Husband of Maria Sklodowska. Marie Curie

Marie Skłodowska-Curie was the first scientist to be twice awarded Nobel Prize- in 1903 in physics and 1911 in chemistry. The main direction of her activity was the study of radioactivity. It was she and her husband Pierre Curie who discovered the elements radium and polonium. But these studies led to her death. At that time, nothing was known about the effect of radiation on living organisms; the very existence of radioactive radiation was just being discovered, and the first experiments and studies were being carried out. It was completely normal for Maria to take a sample of radioactive material home with her from the laboratory to work on it some more. Naturally, there was no talk of any protection during the experiments.

As a result, Marie Curie died in 1934 from aplastic anemia caused by prolonged exposure to radioactive radiation. Also, as a result of her mother’s experiments, Marie’s eldest daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, who died of leukemia, received radiation as a result of her mother’s experiments. Interestingly, radiation was not considered dangerous; many household items at that time contained radioactive elements that glowed in the dark. Only in 1938 was it prohibited household use radiation.

In 1995, the body of Marie Sklodowska-Curie was transferred to the Pantheon, where she rests prominent figures science and art of France. Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Victor Hugo and Emile Zola and many others found their final rest here famous personalities. And only two women were honored with burial in the Pantheon. This is the wife outstanding physicist Marcelaine Berthelot - Sophie Berthelot, who survived her husband by only a few hours. The second is Maria, whose body rests in a lead coffin, since her remains still emit radiation. Next to her, in the same sarcophagus, lies her husband.

All Curie's things, books, work notebooks long years will pose a danger to people, because the half-life of radium-226, with which they worked, is 1500 years. Now the personal belongings of Marie Skłodowska-Curie are kept in the National Library of France. They are enclosed in special lead containers, but anyone can look through the notebooks of the great physicist, although only after signing a paper stating that they take full responsibility and will work in a special protective suit.

French physicist Marie Skłodowska-Curie (née Maria Skłodowska) was born in Warsaw, Poland. She was the youngest of five children in the family of Władysław and Bronisława (Bogushka) Skłodowski. Maria was brought up in a family where science was respected. Her father taught physics at the gymnasium, and her mother, until she fell ill with tuberculosis, was the director of the gymnasium. Maria's mother died when the girl was eleven years old.

Maria Sklodovskaya studied brilliantly in both primary and secondary school. Also in at a young age she felt the attractive power of science and worked as a laboratory assistant in the chemical laboratory of her cousin. The great Russian chemist Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev, creator periodic table chemical elements, was a friend of her father. Seeing the girl at work in the laboratory, he predicted a great future for her if she continued her studies in chemistry. Growing up under Russian rule (Poland was then divided between Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary), Skłodowska-Curie was active in the movement of young intellectuals and anti-clerical Polish nationalists. Although Skłodowska-Curie spent most of her life in France, she always remained committed to the cause of the struggle for Polish independence.

There were two obstacles on the way to realizing Maria Skłodowska's dream of higher education: family poverty and the ban on admitting women to the University of Warsaw. Maria and her sister Bronya developed a plan: Maria would work as a governess for five years to enable her sister to graduate. medical school, after which Bronya must bear the costs of higher education sisters. Armor received medical education in Paris and, having become a doctor, invited Maria to her place. After leaving Poland in 1891, Maria entered the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Paris (Sorbonne). In 1893, having completed the course first, Maria received a licentiate degree in physics from the Sorbonne (equivalent to a master's degree). A year later she became a licentiate in mathematics.

Also in 1894, in the house of a Polish emigrant physicist, Maria Sklodowska met Pierre Curie. Pierre was the head of the laboratory at the Municipal School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry. By that time, he had conducted important research on the physics of crystals and the dependence of the magnetic properties of substances on temperature. Maria was researching the magnetization of steel, and her Polish friend hoped that Pierre could give Maria the opportunity to work in his laboratory. Having first become close because of their passion for physics, Maria and Pierre got married a year later. This happened shortly after Pierre defended his doctoral dissertation. Their daughter Irène (Irène Joliot-Curie) was born in September 1897. Three months later, Marie Curie completed her research on magnetism and began looking for a topic for her dissertation.

In 1896, Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium compounds emit deeply penetrating radiation. Unlike X-rays, discovered in 1895 by Wilhelm Röntgen, Becquerel radiation was not the result of excitation from an external energy source, such as light, but an internal property of uranium itself. Fascinated by it mysterious phenomenon and attracted by the prospect of starting new area research, Curie decided to study this radiation, which she later called radioactivity. Having begun work at the beginning of 1898, she first of all tried to establish whether there were substances other than uranium compounds that emitted the rays discovered by Becquerel. Because Becquerel noticed that air became electrically conductive in the presence of uranium compounds, Curie measured electrical conductivity near samples of other substances using several precision instruments designed and built by Pierre Curie and his brother Jacques. She came to the conclusion that of the known elements, only uranium, thorium and their compounds are radioactive. However, Curie soon made a much more important discovery: uranium ore, known as uranium pitchblende, emits Becquerel radiation stronger than uranium and thorium compounds, and at least four times stronger than pure uranium. Curie suggested that uranium resin blende contained an as yet undiscovered and highly radioactive element. In the spring of 1898, she reported her hypothesis and the results of her experiments to the French Academy of Sciences.

Then the Curies tried to isolate a new element. Pierre put aside his own research in crystal physics to help Maria. By treating uranium ore with acids and hydrogen sulfide, they separated it into its known components. Examining each of the components, they found that only two of them, containing the elements bismuth and barium, had strong radioactivity. Since the radiation discovered by Becquerel was not characteristic of either bismuth or barium, they concluded that these portions of the substance contained one or more previously unknown elements. In July and December 1898, Marie and Pierre Curie announced the discovery of two new elements, which they named polonium (in honor of Poland, Marie's homeland) and radium.

Since the Curies had not isolated any of these elements, they could not provide chemists with decisive evidence of their existence. And the Curies began a very difficult task - extracting two new elements from uranium resin blende. They found that the substances they were about to find amounted to only one millionth of uranium resin blende. To extract them in measurable quantities, researchers needed to process huge quantities of ore. Over the next four years, the Curies worked in primitive and unhealthy conditions. They carried out chemical separations in large vats set up in a leaky, windswept barn. They had to analyze the substances in a tiny, poorly equipped laboratory at the Municipal School. During this difficult but exciting period, Pierre's salary was not enough to support his family. Although intensive research and Small child occupied almost all of her time, Maria in 1900 began teaching physics in Sèvres, at the Ecole Normale Superiore, an educational institution that trained teachers high school. Pierre's widowed father moved in with Curie and helped look after Irene.

In September 1902, the Curies announced that they had succeeded in isolating one tenth of a gram of radium chloride from several tons of uranium resin blende. They were unable to isolate polonium, since it turned out to be a decay product of radium. Analyzing the compound, Maria found that the atomic mass of radium was 225. The radium salt emitted a bluish glow and heat. This fantastic substance has attracted the attention of the whole world. Recognition and awards for its discovery came to the Curies almost immediately.

Having completed her research, Maria finally wrote her doctoral dissertation. The work was called "Studies on Radioactive Substances" and was presented at the Sorbonne in June 1903. It included a huge number of observations of radioactivity made by Marie and Pierre Curie during the search for polonium and radium. According to the committee that awarded Curie scientific degree, her work was the greatest contribution ever made to science by a doctoral dissertation.

In December 1903, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics to Becquerel and the Curies. Marie and Pierre Curie received half the award "in recognition... of their joint research into the phenomena of radiation discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel." Curie became the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize. Both Marie and Pierre Curie were ill and could not travel to Stockholm for the award ceremony. They received it the following summer.

Even before the Curies completed their research, their work encouraged other physicists to also study radioactivity. In 1903, Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy put forward a theory according to which radioactive radiation arises from the decay of atomic nuclei. During decay, radioactive elements undergo transmutation - transformation into other elements. Curie did not accept this theory without hesitation, since the decay of uranium, thorium and radium occurs so slowly that she did not have to observe it in her experiments. (True, there was evidence of the decay of polonium, but Curie considered the behavior of this element to be atypical). Yet in 1906 she agreed to accept the Rutherford–Soddy theory as the most plausible explanation of radioactivity. It was Curie who introduced the terms decay and transmutation.

The Curies noted the effect of radium on the human body (like Henri Becquerel, they received burns before realizing the dangers of handling radioactive substances) and suggested that radium could be used to treat tumors. The therapeutic value of radium was recognized almost immediately, and prices for radium sources rose sharply. However, the Curies refused to patent the extraction process or use the results of their research for any commercial purposes. In their opinion, extracting commercial benefits did not correspond to the spirit of science, the idea of ​​free access to knowledge. Despite this, the Curie couple's financial situation improved, as the Nobel Prize and other awards brought them some wealth. In October 1904, Pierre was appointed professor of physics at the Sorbonne, and a month later, Maria became officially named the head of his laboratory. In December, their second daughter, Eva, was born, who later became a concert pianist and biographer of her mother.

Marie drew strength from recognition of her scientific achievements, her favorite work, and Pierre's love and support. As she herself admitted: “I found in marriage everything I could have dreamed of at the time of our union, and even more.” But in April 1906, Pierre died in a street accident. Having lost her closest friend and workmate, Marie withdrew into herself. However, she found the strength to continue working. In May, after Marie refused the pension assigned by the ministry public education, the faculty council of the Sorbonne appointed her to the department of physics, which was previously headed by her husband. When Curie gave her first lecture six months later, she became the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne.

In the laboratory, Curie concentrated her efforts on isolating pure radium metal rather than its compounds. In 1910, she managed, in collaboration with Andre Debierne, to obtain this substance and thereby complete the cycle of research that began 12 years earlier. She convincingly proved that radium is a chemical element. Curie developed a method for measuring radioactive emanations and prepared for the International Bureau of Weights and Measures the first international standard of radium - a pure sample of radium chloride, with which all other sources were to be compared.

At the end of 1910, at the insistence of many scientists, Curie was nominated for elections to one of the most prestigious scientific societies - the French Academy of Sciences. Pierre Curie was elected to it only a year before his death. In the entire history of the French Academy of Sciences, no woman had been a member, so the nomination of Curie led to a fierce battle between supporters and opponents of this step. After several months of offensive controversy, in January 1911, Curie's candidacy was rejected by a majority of one vote.

A few months later, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Curie the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for outstanding services in the development of chemistry: the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element." Curie became the first two-time Nobel Prize winner. Introducing the new laureate, E.V. Dahlgren noted that “radium research has led to last years to the birth of a new field of science - radiology, which has already taken possession of its own institutes and journals."

Shortly before the outbreak of World War I, the University of Paris and the Pasteur Institute established the Radium Institute for radioactivity research. Curie was appointed Director of Basic Research and medical use radioactivity. During the war, she trained military medics in the applications of radiology, such as detecting shrapnel in the body of a wounded person using X-rays. In the front-line zone, Curie helped create radiological installations and supply first aid stations with portable X-ray machines. She summarized her accumulated experience in the monograph “Radiology and War” in 1920.

After the war, Curie returned to the Radium Institute. In the last years of her life, she supervised the work of students and actively promoted the application of radiology in medicine. She wrote a biography Pierre Curie, which was published in 1923. Curie periodically made trips to Poland, which gained independence at the end of the war. There she advised Polish researchers. In 1921, together with her daughters, Curie visited the United States to accept a gift of 1 gram of radium to continue her experiments. During her second visit to the USA (1929), she received a donation, with which she purchased another gram of radium for therapeutic use in one of the Warsaw hospitals. But as a result of many years of working with radium, her health began to deteriorate noticeably.

Curie died on July 4, 1934 from leukemia in a small hospital in the town of Sancellemose in the French Alps.

Curie's greatest strength as a scientist was her unbending tenacity in overcoming difficulties: once she had posed a problem, she would not rest until she had found a solution. A quiet, modest woman who was chastened by her fame, Curie remained unwaveringly loyal to the ideals she believed in and the people she cared about. After her husband's death, she remained a tender and devoted mother to her two daughters.

In addition to two Nobel Prizes, Curie was awarded the Berthelot Medal of the French Academy of Sciences (1902), the Davy Medal of the Royal Society of London (1903), and the Elliott Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute (1909). She was a member of 85 scientific societies around the world, including the French medical academy, received 20 honorary degrees. From 1911 until her death, Curie took part in the prestigious Solvay congresses in physics, and for 12 years she was a member of the International Commission on intellectual cooperation of the League of Nations.

Marie Curie's eldest daughter was raised by her grandfather, because Marie was too busy. © flick.com

Today is the birthday of Marie Curie, one of the most famous chemists. Do you know everything about this famous woman? Let's check, find out 10 amazing facts from the life of Marie Curie.

1. Marie Curie wore her permanent talisman on her chest - an ampoule of radium. When working with radioactive substances, Marie Curie did not take any safety measures. At the same time, the great woman lived to be 66 years old.

2. Marie Curie - twice Nobel Prize winner: in physics in 1903 and in chemistry in 1911.

3. Marie Curie - founder of the Curie Institutes in Paris and Warsaw.

4. One of the elements that Marie Curie discovered with her husband is called polonium - in honor of Marie's homeland - Poland.

5. The second element, which Marie Curie worked with her husband for 12 years to discover, is called radium.

6. Marie Curie was a member of 85 scientific societies from around the world and the recipient of 20 scientific honorary degrees.

7. Marie Curie had two daughters, despite the fact that she worked with radioactive substances all her life.

© flick.com

8. Marie Curie’s eldest daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie, like her mother, married a chemist and, 24 years after Marie Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize, she herself became Nobel laureate in chemistry. By the way, Irene received a prize, like her mother, together with her husband, for her work on radioactive elements.

9. Marie Curie became the first female teacher in the history of the Sorbonne University.

10. During the First World War, Marie Curie, together with eldest daughter, who was still a teenager at the time, traveled to hospitals with the first X-ray machine and taught doctors how to take X-rays in order to more successfully perform operations on the wounded.

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Marie Sklodowska-Curie (born November 7, 1867 - died July 4, 1934) - French (Polish) experimental scientist, physicist and chemist, one of the creators of the doctrine of radioactivity. The first woman to win the Nobel Prize, the first person to win the Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in two different sciences - physics and chemistry. Together with her husband Pierre, Curie discovered the elements radium and polonium. Founder of the Curie Institutes in Paris and Warsaw.

Not a single woman in the world was able to achieve such popularity in the field of science as Marie Curie achieved during her lifetime. Meanwhile, when you look at the details of her biography, you get the impression that this scientist did not have sharp surges and dips, setbacks and sudden rises, which usually accompany genius. It seems that her success in physics is only the result of titanic work and rare, almost incredible luck. It seems that the slightest accident, a zigzag of fate - and the great name of Marie Curie would not exist in science. But perhaps it just seems so.

Childhood

And her life began in Warsaw, in the modest family of the teacher Joseph Sklodovsky, where, in addition to the youngest Mania, two more daughters and a son were growing up. Life was very difficult, the mother was dying for a long time and painfully from tuberculosis, the father was exhausted to treat his sick wife and feed his five children. He may not have been very lucky; he did not stay in profitable places for long. He himself explained this by saying that he did not know how to get along with the Russian authorities of the gymnasiums. In fact, the spirit of nationalism dominated the family, and much was said about the oppression of the Poles. The children grew up under the strong influence of patriotic ideas, and Maria remained with a complex of an undeservedly humiliated nation for the rest of her life.

Due to lack of income, the Skłodowskis gave part of the house to boarders - children from nearby villages who studied in Warsaw - so the rooms were constantly noisy and restless. Early in the morning, Manya was lifted from the sofa, because the dining room in which she slept was needed for the boarders' breakfast. When the girl was 11 years old, her mother and elder sister. However, the father, who had withdrawn into himself and suddenly aged dramatically, did everything to ensure that the children fully enjoyed life. One after another they graduated from high school and all with gold medals. Manya was no exception, showing excellent knowledge in all subjects. As if sensing what the daughters would have in the future serious tests, the father sent the girl to the village to stay with relatives for a whole year. Perhaps this was her only vacation in her life, the most carefree time. “I can’t believe that there is some kind of geometry and algebra,” she wrote to a friend, “I have completely forgotten them.”

Pierre and Marie Curie

Education

In Paris, Maria, who was already 24 years old, entered the Sorbonne, and a life full of hardships began. She plunged headlong into her studies and abandoned all entertainment - only lectures and libraries. There was a catastrophic lack of funds even for the most basic necessities. The room where she lived had no heating, no lighting, no water. Maria herself carried bundles of firewood and buckets of water to the sixth floor. She gave up long ago hot food, because she didn’t know how to cook, and didn’t want to, and she didn’t have money for restaurants. One day, when my sister’s husband came to see Maria, she fainted from exhaustion. I had to feed my relative somehow. But in a few months the girl was able to overcome the most difficult material at a prestigious French university. This is incredible, because over the years of vegetating in the village, despite persistent studies, she has fallen very far behind - self-education is self-education.

Maria became one of the best students at the university and received two diplomas - physics and mathematics. However, it cannot be said that in four years she was able to do anything significant in science or that any of the teachers later recalled her as a student who showed outstanding abilities. She was just a conscientious, diligent student.

Meet Pierre Curie

In the spring of 1894, perhaps the most significant event in her life occurred. She met Pierre Curie. By the age of twenty-seven, Maria hardly had any illusions about her personal life. This unexpectedly coming love seems even more wonderful. Pierre had turned 35 by that time; he had long been waiting for a woman who could understand his scientific aspirations. Among people of genius, where ambitions are so strong, where relationships are burdened by the complexities of creative natures, the case of Pierre and Maria, who created a surprisingly harmonious couple, is rare and has no analogues. Our heroine pulled out happy ticket.

Marie Curie with her daughters Eva and Irene in 1908

New direction - radiation

Marie Curie began writing her doctoral dissertation. After looking at recent articles, she becomes interested in the discovery of Becquerel's uranium radiations. The topic is completely new, unexplored. After consulting with her husband, Maria decided to take on this work. She pulls out a lucky ticket for the second time, not yet knowing that she has found herself at the very peak of scientific interests of the 20th century. Then Maria could hardly have imagined that she was entering the nuclear era, that she would become a guide for humanity in this new complex world.

Scientific work

The work began rather prosaically. The woman methodically studied samples containing uranium and thorium and noticed deviations from the expected results. This is where Maria’s genius manifested itself; she expressed a daring hypothesis: these minerals contain a new, hitherto unknown radioactive substance. Soon Pierre also became involved in her work. It was necessary to highlight this unknown chemical element, determine its atomic weight in order to show the whole world the correctness of their assumptions.

For four years, the Curies lived as recluses; they rented a dilapidated barn, in which it was very cold in winter and hot in summer, with streams of rain pouring through the cracks in the roof. For 4 years, at their own expense, without any helpers, they isolated radium from ore. Maria took on the role of laborer. While her husband was busy setting up delicate experiments, she poured liquids from one vessel to another and stirred the boiling material in a cast-iron basin for several hours in a row. During these years, she became a mother and took on all the household chores, since Pierre was the only breadwinner in the family and was torn between experiments and lectures at the university.

The work progressed slowly, and when the main part of it was completed, all that remained was to do precise measurements on the latest devices, but they were not there - Pierre gave up. He began to persuade Maria to suspend the experiments, to wait for better times, when the necessary instruments would be at their disposal. But the wife did not agree and, having made incredible efforts, in 1902 she allocated a decigram of radium, a white shiny powder, which she subsequently did not part with all her life and bequeathed it to the Radium Institute in Paris.

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Museum in Warsaw

Glory. First Nobel Prize

Fame came quickly. At the beginning of the 20th century, radium seemed to naive humanity to be a panacea for cancer. From different ends globe The Curies began to receive tempting offers: the French Academy of Sciences issued a loan for the separation of radioactive substances, and they began to build the first factories for the industrial production of radium. Now their house was full of guests, fashion magazine correspondents were trying to interview Madame Curie. And the pinnacle of scientific glory is the Nobel Prize! They are rich and are able to afford to maintain their own laboratories, recruit employees and buy the latest instruments, despite the fact that the Curies refused to obtain a patent for the production of radium, giving their discovery to the world selflessly.

Death of husband

And so, when life seemed well-ordered, fulfilling, comfortably containing both personal life, cute little daughters, and beloved work, everything collapsed in one piece. How fragile is earthly happiness.

1906, April 19 - Pierre, as always, went to work in the morning. And he never returned... He died in a terribly absurd way, under the wheels of a horse-drawn carriage. Fate, which miraculously gave Mary her beloved, seemed to be greedy and took him back.

How she was able to survive this tragedy is difficult to imagine. It is impossible to read the lines of the diary written in the first days after the funeral without emotion. “... Pierre, my Pierre, you are lying there like a poor wounded man, with your head bandaged, lost in sleep... We put you in the coffin on Saturday morning, and I supported your head when they carried you. We kissed your cold face with our last kiss. I put in your coffin several periwinkles from our garden and a small portrait of the one whom you called “sweet, intelligent student” and loved so much... The coffin is boarded up, and I don’t see you. I don't allow him to be covered with a terrible black rag. I cover him with flowers and sit down next to him... Pierre sleeps his last sleep in the ground, this is the end of everything, everything, everything..."

Lecture at the Sorbonne

But this was not the end, Maria had another 28 years of life ahead. She was saved by her work and a strong character. A few months after Pierre's death, she gave her first lecture at the Sorbonne. Much more people gathered than the small auditorium could accommodate. According to the rules, the course of lectures was supposed to begin with words of gratitude to the predecessor. Maria appeared at the department to a storm of applause, dryly nodded her head in greeting and, looking ahead, began in an even voice: “When you stand face to face with the successes achieved by physics...” This was the phrase with which I ended my course last semester Pierre. Tears rolled down the cheeks of the audience, and Maria monotonously continued her lecture.

Nobel laureates

1911 - Marie Curie became a two-time Nobel Prize laureate, and a few years later her daughter Irene received the same award.

During World War I, Maria created the first mobile X-ray units for field hospitals. Her energy knew no limits, she carried out enormous scientific and community work, she was a welcome guest at many royal receptions; people wanted to get to know her like a movie star. But one day she will say to one of her immoderate admirers: “There is no need to lead such an unnatural life as I led. I devoted a lot of time to science because I had a passion for it, because I loved scientific research... All I wish for women and young girls is simple family life and the work that interests them.”

Death

Marie Curie became the first person in the world to die from radiation. Years of working with radium had taken their toll. Once upon a time, she shyly hid her burnt, mangled hands, not fully understanding how dangerous her and Pierre’s brainchild was. Madame Curie died on July 4 from pernicious anemia, due to bone marrow degeneration from prolonged exposure to radiation.

Marie Skłodowska-Curie was a Polish scientist who discovered the chemical elements radium and polonium.

Maria was born on November 7, 1867 in Warsaw. Is the fifth and youngest child teachers Bronislava and Wladyslaw Sklodowski. Maria's older siblings (whom the family called Mania) were Zofia (1862-1881), Josef (1863-1937, general practitioner), Bronislawa (1865-1939, physician and first director of the Radium Institute) and Helena (1866). -1961, teacher and public figure). The family lived poorly.

When Maria was 10 years old, her mother died of tuberculosis, and her father was fired for his pro-Polish sentiments and was forced to take lower-paid positions. The death of her mother, and soon of her sister Zofia, caused the girl to abandon Catholicism and become an agnostic.

Marie Curie (center) as a child with her sisters and brother

At the age of 10, Maria began attending a boarding school, and then a gymnasium for girls, from which she graduated with a gold medal. Maria could not receive higher education, since only men were accepted into Polish universities. Then Maria and her sister Bronislava decided to take courses at the underground Flying University, where women were also accepted. Maria suggested that we take turns learning, helping each other with money.

Marie Curie family: father and sisters

Bronislava was the first to enter the university, and Maria got a job as a governess. In early 1890, Bronisława, who had married the doctor and activist Kazimierz Dłuski, invited Maria to move with her to Paris.

It took Skłodowska a year and a half to save money to study in the capital of France; for this, Maria again began working as a governess in Warsaw. At the same time, the girl continued her studies at the university, and also began scientific internship in the laboratory run by her cousin Jozef Boguski, an assistant.

The science

At the end of 1891, Sklodowska moved to France. In Paris, Maria (or Marie, as she would be called later) rented an attic in a house near the University of Paris, where the girl studied physics, chemistry and mathematics. Life in Paris was not easy: Maria was often malnourished, fainted from hunger and had no opportunity to buy warm food. winter clothes and shoes.

Skladovskaya studied during the day and taught in the evening, earning mere pennies for a living. In 1893, Marie received a degree in physics and began working in the industrial laboratory of Professor Gabriel Lippmann.

By order industrial organization Maria began to explore the magnetic properties of various metals. In the same year, Sklodovskaya met with Pierre Curie, who became not only her colleague in the laboratory, but also her husband.

In 1894, Skłodowska came to Warsaw for the summer to see her family. She still harbored illusions that she would be allowed to work in her homeland, but the girl was refused at the University of Krakow - only men were hired. Sklodowska returned to Paris and continued working on her Ph.D. thesis.

Radioactivity

Impressed by two important discoveries by Wilhelm Roentgen and Henri Becquerel, Marie decided to study uranium rays as a possible dissertation topic. To study the samples, the Curie spouses used innovative technologies for those years. Scientists received subsidies for research from metallurgical and mining companies.

Without a laboratory, working in the institute's storage room, and then in a street shed, in four years the scientists managed to process 8 tons of uraninite. The result of one experiment with ore samples brought from the Czech Republic was the assumption that scientists were dealing with another radioactive material in addition to uranium. Researchers have identified a fraction that is many times more radioactive than pure uranium.

In 1898, the Curies discovered radium and polonium - the latter was named after Marie's homeland. The scientists decided not to patent their discovery - although this could bring the spouses a lot of additional money.

In 1910, Maria and the French scientist Andre Debiernoux succeeded in isolating pure metallic radium. After 12 years of experiments, scientists were finally able to confirm that radium is an independent chemical element.

In the summer of 1914, the Radium Institute was founded in Paris, and Maria became head of the department for the use of radioactivity in medicine. During the First World War, Curie invented mobile X-ray units called “petites Curies” (“Little Curies”) to treat the wounded. In 1915, Curie came up with hollow needles containing "radium emanation", a colorless radioactive gas given off by radium (later identified as radon), which was used to sterilize infected tissue. More than a million wounded military personnel have been successfully treated using these technologies.

Nobel Prize

In 1903, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Curies and Henri Becquerel the Physics Prize for their achievements in the study of radiation phenomena. At first, the Committee intended to honor only Pierre and Becquerel, but one of the committee members and an advocate for the rights of women scientists, Swedish mathematician Magnus Gustav Mittag-Leffler, warned Pierre about this situation. After his complaint, Maria's name was added to the list of honorees.

Marie Curie and Pierre Curie were awarded the Nobel Prize

Marie is the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize. The fee allowed the couple to hire a laboratory assistant and equip the laboratory with appropriate equipment.

In 1911, Marie received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and became the world's first two-time winner of this prize. Maria was also awarded 7 medals for scientific discoveries.

Personal life

While still a governess, Maria fell in love with the son of the mistress of the family, Kazimierz Lorawski. The young man's parents were against his intentions to marry poor Skłodowska, and Kazimierz could not resist the will of his elders. The breakup was extremely painful for both, and Lorawski regretted his decision until his old age.

The main love of Maria's life was Pierre Curie, a physicist from France.

Marie Curie with her husband Pierre Curie

Mutual interest in natural sciences united the young people, and in July 1895 the lovers got married. The young people refused religious services, and instead wedding dress Sklodowska put on a dark blue suit, in which she later worked in the laboratory for many years.

The couple had two daughters - Irene (1897-1956), a chemist, and Eva (1904-2007) - a music and theater critic and writer. Maria hired Polish governesses to teach the girls their native language, and also often sent them to Poland to visit their grandfather.

The Curie couple had two common hobbies, besides science: traveling abroad and long bicycle rides - there is a photo of the spouses standing next to bicycles bought as a wedding gift from a relative. In Pierre Sklodowska found both love and best friend, and a colleague. The death of her husband (Pierre was run over by a horse-drawn carriage in 1906) caused Marie's severe depression - only a few months later the woman was able to continue working.

In 1910-11, Curie supported romantic relationship with Pierre's student, physicist Paul Langevin, who was married at that time. The press began to write about Curie as a “Jewish homewrecker.” When the scandal broke, Maria was at a conference in Belgium. Upon returning, Curie discovered an angry crowd in front of her house; the woman and her daughters had to hide with her friend, writer Camille Marbot.

Death

On July 4, 1934, 66-year-old Marie died at the Sancellemos sanatorium in Passy, ​​in eastern France. The cause of death was aplastic anemia, which, according to doctors, was caused by prolonged exposure to radiation on the woman’s body.

The fact that ionizing radiation has Negative influence, was not known in those years, so many experiments were carried out by Curie without safety measures. Maria carried tubes of radioactive isotopes in her pocket, stored them in her desk drawer, and was exposed to X-rays from unshielded equipment.

Radiation became the cause of many of Curie's chronic illnesses - at the end of her life she was almost blind and suffered from kidney disease, but the woman never thought about changing dangerous work. Curie was buried in the cemetery in the town of Seau, next to Pierre's grave.

Sixty years later, the remains of the couple were transferred to the Parisian Pantheon, a tomb outstanding people France. Maria is the first woman awarded burial in the Pantheon for her own merits (the first was Sophie Berthelot, buried with her husband, physical chemist Marcelin Berthelot).

• In 1903, the Curies were invited to the Royal Institution of Great Britain to give a report on radioactivity. Women were not allowed to give speeches, so only Pierre presented the report.
• The French press hypocritically insulted Curie, pointing out her atheism and the fact that she was a foreigner. However, after receiving the first Nobel Prize, Curie began to be written as a heroine of France.
• The word "radioactivity" was coined by the Curies.
• Curie became the first woman professor at the University of Paris.
• Despite great help During the war, Marie did not receive official gratitude from the French government. In addition, immediately after the outbreak of hostilities, Maria tried to donate her gold medals to support French army, but the National Bank refused to accept them.
• Curie's student Marguerite Perey became the first woman to be elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1962, more than half a century after Curie attempted to join it. scientific organization(Edouard Branly, the inventor who helped Guglielmo Marconi develop the wireless telegraph, was chosen instead).
• Curie's students included four Nobel laureates, including his daughter Irene and her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie.
• The records and documents that Maria kept in the 1890s are considered too dangerous to process due to the high level of radioactive contamination. Even Curie's cookbook is radioactive. The scientist's papers are stored in lead boxes, and those who want to work with them have to wear special protective clothing.
• A chemical element was named in honor of Curie - curium, several universities and schools, an oncology center in Warsaw, an asteroid, geographical objects and even the clematis flower; her portrait adorns banknotes, stamps and coins different countries peace.