Marie Curie Essay, Research Paper

Curie, Marie

physicist and twice Nobel laureate, best known for her Curie, Marie, née Maria Sklodowska (1867-1934), French work on radioactivity, with her husband Pierre. Maria Sklodowska was born in Warsaw, Poland, which was then part of the Russian Empire. Her father, an ardent Polish nationalist, taught mathematics and physics at a secondary school, but was denied promotion because of his political views, which he passed on to his daughter. She won a gold medal at school and then joined a “underground” university, which aimed to stop the Russians from taking over. There she was influenced by the high esteem in which its members held science. She found employment as a governess before joining her sister in Paris in 1891. She carried out her scientific studies at the Sorbonne, where she came first in physics in 1893. In 1894 she met Pierre Curie, who she married the next year.

After the discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Roentgen and the discovery of the emission of novel radiations from uranium in 1896 by Antoine Becquerel, Marie Curie turned her attention to the question of whether there were any other elements that emitted these rays. In 1898 she discovered that such rays were emitted in unexpected strength by the uranium-containing mineral pitchblende, for which she coined the term “radioactive”. Her observations led her to conclude that there was a previously unknown chemical element in the pitchblende. Both the Curies then made a Herculean effort to reduce the pitchblende chemically, repeatedly dissolving it and crystallizing it out to.