What kind of person was marie curie

Pierre put his crystals aside to help his wife isolate these radioactive elements and study their properties. Marie extracted pure radium salts from pitchblende, a highly radioactive ore obtained from mines in Bohemia. The extraction required tons of the substance, which she dissolved in cauldrons of acid before obtaining barium sulphate and other alkalines, which she then purified and converted into chlorides.

The separation of radium from the alkalines required thousands of tedious crystallizations. Working in a dilapidated shed with broken windows and poor ventilation, she nonetheless was able to make sensitive measurements.

It is remarkable, says Baisden, that Curie calculated the atomic weight of radium so accurately given such deplorable conditions. Both Curies were plagued by ailments—burns and fatigue—that, in retrospect, were clearly caused by repeated exposures to high doses of radiation. Both, too, were resistant to the suggestion that their research materials caused their ailments.

In , Curie became the first woman in France to earn a PhD in physics. Professors who reviewed her doctoral thesis, which was about radiation, declared that it was the greatest single contribution to science ever written. Rumors of a Nobel Prize began to circulate, but some members of the French Academy of Sciences attributed the brilliance of the work not to Marie, but to her co-workers.

These skeptics began to lobby quietly for the prize to be split between Becquerel and Pierre. But Pierre insisted to influential people on the Nobel committee that Marie had originated their research, conceived experiments and generated theories about the nature of radioactivity. Both Curies shared the Nobel Prize in physics with Becquerel in It was the first Nobel to be awarded to a woman. Whether Marie Curie took the remark as an insult is not known—it surely rankles today—but it must be among the most grudging comments ever said to a laureate.

Moreover, the notion that Marie was a mere helpmeet to Pierre—one of the more persistent myths about her—was an opinion widely held, judging from published and unpublished comments by other scientists and observers. At the Sorbonne, it was Pierre who got the plum job, a full professorship. Marie was not promoted. Pierre hired more assistants and made Marie the official head of the laboratory, freeing her to conduct experiments and for the first time, be paid for it.

The most successful collaboration between a husband and wife in the history of science ended suddenly on April 19, , when Pierre, apparently lost in thought, walked into traffic on the rue Dauphine and was killed instantly by an onrushing carriage.

Hundreds of people—students, artists, photographers, celebrities—lined up outside the university on November 5, , hoping to attend her first lecture. She gave no outward sign of mourning. She began by summarizing the recent breakthroughs in physics research. She wrote a diary during this time, addressed to her late husband, about continuing their research.

In , she published a page treatise on radioactivity. Neither Curie nor Langevin discussed their relationship with outsiders. The front-page coverage of the scandal threatened to overshadow another news story later that year: her second Nobel Prize.

This one, in chemistry, was for the discovery of polonium and radium. In her acceptance speech in Stockholm, she paid tribute to her husband but also made clear that her work was independent from his, spelling out their separate contributions and describing the discoveries she had made after his death.

At the end of , Curie became very ill. She had an operation to remove lesions from her uterus and kidney, followed by a long recovery. In , she began to travel again and return to science. In March of that year, Einstein paid her an extended visit, and later she opened and headed a new research facility in Warsaw. Together with her husband, she was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in , for their study into the spontaneous radiation discovered by Becquerel, who was awarded the other half of the Prize.

In she received a second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry , in recognition of her work in radioactivity. She also received, jointly with her husband, the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in and, in , President Harding of the United States, on behalf of the women of America, presented her with one gram of radium in recognition of her service to science. For further details, cf.

Biography of Pierre Curie. Curie died in Savoy, France, after a short illness, on July 4, It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above. Curie was a focused and diligent student, and was at the top of her class. In recognition of her talents, she was awarded the Alexandrovitch Scholarship for Polish students studying abroad. The scholarship helped Curie pay for the classes needed to complete her licianteships, or degrees, in physics and mathematical sciences in One of Curie's professors arranged a research grant for her to study the magnetic properties and chemical composition of steel.

That research project put her in touch with Pierre Curie, who was also an accomplished researcher. The two were married in the summer of Pierre studied the field of crystallography and discovered the piezoelectric effect , which is when electric charges are produced by squeezing, or applying mechanical stress to certain crystals. He also designed several instruments for measuring magnetic fields and electricity.

According to Goldsmith, Curie coated one of two metal plates with a thin layer of uranium salts. Then she measured the strength of the rays produced by the uranium using instruments designed by her husband. The instruments detected the faint electrical currents generated when the air between two metal plates was bombarded with uranium rays. She found that uranium compounds also emitted similar rays. In addition, the strength of the rays remained the same, regardless of whether the compounds were in solid or liquid state.

Curie continued to test more uranium compounds. She experimented with a uranium-rich ore called pitchblende, and found that even with the uranium removed, pitchblende emitted rays that were stronger than those emitted by pure uranium. She suspected that this suggested the presence of an undiscovered element.

In March , Curie documented her findings in a seminal paper, where she coined the term "radioactivity. Curie stated that measuring radioactivity would allow for the discovery of new elements.

And, that radioactivity was a property of the atom.