Polonium. To this day, Marie Curie is still the only woman to have received two Nobel Prizes.

Significance of Marie Curie’s achievements for society

The discoveries of radioactive properties in certain elements have established entirely new industries as well as
create many global problems. Radioactive elements are unstable, so they can be used to fuel nuclear fission,
which gives off heat, to heat water to make steam, such as in a nuclear power plant or nuclear submarine.
However, if such substances are not handled carefully and confined in containers that conceal the radiation, it
can cause serious health problems that are potentially fatal.
During World War I, Madam Curie pushed for the use of mobile radiography units (Petite Curies),
powered by tubes of radon gas, to assist with the treatment of wounded soldiers. However, the side effects of
radiation were not fully understood at the time, so often patients were seriously overexposed, causing more
harm than good. Today, cancer patients can benefit from controlled radiation therapy. And radiation can be
used as a method of diagnosis, such as in a PET (positron emission tomography) scan.
However, the most frightening aspect of radioactivity is its ability to cause so much harm, as in a
nuclear bomb or in the meltdown of a nuclear reactor in a nuclear power plant. Today, several nations store
nuclear weapons to influence political decisions in their favour. It is a shame that such a useful resource,
discovered by Marie Curie and her fellow researchers, has been used to cause fear and destruction.

© Sarah Don, Australia, 2007

Bibliography:
Carey, J. (2005) Brain Facts, Society for Neuroscience, USA.
Cutnell, J.D. & Johnson, K.W. (1995) Physics, John Wiley & Sons Inc., Canada.
Dry, S & Seifert, S. (2003) Curie, Haus Publishing Limited, Great Britain.
Marie Curie, http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1903/marie-curie-bio.html (11/3/07)
Marie Curie, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/marie_sklodowska-curie (24/2/07)
Nuclear Technology, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/nuclear_technology (24/2/07)

© Sarah Don, Australia, 2007