Marie Sklodowska Curie (1867-1934) was born into an intellectual family in Warsaw. After her father lost his teaching job due to his political activism, the family struggled financially. Her sister died of typhus and then she lost her mother to TB.
Clever Marie was educated locally and got some scientific training from her father. Girls could not attend universities in Poland, so Marie earned her skimpy living through private tutoring and working in a laboratory.
Her sister Bronya was studying medicine in Paris where some universities already admitted women. In Sep 1891 Marie moved in with Bronya and when classes began at the Sorbonne in 1891, Marie enrolled as a Physics & Mathematical Sciences student. By 1894 she was looking for a laboratory where she could work on her research project, the measurement of the magnetic properties of various steel alloys. She visited Pierre Curie at the School of Physics & Chemistry at Paris University in 1894, and they married a year later.
Research didn’t pay much, so the Curies had to do a lot of teaching to earn a living. In 1897 the couple's first daughter (Irène) was born and it was then that the Curies were building on the work of the German
Antoine Henri Becquerel, Pierre and Marie Curie
Nobel Prize winners in Physics, 1903
Nobel Prize winners in Physics, 1903
Pierre invented instruments that could measure radiation. With these the Curies demonstrated that, no matter the form of uranium, it continued to radiate with an intensity proportional to the amount of uranium in the sample. Marie developed methods for the separation of radium from radioactive residues in enough quantities to allow for the careful study of its therapeutic properties.
While searching for other sources of radioactivity, the Curies turned to pitchblende, a mineral known for its uranium content. To their great surprise, the radioactivity of pitchblende far exceeded the combined radioactivity of the uranium and thorium contained in it.
From their laboratory, two successive papers reached the Academy of Sciences. In July 1898, they announced the discovery of a new radioactive element which the Curies named polonium after Marie's native country. The second paper, announcing the discovery of radium, was read at the Dec meeting. In 1898-1902 the Curies converted several tons of pitchblende, locating precious centigrams of radium.
Serious Science
They also published 32 scientific papers, one announcing that diseased, tumour-forming cells were destroyed faster than healthy cells when exposed to radium!! While their early medical work did contain mistakes, radiation really could shrink tumours, while applied directly slivers of radium could do the same. These techniques, in refined form, were the basis of Curie's career in therapeutic radiology and were closely related to mine in diagnostic radiology.
After 5 years as an isolated widow, Marie Curie’s relationship with her husband's former student, Paul Langevin, became public. Curie was derided in the press for breaking up Langevin's marriage. Although it nearly prevented her receiving her second Nobel Prize, Curie’s scientific work continued at the top level.
They also published 32 scientific papers, one announcing that diseased, tumour-forming cells were destroyed faster than healthy cells when exposed to radium!! While their early medical work did contain mistakes, radiation really could shrink tumours, while applied directly slivers of radium could do the same. These techniques, in refined form, were the basis of Curie's career in therapeutic radiology and were closely related to mine in diagnostic radiology.
In Nov 1903 the Royal Society of London gave the Curies its highest awards, the Davy Medal. A month later the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm announced that three French scientists, AH Becquerel and the Curies, were the joint recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1903. In 1904 Pierre travelled to Stockholm where he delivered their Nobel Prize lecture. In Dec 1904, their daughterÈve was born, just as Mme Curie gained her Doctor of Science degree.
The family team ended tragically in Apr 1906 when Pierre was hit by a heavy carriage and killed. The widow was soon asked to take over her late husband's post as Head of the Physics Laboratory at the Sorbonne. Honours poured in from scientific societies all over the world for the young widow and her gigantic task of radioactivity research. In 1908 Dr Curie edited the collected works of her late husband, and in 1910 she published her massive Traité de radioactivité.
Dr Curie had been the first woman to be granted her 1st Nobel Prize in 1903 in physics, and later became the first person to earn a second one. She received her 2nd Nobel Prize in 1911, this time in chemistry, for the discovery of radium and polonium and the isolation of radium. She provided science with a method for isolating and purifying radioactive isotopes. Marie became Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris, a giant laboratory founded by Paris Uni and Institut Pasteur before the war.
WW1 car carrying X-ray technology
Photo credit. The Conversation
Disturbed at the quality of medical care for soldiers, Dr Curie invented and resourced a brilliant fleet of radiology cars to carry X-ray technology to wounded soldiers on WW1’s front line. The machines diagnosed injuries by X-raying wounded soldiers for bullets, shrapnel and fractures. After the war, she wrote and published her book La Radiologie et la guerre. In it she gave details of the scientific and human experiences gained for radiology during the war.
An important visitor to the Radium Institute was Mrs William Marie Meloney, editor of a New York magazine and a Curie-fan. Meloney organised a nationwide subscription in America that produced money needed to purchase a gram of radium. Dr Curie was invited to the USA with her daughters, to collect the precious gift. In the White House, Pres Warren Harding (1865–1923) made a presentation. On her second trip in 1929, Pres H Hoover presented her with the money donated by Americans, to buy radium for her laboratories.
In 1926 Marie’s daughter Irène married Frédéric Joliot, the most gifted assistant at the Radium Institute. In 1937 as a Collège de France professor, Frédéric studied chain reactions and controlled nuclear fission to generate energy. Irene and Frederick were awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of artificial radioactivity.
Today scientists, working in cancer treatment, archaeology and astrophysics, continue to build on her radiation work. Dr Curie worked into old age, completing her last book Radio-activité in 1934. She died in 1934 from aplastic anaemia, due to overexposure to radiation. Even sadder, her brilliant daughter Irene died from radiation leukemia in 1956.