Maria Curie is going to win Nobel Prize Step by Step
Before we start, a brief introduction of Maria Curie is that she is a radioactivity girl and has twice a winner of Nobel Prize. The other special case about her is that she is the first woman winner of Nobel Prize.
Marie Skłodowska was born in Poland from a family of teachers. That means her family knows the importance of education very well. Inevitably, Curie has the part of the top students in her school. Best students attended the University of Warsaw which is men-only. Instead of this, she went underground education that is not formal and it was a secret educational area spreading from ear to ear in Warsaw. Curie and her sister desire to earn an official degree abroad. In this stage, they faced financial insufficiencies.
Deal with the Sister
The underlying idea behind the topic is to study and work in shifts. The deal is that firstly Maria Curie works and supports her sister’s education until her sister gets the degree. After that, the situation will be opposite. Curie worked as a private teacher about 5 years. In the meantime, she read lots of physics, math and chemistry.
Buttered Bread and Tea in University Life
Finally Maria enrolled at the Sorbonne Univeristy in Paris. (Nowadays, Sorbonne University has Pierre et Marie Curie faculty of medicine named with her name. [3] ) According to a legend, in these days, Marie feed herself with buttered bread and tea because of her limited financial situations. [1] Her master’s degree in physics in 1893 and nonstop next year she earned another degree in chemistry. Then she was awarded industrial funding to investigate how the composition of steel affected its magnetic properties. [4] In the interval, she has started to work in a lab. One day, she met the future husband who is also scientist colleague named Pierre Curie. The smart pair married in 1895. In the 3 years, she got the two degrees and one husband.
Let’s Do Some Science
Curie became attracted strong attention and interest of rays that were recently discovered by scientists Wilhelm Roentgen and Henri Becquerel. Roentgen discovered X-rays and Becquerel had found an element called uranium. Curie took Becquerel’s work a few steps further, conducting her own experiments on uranium rays. She discovered that the rays continued to exist constant, no matter the condition or form of the uranium. She theorized the rays came from the element’s atomic structure. This revolutionary idea created the field of atomic physics and Curie herself coined the word radioactivity. Marie and Pierre had a daughter in 1897, but their work didn’t slow down conversely accelerated.
One day, Marie was examining a material called pitchblende. She expected there to be a few rays from the uranium in pitchblende, but instead Marie found a lot of rays. Maria and Pierre Curie soon realized that there must be a new, undiscovered element in pitchblende. [5] They named the element polonium, after Marie’s native country of Poland. They also detected the presence of another radioactive material in the pitchblende and called that radium.
The way to go to Nobel Prize
1903 Prize: The 1896 discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel inspired Marie and Pierre Curie to further investigate this phenomenon. They examined many substances and minerals for signs of radioactivity. They found that the mineral pitchblende was more radioactive than uranium and concluded that it must contain other radioactive substances. From it, they managed to extract two previously unknown elements, polonium, and radium, both more radioactive than uranium. [2]
1911 Prize: After Marie and Pierre Curie first discovered the radioactive elements polonium and radium, Marie continued to investigate their properties. In 1910 she successfully produced radium as a pure metal, which proved the new element’s existence beyond a doubt. She also documented the properties of the radioactive elements and their compounds. Radioactive compounds became important as sources of radiation in both scientific experiments and in the field of medicine, where they are used to treat tumors. [2]
I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries.
Radioactivity and Health
She was known that carrying test tubes of radium in her pocket of the lab coat. All of her years of working with radioactive materials took a toll on Curie’s health. Finally, she died from overexposure to radiation, both from her experiments and from her work with X-ray machines. Nowadays, there are lots of safety measures to keep scientists from getting overexposed to the rays.
Some Facts About Her
- Marie became the Professor of Physics at the Sorbonne after her husband died.
- Marie became good friends with fellow scientist Albert Einstein.
- Her first daughter, Irene, won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work with aluminum and radiation.
- The Curie Institute in Paris, founded by Marie in 1921, is still a major cancer research facility. [5]
References
[1] http://www.biography.com/people/marie-curie-9263538#synopsis
[2] http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1911/marie-curie-facts.html
[4] http://www.famousscientists.org/marie-curie/
[5] http://www.ducksters.com/biography/women_leaders/marie_curie.php
