Marie Curie: the woman who shook up science (2023)

Born as Maria Sklodowska on November 7, 1867 in Warsaw, in what was then the country of. Vistula, part of the Russian Empire, grew up in an intellectual but impoverished family. Her father was a physics teacher, a convinced atheist and a patriot who wanted an independent Poland. His views clashed with those of the authorities and meant he struggled to keep a job. Maria spent her early years at the boarding school run by her devout Catholic mother.

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But when her mother died of tuberculosis, 11-year-old Maria took refuge by helping her father in his laboratory. The calm, rational world of pipettes and problem-solving was a far cry from the political turmoil outside. But when Maria turned 18, financial reality pulled her away from that safe haven. She made a deal with her sister Bronya. While working as a governess for the daughters of a Russian nobleman, Maria saved her hard-earned money to support Bronya while her sister studiedmedicinein Paris. In return, once Bronya became a doctor, she would fund Maria to come to Paris to study.

But after just two years, her left-wing politics had caught the attention of Big Brother. So, at the age of 24, Maria moved to Paris and changed her name to Marie. It was supposed to be a temporary move; Her plan was to get her teacher's diploma and then return to Poland once the sharp-eyed government relaxed a bit. But Parisian labs and loves changed the course of her life forever.

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Initially, Parisian life was a real challenge for a penniless student who had trouble conversing in French and rented a tiny, freezing cold attic room where she piled all her clothes on her bed to keep warm at night. Finding work was also a test for a young girl in the male-dominated world of science.

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Marie kept trying to find a job in a lab but was always turned down. Finally she got the chance to do some trivial tasks. But her technical prowess immediately drew attention and earned the respect of her peers. While working in these laboratories, she met a certain scientist named Pierre Curie.

Both passionate about science, both left-wing and secular, the love soon blossomed. Pierre was already a big name in the scientific world; Early in his career he had discovered what he called 'piezoelectricity' with his brother Jacques and was currently head of a laboratory at the School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry, where talented engineers were trained.

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In Pierre, Marie found an intellectual and confidante, someone with whom she enjoyed contemplating scientific theories and sharing trips on their bikes. But Marie turned down Pierre's first marriage proposal - her goal had always been to return to her native Poland.

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Pierre in love has volunteered to steal his entire career and move to Poland with her. However, on a trip to her family in 1894, she applied for a place at Kraków University, but was not accepted as a woman. Thus, in 1895, the couple wed in a suburb of Paris, with the unconventional Marie wearing, instead of a wedding dress, a dark blue outfit that reportedly became one of her lab outfits. Two years later they welcomed their first daughter Irène, followed by Eve in 1904.

Marie didn't allow itmaternityhowever, stand in the way of her work. Her superior, Antoine Henri Becquerel, had tasked her with investigating a bizarre phenomenon he had discovered. Intrigued by the recent discovery of X-rays and the way certain materials glowed when exposed to bright light, Becquerel had discovered by 1896 that uranium salts could affect photographic plates through black paper even when the sun was not shining.

Using a device Pierre invented, Marie set out to solve the mystery of these strange rays. Within days she discovered that the element thorium emits the same radiation as uranium and concluded that it is not the arrangement of atoms in a molecule that makes it radiate, but the interior of the atom itself. This discovery was downright revolutionary.

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Chemists around the world admired Marie's tenacity and the classical chemistry she practiced. Locking herself in what she called "the miserable old shed," she undertook the back-breaking labor of stirring huge barrels of pitchblende and dissolving them in acid to separate the various elements present.

The hard hours have paid off. In June 1898, Marie and Pierre extracted a black powder 330 times more radioactive than uranium and named their discovery polonium. Marie was unashamedly forthcoming about the fact that her native Poland inspired the name. That was a pretty bold political statement back then — a bit like what you call a new discovery “Ukrainium” today. Six months later, the Curies announced that they had found another new chemical element, radium.

In 1903 Becquerel and the Curies received the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of something called "radioactivity". That was groundbreaking. No woman had ever won a Nobel Prize before. And indeed, the award was not without controversy. The committee had voted for Becquerel to receive half the prize and Pierre the other half.

But a committee member questioned why Marie shouldn't get recognition. So in the end, Pierre and Marie each got a quarter of the price.

The curies were a perfect match. While Pierre was a little dreamer, Marie was a great networker who was good at promoting her work. Nonetheless, Pierre was always the one who garnered greater recognition, such as when Vanity Fair ran a "Men of the Year" article that featured a picture of Pierre triumphantly holding up a stick of radium chloride while Marie demurely stood behind it.

But just as the Curies seemed to be flying high, Pierre had a tragic accident. In April 1906 he tripped under a horse and cart and died instantly from a fractured skull. Marie initially showed no outward signs of grief and reportedly kept repeating, "Pierre is dead." But behind the steely stance, she was devastated. Over time, she became introverted and lost in her work.

She moved the family to the outskirts of Paris, where Pierre's father played a huge role in raising his granddaughters. From conferences in far flung places around the world, Marie wrote heartbreaking letters to her daughters, saying she wished she could see them more often. Torn between family and science, Marie continued to throw herself into her work. After Pierre's death, she became the first woman to take his place as professor of general physics at the Faculty of Science. But in her private life, Marie was lonely.

In 1910, 43-year-old Marie sought solace in the arms of another—scientist Paul Langevin, a married man with four children. When his wife (whom he had split from) discovered the passionate affair, she reportedly leaked the details to a tabloid. Despite Langevin's alleged wish. In order to fight a duel against the journalist who published the story, Marie was so slandered by the press that she decided to end the affair. However, the label "House Destroyer" also influenced her professional life and almost caused her to miss out on her second Nobel Prize. The Swedish Academy of Sciences had tried to dissuade her from coming to Stockholm to accept the prize - this time for chemistry.

In response, Marie said, “The prize was awarded for the discovery of radium and polonium. I believe that there is no connection between my scientific work and the facts of my private life. I cannot accept ... that the appreciation of scientific work is influenced by defamation and defamation of private life."

A lethal dose

Marie's reputation remained tarnished until her heroic efforts to help wounded French soldiers during World War I. Unfortunately, Marie's hard work overwhelmed her in the end. Today, exposure to high doses of radioactive material is avoided at all costs, but the long hours she spent in her laboratory eventually led to her death. Marie died in 1934 from aplastic anemia, a condition in which the bone marrow does not produce enough new blood cells. Her death was almost certainly the result of excessive exposure to radiation.

When first discovered, radium was like nothing seen before—it glowed in the dark and was warm to the touch. In the 1920s and 1930s, quackery was all the rage in everything from radioactive toothpaste to ointments, and radium was used in everything from clocks to nightlights. But this "magical" element also had an ominous side.

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In 1901, Becquerel reported how his waistcoat pocket had been burned while carrying an active radium sample in it. Laboratory assistants suffered from aching limbs and sores on their fingers where they had handled radioactive material.

Marie must have known that she was playing dice with death. So why did she continue to work with radioactive materials? Most likely because she was in denial since she was so obsessed with her work. Considering the extent to which she was exposed to radioactivity during her lifetime, she was quite lucky to make it to the age of 66.

Her life has been full of scientific endeavors, some scandals and sad moments, but also full of achievements. Few would argue against its place in the annals of science.

Eternal Holiness: The Legacy of Marie Curie

For a poor Polish migrant, Marie was incredibly successful in the male-dominated world of science. She left an impressive legacy - the unit of radioactivity (curie), the element curium and a worldwide charity are all named after her. Nobel prizes aside, perhaps it was her ability to balance a distinguished career with family life that was her greatest achievement. Marie had two daughters, Irène and Eva.

Eve became a journalist and writer while her older sister followed in her mother's footsteps. Just like Marie, Irène was smart but obsessive, eschewed vanity, and was sometimes socially awkward. Irène worked with her husband Frédéric Joliot on the atomic nucleus and together they received the coveted Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 for their work on the discovery of artificial radiation. But Irène also died in 1956 from a radiation-related illness – leukemiaFirst World War.

It was these X-ray machines and her heroic efforts during the war that turned Marie from a sinner into a saint. After her love affair with a married man hit the newspapers in 1910, her reputation was in tatters. But by developing the small, portable X-ray machines that could be used to diagnose injuries near the front lines, Marie turned attention away from her love life and back to her work. Not content with simply making the device, she then toured Paris raising funds in her role as Director of the Red Cross Radiological Service. By October 1914, the front-line units were operational, where Marie and Irène worked tirelessly, x-raying the wounded for bullets and fractures.

This article was first published in the May 2016 issue of BBC History Revealed magazine