Wherever possible I have included appropriate quotations in Marie Curie's own words and each section is related in some way to the life and work of Maria or Pierre. Marie Curie's life in Poland prior to her 1891 departure for Paris is included in this review as are other aspects of her life and work such as her work in World War I with radiological ambulances (known as "Little Curies") on the battlefields of France and Belgium, early experiments with radium and the founding of the Institut du Radium in Paris and of the Radium Institute in Warsaw. This is particularly relevant as Marie Curie was in 1897 a research student in Becquerel's laboratory. This followed the earlier discovery in November 1895 of X-rays by Röntgen, which has already been reviewed in the British Journal of Radiology and the discovery in March 1896, by Becquerel, of the phenomenon of radioactivity, which introduces this review. She was the first woman to receive that honor on her own merit.This review celebrates the events of 100 years ago to the month of publication of this December 1998 issue of the British Journal of Radiology, when radium was discovered by the Curies. In 1995, her and Pierre's remains were moved to the Panthéon, the French National Mausoleum, in Paris. She returned to Poland for the foundation laying ceremony for the Radium Institute, which opened in 1932 with her sister Bronislawa as its director.Ĭurie died in 1934 of radiation-induced leukemia, since the effects of radiation were not known when she began her studies. She traveled to the United States in 1921 to tour and raise funds for research on radium. In 1911, Marie won her second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry, for isolating pure radium.ĭuring World War I, Curie served as the director of the Red Cross Radiology Service, treating over an estimated one million soldiers with her X-ray units. Marie carried on their research and was appointed to fill Pierre's position at the Sorbonne, thus becoming the first woman in France to achieve professorial rank. In 1906, Pierre was killed in a traffic accident. Isolating pure samples of these elements was exhausting work for Marie it took four years of back-breaking effort to extract 1 decigram of radium chloride from several tons of raw ore.
In 1898, they announced the discovery of two new elements, radium and polonium. For their joint research into radioactivity, Marie and Pierre Curie were awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics.Īs a team, the Curies would go on to even greater scientific discoveries. This discovery is perhaps her most important scientific contribution.
Thus, she deduced that radioactivity does not depend on how atoms are arranged into molecules, but rather that it originates within the atoms themselves. Within days she discovered that thorium also emitted radiation, and further, that the amount of radiation depended upon the amount of element present in the compound. While she tried to return to work in Poland in 1894, she was denied a place at Krakow University because of her gender and returned to Paris to pursue her Ph.D.Īdopting the study of Henri Becquerel's discovery of radiation in uranium as her thesis topic, Curie began the systematic study of other elements to see if there were others that also emitted this strange energy. In Paris, she also met her husband Pierre Curie. The beginning of her scientific career was an investigation of the magnetic properties of various steels. University education for women was not available in Russia at the time, so Curie left to pursue her degrees at the University of Paris in 1891. Curie never worked on the Manhattan Project, but her contributions to the study of radium and radiation were instrumental to the future development of the atomic bomb.Ĭurie was born in Warsaw, Poland on November 7, 1867, which was then part of the Russian Empire. Curie was a pioneer in researching radioactivity, winning the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and Chemistry in 1911. She carried out the first research into the treatment of tumors with radiation. Marie Sklodowska Curie (1867-1934) was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist. Marie and Pierre Curie isolate radium On April 20, 1902, Marie and Pierre Curie successfully isolate radioactive radium salts from the mineral pitchblende in their laboratory in Paris. Marie Curie discovered two new chemical elements - radium and polonium.
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