Marie Curie

The woman who became “Madame Marie Curie” was named Maria Sklodowska at birth. Her family and friends called her by a nickname, Manya. She was born on November 7, 1867, in Warsaw, the city that had once been the capital of Poland.

Manya’s parents raised their children to be patriots of a nation that no longer existed. By 1815, through wars and treaties, the countries around Poland had divided up the country and swallowed the pieces. Warsaw was in the piece controlled by the czar of Russia, a provincial city of the Russian Empire. The Sklodowskis and other patriots were determined to preserve Polish culture at all costs.

The family suffered because of their patriotism. Manya’s father was forced out of a good teaching position because of his pro-Polish beliefs, and during her childhood the family struggled financially. Manya’s parents were teachers, and they taught their five children the value of learning. Only modern education could lift them, and Poland, from their lowly condition.

Before Manya turned 11, her eldest sister had died of typhus and her mother had died of tuberculosis. Despite these losses, Manya graduated from high school at 15 with the highest honors. After graduating, however, she suffered from a nervous illness, which left her feeling too tired to do anything. It may have been what modern doctors call depression. Her father sent her to visit cousins in the countryside, where she could spend a carefree year.

A Pact between Sisters

Education drew Maria back to Warsaw from her year of recuperation in the country. Women were not permitted to study at the University of Warsaw. So Maria and her older sister Bronya joined other students at a “floating university.” The classes met at night, at changing locations to avoid detection by the czar’s police.

Maria and Bronya knew that to get a true professional education, they would have to go to a major university in Western Europe. The sisters made a pact. Maria would work as a governess to help pay for Bronya’s medical studies in Paris. As soon as Bronya was trained and began to earn money, she would help cover the costs of Maria’s university training.

Maria spent three years in a village 150 kilometers from Warsaw. She was hired by the owner of a beet-sugar factory to teach his children. He did not object when she used some of her spare time to teach the children of the Polish peasant workers how to read, although she risked punishment if the Russian authorities found out. Maria used her free hours to read widely in many subjects. She found that she was best at math, physics, and chemistry. The Russian authorities had forbidden Poles to teach laboratory science, but a chemist in the beet-sugar factory gave Maria some lessons.

Maria returned to Warsaw in 1889. Her father was now earning a better salary as head of a reform school, and was able to send money to Bronya in Paris each month. For another two years Maria went on working as a governess and tutor. On Sundays and evenings she secretly studied chemistry course at a “Museum,” which was actually an illegal lab for training Polish scientists.

Shortly before she turned 24, Maria calculated she had saved up just enough money for university studies in Paris. She had looked forward to this moment for a long time. All the same, she took leave of her beloved father and their beloved Poland with sadness. She promised to return after finishing her studies.

A young Polish woman traveled economy-class from Warsaw to Paris in autumn 1891. She had enough money to cover university tuition, a small room and the cheapest food, but little else. Maria Sklodowska left behind not only her beloved father and country but her very name. She registered at the famous Sorbonne university as Marie, the French form of Maria.

Marie was not as well prepared as her fellow students. Nevertheless, through hard work she completed master’s degrees in physics and math in only three years. Living on her own for the first time, she focused so hard on her studies that she sometimes forgot to eat.

Marie’s superior work in physics won her a scholarship. And a group of industrialists, the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry, paid her to investigate the magnetic properties of different steels. To carry out the work she needed a lab.

Pierre Curie had a lab, so Marie was introduced to him in spring 1894. He had the impressive title of Laboratory Chief at the Paris Municipal School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry. In fact his lab facilities were poor, but he let Marie work there. Curie, about 10 years older than Marie, had made important scientific discoveries on magnetism and crystals. But he had never bothered to complete a doctoral thesis.

As the relationship between Pierre and Marie deepened, he convinced her that she should pursue science in Paris, not return to Poland for good. She in turn convinced him to write up his magnetism research and get a doctoral degree. He was then promoted to a professorship, but his teaching duties grew, and his lab got no better.

Pierre and Marie married in July 1895. Over the next two years, Marie completed her research on the magnetic properties of steels. She submitted her final results shortly before giving birth to their first daughter, Irène, in September 1897. Pierre’s father, a retired doctor, moved in with them and helped raise Irène. Marie began looking for a research topic that would earn her a doctorate in science. No woman in the world had yet completed that degree.

The Mystery of the Rays

Two mysterious discoveries led Marie Curie to her life’s work. In December 1895, a German physicist, Wilhelm Roentgen, had discovered rays that could travel through solid wood or flesh. A few months later a French physicist, Henri Becquerel, discovered that minerals containing uranium also gave off rays. Roentgen’s X-rays amazed scientists, who took to studying them with great energy. They mostly ignored Becquerel’s rays, which seemed much the same, only weaker. Marie decided to investigate the uranium rays. There was so little work on them for her to read about that she could begin experiments at once.

First Marie needed a lab. She had to settle for a storeroom in the Paris Municipal School, where her husband, Pierre Curie, was now a professor. The storeroom was crowded and damp, but somehow she had to overcome its problems. She started off by studying a variety of chemical compounds that contained uranium. She discovered that the strength of the rays that came out depended only on the amount of uranium in the compound. It had nothing to do with whether the material was solid or powdered, dry or wet, pure or combined with other chemical elements. If you had a certain amount of uranium—a certain number of uranium atoms—then you got a certain intensity of radiation. Nothing else made a difference.

The discovery of Radium

This was very strange. Normal properties, color or smell or hardness, changed according to how you treated a substance. Scientists of the time knew that such properties came from the way atoms combined with one another. The atoms themselves, most scientists believed, had all been created at the beginning of time, and could not possibly change. Marie puzzled over this, trying out every possible idea. Perhaps, she suspected, something was happening inside uranium atoms that gave rise to rays.

And not only inside uranium. Trying out various chemicals, Marie found that compounds that contained an uncommon element, thorium, also gave off rays. To describe the behavior of these two elements, Marie made up the term “radioactivity.”

Marie got another surprise as she pushed through more compounds. The mineral pitchblende, rich in uranium, gave off more radioactivity than could be accounted for by the uranium in it (and there was no thorium). She figured the pitchblende must contain another element, fiercely radioactive, and never seen before. The promise of a strange new element was so exciting that Pierre put aside his work on crystals to help speed up the discovery. They worked as a team, each responsible for a specific task.

Penetrating the Mystery

Achunk of pitchblende may contain up to 30 different chemical elements. The Curies were like detectives searching for a suspected criminal in a crowded street. They had no idea what the new element would be like, except that it was radioactive. After long labor they succeeded in finding not one but two new elements! In July 1898 they published a paper revealing their first discovery. They honored Marie’s native land by naming the element “polonium.” That December they announced the second new element, which they named “radium” from the Latin word for ray.

Other scientists did not trust the announcement, for the Curies did not have enough polonium and radium to see and weigh. The elements’ existence was known from nothing but their radioactivity. The Curies would have to separate their elements from the other substances they were mixed with. The storeroom at Pierre’s school was too small for such work, and the Curies continued their work in an abandoned shed nearby.

The public and industrialists were fascinated by the Curies’ discoveries. Radium, inexhaustibly giving out energy (you could see the light, and it gave out heat too), hinted at great mysteries and perhaps amazing inventions. Moreover, Pierre proved that radium could damage living flesh. That opened a new way to treat cancer and other ailments. But Marie lost nearly 20 pounds while doing her doctoral research, and Pierre was often exhausted and in pain. Was it overwork and stress, or was radiation the cause of their frequent illnesses? Marie refused to believe that radiation was very harmful, but doctors today think otherwise

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Industrial firms saw an opportunity in the Curies’ research. They helped the Curies by providing additional lab space, raw materials, and support staff. A thriving industry grew up, extracting radioactive substances for medical uses (and other uses too, like watches that glowed in the dark). Radium was also used by scientists for experiments on atoms. They confirmed what Marie had suspected—the powerful energy that showed up in radioactivity was a fundamental property of every atom of matter

The Curies themselves did not grow rich from this industry. In fact, they had trouble covering their household expenses. They increased their income in 1900 by taking on more teaching work. Marie became the first woman faculty member at France’s top training school for women teachers. In 1903 she completed her doctoral thesis, becoming the first woman to receive a doctorate in France. The committee of examiners declared that her work had done more for science than any previous thesis project. Famous now, the Curies seemed destined for an easy life at the top of their profession.

High Honors, then Tragedy

When the Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Pierre and Marie Curie in 1903, the great honor quickly changed their lives. Pierre was finally appointed to a professorship at the Sorbonne, and the university belatedly found funds for a laboratory for him. It also hired Marie—the first woman to win a Nobel Prize—as “laboratory chief.”

Pierre and Marie felt too ill, and too busy, to get to Sweden to deliver the traditional lecture accepting the Nobel Prize until 1905. The following spring Pierre was finally feeling more positive about his research. Although rainy, April 19, 1906, promised to be a productive day for him. After working in the laboratory in the morning, he was on his way to a library when he slipped on the wet street and fell in front of a heavy horse-drawn wagon. It ran over his head, killing him instantly

Despite her shock and grief, Marie went back to work a day after the funeral. Less than a month later, the Sorbonne agreed to make her its first woman professor, taking up Pierre’s position. Meanwhile she began important lab work. Another scientist had come up with a theory that radium was not an element at all, but a compound of the known elements lead and helium. It took her several years to prove beyond doubt that radium was indeed an element.

Still more important, she decided to establish a scientific institution worthy of Pierre’s memory. Helped by her scientist friends, she persuaded the French government and the private Pasteur Foundation to fund a Radium Institute. Marie would head a radioactivity laboratory, and an eminent physician would lead its medical research laboratory.

Work, a Scandal and Back to Work

Marie Curie was busy not only with her teaching, research, and efforts to set up the Radium Institute, but also as a mother. Between 1906 and 1908 she taught physical science once a week at a cooperative school, where her daughter Irène and a few other children got lessons from their parents. Her father-in-law helped raise Irène and Eve, but he died in 1910. A series of Polish governesses was hired, some more successful than others. The next few years were difficult. In 1911 the French Academy of Sciences rejected Curie’s bid to become a member. Later that year, a scandal erupted.

Paul Langevin had been one of Pierre’s brightest students. Now he was in love with Pierre’s widow. Langevin was unhappily married to a woman who could not understand his devotion to scientific research, but some newspapers accused the foreigner Curie of breaking up a good French home. Returning to France from a meeting of scientists, Curie found a mob in front of her house. She scooped up her terrified daughters and took refuge with friends.

In the middle of this trial Curie became the first person to win a second Nobel Prize. She pulled herself together and traveled to Sweden to accept the 1911 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for her discovery of radium and polonium. The following month, she collapsed from depression and kidney problems. Many months passed before Curie was able to work again.

Curie finally returned to work in late 1912. She never remarried, devoting her life to the Radium Institute. By August 1914, the building was nearly completed. She expected its work to improve the human condition would begin immediately

In August 1914, Germany invaded France. Nearly all of Curie’s staff at the Radium Institute enlisted in the war effort. Scientific research had to halt during the World War, and Curie looked for ways her science could help. She knew that doctors could use X-rays to save the lives of wounded soldiers by revealing bullets, shrapnel, and broken bones. The problem was to get the X-ray machines to the doctors near the Front. Curie talked wealthy people into donating their cars, and assembled a fleet of 20 mobile X-ray stations as well as 200 stationary stations.

Curie chose her teenage daughter Irène as her first assistant. For a year Irène worked by her mother’s side. Like her mother, she refused to show emotion at the sight of the terrible wounds. Soon Curie allowed Irène to direct an X-ray station by herself. Meanwhile Marie thought of another way for radioactivity to help save soldiers’ lives. At the Radium Institute she prepared tiny glass tubes containing a radioactive gas (radon) that comes from minerals containing radium. Hospital doctors inserted the tiny tubes into patients at spots where the radiation would destroy diseased tissue.

Organizer, Promoter, Legend

After the war ended in 1918, Marie Curie went back to doing whatever she could to raise money for the Radium Institute. She was becoming a living legend, and she resolved to make the most of her fame. The tale of her early struggles could inspire people to give scientists more help. As the tale was retold, it sometimes sounded as if she had done everything single-handed, although in fact she had relied, like nearly all scientists, on private and government funds and assistants.

Curie’s best opportunity came when a magazine article led to a “Marie Curie Radium Campaign” in the United States. The trip tired her out, and she was happy to let her daughters take her place at some functions. The effort paid off. She returned with a gram of radium—only a speck, but so fiercely radioactive that it could fuel thousands of experiments—as well as expensive equipment and cash for the Radium Institute.

Curie continued to do research on radioactivity, but her main focus shifted to running the Radium Institute. She made the Institute a center for measuring the radium content of various products used by doctors and others. She also made it a world center for research, carefully selecting several dozen scientists and keeping up with the progress of each. Her researchers made many discoveries. In 1934, she was delighted when her daughter Irène and Irène’s husband, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, discovered artificial radioactivity at the Radium Institute.

Curie did not live to see Irène and Frédéric receive the 1935 Nobel Prize for their discovery. As early as 1920 she had been sufferering from medical problems, probably caused by her many years of exposure to radioactive materials. On July 4, 1934, Marie Curie died of aplastic anemia, a blood disease that often results from getting too much radiation. She was buried next to Pierre. In 1995 the remains of the pair were transferred to the majestic Pantheon in Paris, where they now lie alongside France’s greatest citizens. The president of France declared that the transfer demonstrated the nation’s respect for all those, like the Curies, “who dedicate themselves to science.”

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