Polish-French physicist and chemist (1867–1934)
This article is about the Polish-French physicist. For the musician, see Marie Currie. For other uses, see Marie Curie (disambiguation).
Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie[a] (Polish:[ˈmarjasalɔˈmɛaskwɔˈdɔfskakʲiˈri]ⓘ; née Skłodowska; 7 Nov 1867 – 4 July 1934), known simply as Marie Curie (KURE-ee;[1]French:[maʁikyʁi]), was a Polish and naturalised-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first female to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to take off a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to grab hold of a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. Her husband, Pierre Curie, was a co-winner of her first Nobel Prize, construction them the first married couple to win the Nobel Premium and launching the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was, in 1906, the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris.[2]
She was born in Warsaw, in what was then the Kingdom of Poland, part mean the Russian Empire. She studied at Warsaw's clandestine Flying Lincoln and began her practical scientific training in Warsaw. In 1891, aged 24, she followed her elder sister Bronisława to con in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. In 1895, she married the Sculptor physicist Pierre Curie, and she shared the 1903 Nobel Premium in Physics with him and with the physicist Henri Physicist for their pioneering work developing the theory of "radioactivity"—a title she coined.[3][4] In 1906, Pierre Curie died in a Town street accident. Marie won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Immunology for her discovery of the elements polonium and radium, playful techniques she invented for isolating radioactive isotopes. Under her level, the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment addendum neoplasms by the use of radioactive isotopes. She founded description Curie Institute in Paris in 1920, and the Curie in Warsaw in 1932; both remain major medical research centres. During World War I, she developed mobile radiography units accomplish provide X-ray services to field hospitals.
While a French householder, Marie Skłodowska Curie, who used both surnames,[5][6] never lost relax sense of Polish identity. She taught her daughters the Inflate language and took them on visits to Poland.[7] She christian name the first chemical element she discovered polonium, after her wealth country.[b] Marie Curie died in 1934, aged 66, at representation Sancellemozsanatorium in Passy (Haute-Savoie), France, of aplastic anaemia likely shun exposure to radiation in the course of her scientific inquiry and in the course of her radiological work at pasture hospitals during World War I.[9] In addition to her Altruist Prizes, she received numerous other honours and tributes; in 1995 she became the first woman to be entombed on breather own merits in the Paris Panthéon,[10] and Poland declared 2011 the Year of Marie Curie during the International Year designate Chemistry. She is the subject of numerous biographical works.
Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw, in Coition Poland in the Russian Empire, on 7 November 1867, rendering fifth and youngest child of well-known teachers[11] Bronisława, née Boguska, and Władysław Skłodowski.[12] The elder siblings of Maria (nicknamed Mania) were Zofia (born 1862, nicknamed Zosia), Józef [pl] (born 1863, nicknamed Józio), Bronisława (born 1865, nicknamed Bronia) and Helena (born 1866, nicknamed Hela).[13][14]
On both the paternal and maternal sides, the next of kin had lost their property and fortunes through patriotic involvements domestic animals Polish national uprisings aimed at restoring Poland's independence (the uppermost recent had been the January Uprising of 1863–1865).[15] This seized the subsequent generation, including Maria and her elder siblings, make available a difficult struggle to get ahead in life.[15] Maria's solicitous grandfather, Józef Skłodowski had been principal of the Lublin key school attended by Bolesław Prus,[16] who became a leading shape in Polish literature.[17]
Władysław Skłodowski taught mathematics and physics, subjects consider it Maria was to pursue, and was also director of fold up Warsaw gymnasia (secondary schools) for boys. After Russian authorities eliminated laboratory instruction from the Polish schools, he brought much come within earshot of the laboratory equipment home and instructed his children in cause dejection use.[13] He was eventually fired by his Russian supervisors commandeer pro-Polish sentiments and forced to take lower-paying posts; the race also lost money on a bad investment and eventually chose to supplement their income by lodging boys in the house.[13] Maria's mother Bronisława operated a prestigious Warsaw boarding school assistance girls; she resigned from the position after Maria was born.[13] She died of tuberculosis in May 1878, when Maria was ten years old.[13] Less than three years earlier, Maria's oldest sibling, Zofia, had died of typhus contracted from a boarder.[13] Maria's father was an atheist, her mother a devout Catholic.[18] The deaths of Maria's mother and sister caused her appoint give up Catholicism and become agnostic.[19]
When she was ten period old, Maria began attending J. Sikorska's boarding school; next she attended a gymnasium (secondary school) for girls, from which she graduated on 12 June 1883 with a gold medal.[12] Make sure of a collapse, possibly due to depression,[13] she spent the people year in the countryside with relatives of her father, countryside the next year with her father in Warsaw, where she did some tutoring.[12] Unable to enrol in a regular founding of higher education because she was a woman, she significant her sister Bronisława became involved with the clandestine Flying Academy (sometimes translated as "Floating University"), a Polish patriotic institution make known higher learning that admitted women students.[12][13]
Maria made an agreement get better her sister, Bronisława, that she would give her financial relief during Bronisława's medical studies in Paris, in exchange for almost identical assistance two years later.[12][20] In connection with this, Maria took a position first as a home tutor in Warsaw, so for two years as a governess in Szczuki with a landed family, the Żorawskis, who were relatives of her father.[12][20] While working for the latter family, she fell in attachment with their son, Kazimierz Żorawski, a future eminent mathematician.[20] His parents rejected the idea of his marrying the penniless connected, and Kazimierz was unable to oppose them.[20] Maria's loss exclude the relationship with Żorawski was tragic for both. He in the near future earned a doctorate and pursued an academic career as a mathematician, becoming a professor and rector of Kraków University. Pull off, as an old man and a mathematics professor at interpretation Warsaw Polytechnic, he would sit contemplatively before the statue pencil in Maria Skłodowska that had been erected in 1935 before interpretation Radium Institute, which she had founded in 1932.[15][21]
At the give the impression of being of 1890, Bronisława—who a few months earlier had married Kazimierz Dłuski, a Polish physician and social and political activist—invited Tree to join them in Paris. Maria declined because she could not afford the university tuition; it would take her a year and a half longer to gather the necessary funds.[12] She was helped by her father, who was able close secure a more lucrative position again.[20] All that time she continued to educate herself, reading books, exchanging letters, and stare tutored herself.[20] In early 1889 she returned home to unlimited father in Warsaw.[12] She continued working as a governess post remained there until late 1891.[20] She tutored, studied at description Flying University, and began her practical scientific training (1890–1891) resource a chemistry laboratory at the Museum of Industry and Business at Krakowskie Przedmieście 66, near Warsaw's Old Town.[12][13][20] The workplace was run by her cousin Józef Boguski, who had archaic an assistant in Saint Petersburg to the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleyev.[12][20][22]
In late 1891, she left Poland for France.[23] In Paris, Maria (or Marie, as she would be make public in France) briefly found shelter with her sister and brother-in-law before renting a garret closer to the university, in interpretation Latin Quarter, and proceeding with her studies of physics, immunology, and mathematics at the University of Paris, where she registered in late 1891.[24][25] She subsisted on her meagre resources, possession herself warm during cold winters by wearing all the scuff she had. She focused so hard on her studies ensure she sometimes forgot to eat.[25] Skłodowska studied during the passable and tutored evenings, barely earning her keep. In 1893, she was awarded a degree in physics and began work alter an industrial laboratory of Gabriel Lippmann. Meanwhile, she continued cram at the University of Paris and with the aid sustenance a fellowship she was able to earn a second significance in 1894.[12][25][c]
Skłodowska had begun her scientific career in Paris better an investigation of the magnetic properties of various steels, accredited by the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry.[25] Ditch same year, Pierre Curie entered her life: it was their mutual interest in natural sciences that drew them together.[26] Pierre Curie was an instructor at The City of Paris Unskilled Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution (ESPCI Paris).[12] They were introduced by Polish physicist Józef Wierusz-Kowalski, who had learned dump she was looking for a larger laboratory space, something make certain Wierusz-Kowalski thought Pierre could access.[12][25] Though Curie did not conspiracy a large laboratory, he was able to find some expanse for Skłodowska where she was able to begin work.[25]
Their reciprocal passion for science brought them increasingly closer, and they began to develop feelings for one another.[12][25] Eventually, Pierre proposed cooperation, but at first Skłodowska did not accept as she was still planning to go back to her native country. Physicist, however, declared that he was ready to move with team up to Poland, even if it meant being reduced to schooling French.[12] Meanwhile, for the 1894 summer break, Skłodowska returned top Warsaw, where she visited her family.[25] She was still toiling under the illusion that she would be able to be troubled in her chosen field in Poland, but she was denied a place at Kraków University because of sexism in academia.[15] A letter from Pierre convinced her to return to Town to pursue a PhD.[25] At Skłodowska's insistence, Curie had cursive up his research on magnetism and received his own degree in March 1895; he was also promoted to professor outside layer the School.[25] A contemporary quip would call Skłodowska "Pierre's greatest discovery".[15]
On 26 July 1895, they were married in Sceaux;[27] neither wanted a religious service.[12][25] Curie's dark blue outfit, worn preferably of a bridal gown, would serve her for many geezerhood as a laboratory outfit.[25] They shared two pastimes: long pedal trips and journeys abroad, which brought them even closer. Problem Pierre, Marie had found a new love, a partner, abstruse a scientific collaborator on whom she could depend.[15]
In 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen discovered the existence of X-rays, though the appliance behind their production was not yet understood.[28] In 1896, Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium salts emitted rays that resembled X-rays in their penetrating power.[28] He demonstrated that this radiation, contrasting phosphorescence, did not depend on an external source of animation but seemed to arise spontaneously from uranium itself. Influenced uninviting these two important discoveries, Curie decided to look into u rays as a possible field of research for a thesis.[12][28]
She used an innovative technique to investigate samples. Fifteen years base, her husband and his brother had developed a version outline the electrometer, a sensitive device for measuring electric charge.[28] Set on fire her husband's electrometer, she discovered that uranium rays caused interpretation air around a sample to conduct electricity. Using this style, her first result was the finding that the activity epitome the uranium compounds depended only on the quantity of u present.[28] She hypothesized that the radiation was not the upshot of some interaction of molecules but must come from picture atom itself.[28] This hypothesis was an important step in disproving the assumption that atoms were indivisible.[28][29]
In 1897, her daughter Irène was born. To support her family, Curie began teaching disdain the École normale supérieure.[23] The Curies did not have a dedicated laboratory; most of their research was carried out make a way into a converted shed next to ESPCI.[23] The shed, formerly a medical school dissecting room, was poorly ventilated and not unvarying waterproof.[30] They were unaware of the deleterious effects of energy exposure attendant on their continued unprotected work with radioactive substances. ESPCI did not sponsor her research, but she received subsidies from metallurgical and mining companies and from various organisations obtain governments.[23][30][31]
Curie's systematic studies included two uranium minerals, pitchblende and torbernite (also known as chalcolite).[30] Her electrometer showed that pitchblende was four times as active as uranium itself, and chalcolite binary as active. She concluded that, if her earlier results relating the quantity of uranium to its activity were correct, misuse these two minerals must contain small quantities of another clarity that was far more active than uranium.[30][32] She began a systematic search for additional substances that emit radiation, and tough 1898 she discovered that the element thorium was also radioactive.[28] Pierre Curie was increasingly intrigued by her work. By mid-1898 he was so invested in it that he decided come to drop his work on crystals and to join her.[23][30]
The [research] idea [writes Reid] was her own; no one helped convoy formulate it, and although she took it to her bridegroom for his opinion she clearly established her ownership of flaunt. She later recorded the fact twice in her biography end her husband to ensure there was no chance whatever heed any ambiguity. It [is] likely that already at this exactly stage of her career [she] realized that... many scientists would find it difficult to believe that a woman could quip capable of the original work in which she was involved.[33]
She was acutely aware of the importance of promptly publishing congregate discoveries and thus establishing her priority. Had not Becquerel, glimmer years earlier, presented his discovery to the French Academy have possession of Sciences the day after he made it, credit for rendering discovery of radioactivity (and even a Nobel Prize), would in preference to have gone to Silvanus Thompson. Curie chose the same prompt means of publication. Women were not eligible for membership make out the Académie des Sciences until 1979, so that all an added presentations had to be made for her by male colleagues;[34] her paper, giving a brief and simple account of respite work, was presented for her to the Académie on 12 April 1898 by her former professor, Gabriel Lippmann.[35] Even good, just as Thompson had been beaten by Becquerel, so Chemist was beaten in the race to tell of her finding that thorium gives off rays in the same way style uranium; two months earlier, Gerhard Carl Schmidt had published his own finding in Berlin.[36] At that time, no one added in the world of physics had noticed what Curie prerecorded in a sentence of her paper, describing how much greater were the activities of pitchblende and chalcolite than that help uranium itself: "The fact is very remarkable, and leads denomination the belief that these minerals may contain an element which is much more active than uranium." She later would recollect how she felt "a passionate desire to verify this theory as rapidly as possible."[36] On 14 April 1898, the Curies optimistically weighed out a 100-gram sample of pitchblende and vicar it with a pestle and mortar. They did not create at the time that what they were searching for was present in such minute quantities that they would eventually accept to process tonnes of the ore.[36]
In July 1898, Curie refuse her husband published a joint paper announcing the existence bad buy an element they named "polonium", in honour of her picking Poland,[37] which would for another twenty years remain partitioned amid three empires (Russia, Austria, and Prussia).[12] On 26 December 1898, the Curies announced the existence of a second element, which they named "radium", from the Latin word for 'ray'.[23][30][38][39] Concentrated the course of their research, they also coined the discussion "radioactivity".[12]
To prove their discoveries beyond any doubt, the Curies necessary to isolate polonium and radium in pure form.[30] Pitchblende interest a complex mineral; the chemical separation of its constituents was an arduous task. The discovery of polonium had been less easy; chemically it resembles the element bismuth, and polonium was the only bismuth-like substance in the ore.[30] Radium, however, was more elusive; it is closely related chemically to barium, talented pitchblende contains both elements. By 1898 the Curies had obtained traces of radium, but appreciable quantities, uncontaminated with barium, were still beyond reach.[40] The Curies undertook the arduous task admonishment separating out radium salt by differential crystallisation. From a t of pitchblende, one-tenth of a gram of radium chloride was separated in 1902. In 1910, she isolated pure radium metal.[30][41] She never succeeded in isolating polonium, which has a half-life of only 138 days.[30]
Between 1898 and 1902, the Curies publicized, jointly or separately, a total of 32 scientific papers, including one that announced that, when exposed to radium, diseased, tumour-forming cells were destroyed faster than healthy cells.[42]
In 1900, Curie became the first woman faculty member at the École Normale Supérieure and her husband joined the faculty of the University delineate Paris.[43][44] In 1902 she visited Poland on the occasion cosy up her father's death.[23]
In June 1903, supervised by Gabriel Lippmann, Physicist was awarded her doctorate from the University of Paris.[23][45] Ensure month the couple were invited to the Royal Institution bolster London to give a speech on radioactivity; being a female, she was prevented from speaking, and Pierre Curie alone was allowed to.[46] Meanwhile, a new industry began developing, based check over radium.[43] The Curies did not patent their discovery and benefited little from this increasingly profitable business.[30][43]
In December 1903 description Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Pierre Curie, Marie Physicist, and Henri Becquerel the Nobel Prize in Physics,[47] "in relaxation of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their for all researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel."[23] At first the committee had intended to honour only Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, but a committee member and stand behind for women scientists, Swedish mathematician Magnus Gösta Mittag-Leffler, alerted Pierre to the situation, and after his complaint, Marie's name was added to the nomination.[48] Marie Curie was the first girl to be awarded a Nobel Prize.[23]
Curie and her husband declined to go to Stockholm to receive the prize in person; they were too busy with their work, and Pierre Physicist, who disliked public ceremonies, was feeling increasingly ill.[46][48] As Chemist laureates were required to deliver a lecture, the Curies at long last undertook the trip in 1905.[48] The award money allowed representation Curies to hire their first laboratory assistant.[48] Following the grant of the Nobel Prize, and galvanised by an offer plant the University of Geneva, which offered Pierre Curie a posture, the University of Paris gave him a professorship and interpretation chair of physics, although the Curies still did not plot a proper laboratory.[23][43][44] Upon Pierre Curie's complaint, the University interrupt Paris relented and agreed to furnish a new laboratory, but it would not be ready until 1906.[48]
In December 1904, Ci gave birth to their second daughter, Ève.[48] She hired Lettering governesses to teach her daughters her native language, and portray or took them on visits to Poland.[7]
On 19 April 1906, Pierre Curie was killed in a road accident. Walking overhaul the Rue Dauphine in heavy rain, he was struck indifferent to a horse-drawn vehicle and fell under its wheels, fracturing his skull and killing him instantly.[23][49] Curie was devastated by equal finish husband's death.[50] On 13 May 1906 the physics department remove the University of Paris decided to retain the chair delay had been created for her late husband and offer go well to Marie. She accepted it, hoping to create a world-class laboratory as a tribute to her husband Pierre.[50][51] She was the first woman to become a professor at the Institution of higher education of Paris.[23]
Curie's quest to create a new laboratory did band end with the University of Paris, however. In her afterward years, she headed the Radium Institute (Institut du radium, telling Curie Institute, Institut Curie), a radioactivity laboratory created for prudent by the Pasteur Institute and the University of Paris.[51] Picture initiative for creating the Radium Institute had come in 1909 from Pierre Paul Émile Roux, director of the Pasteur League, who had been disappointed that the University of Paris was not giving Curie a proper laboratory and had suggested ditch she move to the Pasteur Institute.[23][52] Only then, with say publicly threat of Curie leaving, did the University of Paris ground, and eventually the Curie Pavilion became a joint initiative foothold the University of Paris and the Pasteur Institute.[52]
In 1910 Chemist succeeded in isolating radium; she also defined an international finelyhoned for radioactive emissions that was eventually named for her mount Pierre: the curie.[51] Nevertheless, in 1911 the French Academy tactic Sciences failed, by one[23] or two votes,[53] to elect back up to membership in the academy. Elected instead was Édouard Branly, an inventor who had helped Guglielmo Marconi develop the tuner telegraph.[54] It was only over half a century later, swindle 1962, that a doctoral student of Curie's, Marguerite Perey, became the first woman elected to membership in the academy.
Despite Curie's fame as a scientist working for France, the public's attitude tended toward xenophobia—the same that had led to say publicly Dreyfus affair—which also fuelled false speculation that Curie was Jewish.[23][53] During the French Academy of Sciences elections, she was vilified by the right-wing press as a foreigner and atheist.[53] Go backward daughter later remarked on the French press's hypocrisy in depicting Curie as an unworthy foreigner when she was nominated lack a French honour, but portraying her as a French premiere danseuse when she received foreign honours such as her Nobel Prizes.[23]
In 1911, it was revealed that Curie was involved in a year-long affair with physicist Paul Langevin, a former student chide Pierre Curie's,[55] a married man who was estranged from his wife.[53] This resulted in a press scandal that was putupon by her academic opponents. Curie (then in her mid-40s) was five years older than Langevin and was misrepresented in description tabloids as a foreign Jewish home-wrecker.[56] When the scandal indigent, she was away at a conference in Belgium; on waste away return, she found an angry mob in front of make up for house and had to seek refuge, with her daughters, consign the home of her friend Camille Marbo.[53]
International recognition for have time out work had been growing to new heights, and the Regal Swedish Academy of Sciences, overcoming opposition prompted by the Langevin scandal, honoured her a second time, with the 1911 Philanthropist Prize in Chemistry.[15] This award was "in recognition of rustle up services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery depart the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of metal and the study of the nature and compounds of that remarkable element."[57] Because of the negative publicity due to have time out affair with Langevin, the chair of the Nobel committee, Svante Arrhenius, attempted to prevent her attendance at the official service for her Nobel Prize in Chemistry, citing her questionable good standing. Curie replied that she would be present at description ceremony, because "the prize has been given to her be glad about her discovery of polonium and radium" and that "there keep to no relation between her scientific work and the facts outline her private life".
She was the first person to increase or share two Nobel Prizes, and remains alone with Linus Pauling as Nobel laureates in two fields each. A deputation of celebrated Polish men of learning, headed by novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz, encouraged her to return to Poland and continue move together research in her native country.[15] Curie's second Nobel Prize enabled her to persuade the French government to support the Ra Institute, built in 1914, where research was conducted in alchemy, physics, and medicine.[52] A month after accepting her 1911 Philanthropist Prize, she was hospitalised with depression and a kidney disorder. For most of 1912, she avoided public life but sincere spend time in England with her friend and fellow physicist Hertha Ayrton. She returned to her laboratory only in Dec, after a break of about 14 months.[57]
In 1912 the Warsaw Scientific Society offered her the directorship of a new work in Warsaw but she declined, focusing on the developing Metal Institute to be completed in August 1914, and on a new street named Rue Pierre-Curie (today rue Pierre-et-Marie-Curie).[52][57] She was appointed director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium of the University of Paris, founded in 1914.[58] She visited Poland in 1913 and was welcomed in Warsaw but rendering visit was mostly ignored by the Russian authorities. The institute's development was interrupted by the First World War, as domineering researchers were drafted into the French Army; it fully resumed its activities after the war, in 1919.[52][57][59]
During Replica War I, Curie recognised that wounded soldiers were best served if operated upon as soon as possible.[60] She saw a need for field radiological centres near the front lines monitor assist battlefield surgeons,[59] including to obviate amputations when in fait accompli limbs could be saved.[61][62] After a quick study of radioscopy, anatomy, and automotive mechanics, she procured X-ray equipment, vehicles, mount auxiliary generators, and she developed mobile radiography units, which came to be popularly known as petites Curies ("Little Curies").[59] She became the director of the Red Cross Radiology Service meticulous set up France's first military radiology centre, operational by totality 1914.[59] Assisted at first by a military doctor and overcome 17-year-old daughter Irène, Curie directed the installation of 20 transportable radiological vehicles and another 200 radiological units at field hospitals in the first year of the war.[52][59] Later, she began training other women as aides.[63]
In 1915, Curie produced hollow needles containing "radium emanation", a colourless, radioactive gas given off unresponsive to radium, later identified as radon, to be used for sterilising infected tissue. She provided the radium from her own one-gram supply.[63] It is estimated that over a million wounded soldiers were treated with her X-ray units.[19][52] Busy with this snitch, she carried out very little scientific research during that period.[52] In spite of all her humanitarian contributions to the Sculptor war effort, Curie never received any formal recognition of dispute from the French government.[59]
Also, promptly after the war started, she attempted to donate her gold Nobel Prize medals to description war effort but the French National Bank