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May 22, 2012
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1 Introduction
Marie Curie

Wikipedia

 

Spoken Wikipedia|Marie_Curie.ogg|2005-08-17
Image:Mariecurie.jpg|thumb|Marie Sklodowska Curie, one of the few people to win two Nobel Prizes in different fields, was one of the most significant researchers of radiation and its effects as a pioneer of radiology. Until her granddaughter recently had them decontaminated her notes were radioactive.

Marie Curie (Polish language|Polish Maria Sk??odowska-Curie, November 7 1867 – July 4 1934) was a chemist, pioneer in the early field of radiology and a two-time Nobel laureate. She also became the first woman ever appointed to teach at the Sorbonne. She was born in Poland and spent her early years there, but in 1891 at age 24 moved all to France to study science in Paris. She obtained all her higher degrees and conducted her scientific career there and became a naturalized French citizen. She founded the Curie Institute|Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw.





Born in Warsaw, Poland—partitions of Poland|then a part of the Russian Empire—her first years were sorrowful ones, marked by the death of her sister and, four years later, her mother. She was notable for her amazing memory and diligent work ethic, neglecting even food and sleep to study. After graduating from high school, she suffered a nervous breakdown|mental breakdown for a year. Due to her gender and Russian anti-Polish reprisals following the January Uprising, she was not allowed admission into any universities so she worked as a governess for several years. Eventually, with the monetary assistance of her elder sister, she moved to Paris and studied chemistry and physics at the Sorbonne, where she became the first woman to teach.

At the Sorbonne she met and married another instructor, Pierre Curie. Together they studied Radioactive decay|radioactive materials, particularly the uranium pitchblende ore, which had the curious property of being more radioactive than the uranium extracted from it. By 1898 they deduced a logical explanation: that the pitchblende contained traces of some unknown radioactive component which was far more radioactive than uranium; thus on December 26th Marie Curie announced the existence of this new substance.

Over several years of unceasing labour they refined several tons of uraninite|pitchblende, progressively concentrating the radioactive components, and eventually isolated initially the chloride salts (refining radium chloride on April 20, 1902) and then two new chemical elements. The first they named polonium after Marie's native country, and the other was named radium from its intense radioactivity.
Image:Dyplom Sklodowska.jpg|thumb|Maria Sk??odowska Curie Nobel Prize Diploma
Together with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1903: "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel". She was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize.

Eight years later, she received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1911 "in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element". In an unusual move, Curie intentionally did not patent the radium isolation process, instead leaving it open so the scientific community could research unhindered.

She was the first person to win or share two Nobel Prizes. She is one of only two people who has been awarded a Nobel Prize in two different fields, the other being Linus Pauling. As of October 2005, she remains the only woman to win two Nobel prizes.

After her husband's death, she supposedly had an affair with physicist Paul Langevin, a married man who had left his wife, which resulted in a press scandal, exacerbated by her academic opponents in order to damage her credibility. Despite her fame as an honored scientist working for France, the public's attitude to the scandal tended towards xenophobia—she was a foreigner, from an unknown land (Poland was still referred to as a geographical area, under the Russian Tsar), an area known to have a significant Jewish population (Marie was an atheism|atheist, raised a Catholic, even born in a gentry family (Dolega-Sklodowski), but that didn't seem to matter). France at the time was still reeling from the effects of the Dreyfus affair, so the scandal's effect on the public was all the more acute. It is a strange coincidence that Paul Langevin's grandson Michel later married her granddaughter H??l??ne Langevin-Joliot.

During World War I, she pushed for the use of mobile radiography units for the treatment of wounded soldiers. These units were powered using tubes of radium emanation, a colorless, radioactive gas given off by radium, later to be identified as radon. Marie personally provided the tubes, milked from the radium she purified. Promptly after the war started, she cashed in her and her husband's gold Nobel Prize Medals for the war effort.

In 1921, she did a tour of the United States, where she was welcomed triumphantly, to raise funds for research on radium.

In her later years, she was disappointed by the myriad of physicians and makers of cosmetics who used radioactive material without precautions.

Her death near Sallanches in 1934 was from leukemia, almost certainly due to her massive exposure to radiation in her work.
Image:20000 zl a 1989.jpg|200px|thumb|Historical coins and banknotes of Poland|Historical 20 000 z??oty banknote of Poland with face of Maria Sk??odowska Curie
Her elder daughter, Ir??ne Joliot-Curie, won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935.

Image:Herb Dolega.jpg|200px|thumb|left|Dolega Coat of Arms





Her younger daughter, Eve Curie, wrote her biography Madame Curie after her death.

In 1995, Madame Curie was the first woman laid to rest under the famous dome of The Panth??on in Paris on her own merits.

There is a Madame Curie (film)|1943 U. S. Oscar-nominated film based on her life.

An extremely ahistorical Marie Curie appears as a character in the comedy Young Einstein by Yahoo Serious.

Curie's picture was on the Polish inflationary late-1980s Historical coins and banknotes of Poland|20,000-zloty banknote. Her picture also appeared on the French 500 franc note and on stamps and coins.

Element 96 Curium (Cm) was named in her and Pierre's honor.

Image:Mc-tablica.jpg|200px|thumb| Sign commemorating Marie Sklodowska-Curie's first scientific endeavors on Ulica Krakowskie Przedmiescie in Warsaw.
Image:Mc-birthplace.jpg|200px|thumb|Birthplace of Marie Sklodowska-Curie in Warsaw.





  • Madame Curie: A Biography, by Eve Curie, ISBN 0306810387

  • Marie Curie: A Life, by Susan Quinn, ISBN 0201887940

  • Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie, by Barbara Goldsmith, ISBN 0393051374






  • Maria Curie-Sk??odowska University in Lublin

  • Curie Institute (Warsaw)|Maria Sk??odowska-Curie Institute of Oncology in Warsaw





  • http://www.nobelprize.org/physics/articles/curie/index.html Marie and Pierre Curie and the Discovery of Polonium and Radium unabridged spinless right chronology from nobelprize.org

  • http://www.nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1903 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics and http://www.nobelprize.org/chemistry/laureates/1911 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry – Nobel committee page; presentation speech, her award lecture etc.

  • http://www.nobel-winners.com/Chemistry/marie_curie.html Concise biography at nobel-winners.com; GFDL

  • http://www.staff.amu.edu.pl/~zbzw/ph/sci/msc.htm Detailed Biography at Science in Poland website; with quotes, photographs, links etc.

  • http://www.aip.org/history/curie/contents.htm Long biography at American Institute of Physics website (site also has a short version for kids entitled http://www.aip.org/history/curie/brief/index.html "Her story in brief!")

  • http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/museum.html Maria Sk??odowska-Curie Museum in Warsaw

  • http://www.france.diplomatie.fr/label_france/ENGLISH/SCIENCES/CURIE/marie.html Marie Curie: A Nobel Prize Pioneer at the Panth??on

  • http://www.cordis.lu/improving/fellowships/home.htm European Marie Curie Fellowships

  • http://www.mariecurie.org.uk/ Marie Curie Cancer Care, UK

  • http://www.woodrow.org/teachers/chemistry/institutes/1992/MarieCurie.html Marie Sklodowska Curie: Her Life as a Media Compendium

  • http://rsparlourtricks.blogspot.com/2005/11/marie-curie.html Ron Schuler's Parlour Tricks: Marie Curie


Link FA|cs

Category:1867 births|Curie, Marie
Category:1934 deaths|Curie, Marie
Category:Nobel Prize in Chemistry winners|Curie, Marie
Category:Nobel Prize in Physics winners|Curie, Marie
Category:French chemists|Curie, Marie
Category:French physicists|Curie, Marie
Category:Polish chemists|Curie, Marie
Category:Polish physicists|Curie, Marie
Category:Polish Nobel Prize winners|Sk??odowska-Curie, Maria
Category:Radioactivity|Curie, Marie
Category:Women chemists|Curie, Marie
Category:Women physicists|Curie, Marie
Category:Women scientists|Curie, Marie
Category:Discoverers of chemical elements|Curie, Marie
Category:Atheists|Curie, Marie

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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Marie Curie".


Last Modified:   2005-12-19


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