Marie Curie Pioneer in the Field of Radioactivity

Marie Curie early childhood

Marie Curie was born November 7, 1867 in Poland which at that time was under Russian rule. Given the name Marya Salomee Sklodowska, she was the youngest of five children.

She had an older sister Bronya who taught her how to read. Bronya had been to school and learned to read and when Manya (as they called her) was four years old, she taught her little sister the letters of the alphabet and how to read. Manya became a better reader than her teacher.

Her father was a professor and money was scarce. In order to supplement their income they would rent out rooms to students. At one time there were ten boys living in the apartment with the family. It was so crowded that Manya ended up sleeping on the couch in the dining room.

Tuberculosis claimed a lot of lives in those days, and her mother succumbed to the disease when Manya was only ten years old.

Education and early career

Manya was a diligent student. When she graduated from high school, her father as a reward for her hard work, permitted her to spend a whole year in the country with her cousins. It was a marvelous experience for her.

She returned to Warsaw with the intent of going to college, but lack of finances prevented it at the time. She and her sister earned money by private tutoring of students. Since there was not enough money for both of them to attend college, they decided that Manya would work and send Bronya to college, then when she became a doctor she would return the favor and pay for her younger sister's education. While Bronya was in school Manya became a governess to a family in the country. During this time she was able to also teach some peasant children to read and write.

While serving as a governess she fell in love with her employer's son, but the family looked down on her because she wasn't rich. They thought she was not good enough to marry their son. Bronya invited her to come to Paris and begin her studies. At that time Manya changed her name to a French name,Marie. She attended the Sorbonne where she studied mathematics and physics. Times were hard for her. She lived in a cold apartment and survived on very little food. Despite the hardships she was able to finish school and graduated with the highest grades in the class. She had a master's degree in physics. Then she was awarded a scholarship, studied further and received a master's degree in mathematics. She would later receive a doctorate in physics.

Marie and Pierre

She met Pierre and they married in 1895. Her cousin gave her some money for a wedding present and with it she bought a bicycle for herself and one for Pierre.
Now they could travel. They spent their honeymoon pedaling through the French countryside.

Pierre and Marie were kindred spirits. They began experimenting together and discovered two new radioactive elements. One of them she called "polonium" in
honor of her homeland Poland, and the other they called "radium". It took them four years of work to get enough of the element to prove there was such an element.
To obtain the element they had to work with a ton of pitchblende uranium ore. The Austrian government provided the ore and Pierre and Marie had to pay for transporting it to their facility. During those years of experimentation they carried many large jars of liquid.

In 1903 Pierre and Marie along with Henri Becquerel received the Nobel Prize in physics for their discovery of radioactivity. The money helped to ease their financial
worries, and they were also able to help friends and members of their family. In 1911 Marie was again awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the two new elements they had discovered, polonium and radium.

The Curies had two daughters, Irene and Eve. They were good loving parents. When Pierre was offered a professor's job at the Sorbonne, life seemed to be getting easier for them.

The death of her husband

Then tragedy struck. Pierre was killed when he stepped out in front of a wagon being pulled by horses. Marie was in shock. She had depended so much on Pierre and they had worked so closely together on their research. She felt lost without him, but she was a strong person and was able to continue the work alone.
The school let her start teaching Pierre's classes at the Sorbonne. A woman had never taught at the university before, she was the first. Pierre's father, Dr. Curie lived with the family and helped her to raise the girls, but four years later he too died.

World War One

Marie wanted to serve during World War One and decided the best way she could help would be to provide x-ray machines, so she outfitted some cars with the machines and took them to the battlefield hospitals. With the x-rays doctors could locate bullets and shrapnel and better treat the wounded soldiers. Her daughter Irene, who was seventeen years old at the time, helped her mother by becoming a nurse and working with her on the battlefield. During that time Marie trained 150 women to become x-ray technicians.

Recognition

Madame Curie made two trips to America. Each time she received a gram of radium, the first time from President Warren Harding and eight years later from President Herbert Hoover.

In 1923 she was awarded a pension of 40,000 francs a year from the French government in recognition of her lifetime of work in France.

The death of Marie Curie

She became ill as a result of all her years of exposure to radium. Today doctors identify the disease as leukemia. She died July 4, 1934 at the age of 56.

Epilogue

After Marie's death her daughter Irene and her husband Frederic Joliot received the Nobel prize for their work in atomic research. She followed in her mother's footsteps to also become a great scientist.

Many people have benefited from the discoveries which were made by Marie Curie and her husband Pierre. The radiation which burned their skin as they worked with it eventually came to be used to kill cancer cells in patients suffering from the disease.