Marie Curie was born. Marie Sklodowska-Curie - a phenomenon of the 20th century (6 photos)

SKLODOWSKA-CURIE, MARIA(Curie Sklodowska, Marie), 1867–1934 (France). Nobel Prize in Physics, 1903 (together with A. Becquerel and P. Curie), Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1911.

Born on November 7, 1867 in Warsaw (Poland), the youngest of five children in the family of Wladyslaw Sklodowski and Bronislawa Bogushka. My father taught physics at the gymnasium, and my mother, until she fell ill with tuberculosis, was the director of the gymnasium. The mother died when the girl was eleven years old.

She did brilliantly at school. Back in at a young age worked as a laboratory assistant in my cousin's laboratory. D.I. Mendeleev knew her father and, seeing her at work in the laboratory, predicted a great future for her.

Growing up under Russian rule (Poland was then divided between Russia, Germany and Austria), she accepted active participation in the national movement. Having spent most of her life in France, she nevertheless remained dedicated to the cause of the struggle for Polish independence.

On the way to obtaining a higher education stood poverty and the ban on admitting women to the University of Warsaw, so she worked as a governess for five years so that her sister could receive medical education in Paris, and then my sister took over the expenses for her higher education.

After leaving Poland in 1891, Sklodowska entered the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the University of Paris (Sorbonne). In 1893, having completed the course first, she received a licentiate degree in physics from the Sorbonne (equivalent to a master's degree). A year later she became a licentiate in mathematics.

In 1894 she met Pierre Curie, he was the head of the laboratory at the Municipal School industrial physics and chemistry. Having become close over their passion for physics, Maria and Pierre got married a year later. Their daughter Irène (Irène Joliot-Curie) was born in September 1897.

In 1894, Curie began measuring the electrical conductivity of air near samples of radioactive substances, using instruments designed and built by Pierre Curie and his brother Jacques. The phenomenon of natural radioactivity was discovered in 1896 by the French physicist Antoine Henri Becquerel (1852–1908) and immediately became the subject of active study.

Becquerel placed a uranium salt (potassium uranyl sulfate) on a photographic plate wrapped in thick black paper and exposed it to sunlight for several hours. He discovered that the radiation passed through the paper and affected the photographic plate. This seemed to indicate that the uranium salt was emitting X-rays even after irradiation sunlight. However, it turned out that the same phenomenon occurred without irradiation. Becquerel, observed new look penetrating radiation emitted without external irradiation of the source. The mysterious radiation began to be called Becquerel rays.

Having chosen Becquerel rays as the topic of her dissertation, Sklodowska-Curie began to find out whether other compounds also emitted them. Taking advantage of the fact that this radiation ionizes the air, she used the piezoelectric quartz balancer of the Curie brothers, one of whom, Pierre, was her husband, to measure the electrical conductivity of the air near the objects under study.

She soon came to the conclusion that, in addition to uranium, thorium and its compounds also emit Becquerel rays, which she called radioactivity. She discovered the radioactivity of thorium simultaneously with the German physicist Erhard Karl Schmidt in 1898.

She found that uranium resin blende (uranium ore) electrifies the surrounding air much more strongly than the uranium and thorium compounds contained in it, and even than pure uranium, and from this observation she concluded that there was an unknown, highly radioactive element in the uranium resin blende. In 1898, Marie Curie reported the results of experiments to the Paris Academy of Sciences. Convinced of the validity of his wife's hypothesis, Pierre Curie left his own research to help Maria isolate this element. The Curies' interests as researchers were united, and they used the pronoun "we" in their laboratory notes.

Then the Curies tried to isolate a new element. Processing uranium ore acids and hydrogen sulfide, they divided it into a number of components. Examining each component, they found that only two of them, containing the elements bismuth and barium, had strong radioactivity. Since neither bismuth nor barium emit radiation, they concluded that these components 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 (after Poland) and radium.

In 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 Sevres, at the Ecole Normale Superior, educational institution, who trained teachers high school. Pierre's widowed father moved in with Curie and helped look after Irene.

Next, the Curies began the most difficult task - isolating two new elements from uranium resin blende. They found that the substances they were about to find constituted only a millionth part of the ore. It was necessary 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 a municipal school.

In September 1902, the Curies announced that they had managed to isolate 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.

Having completed the research that led Maria to the discovery of polonium and radium, she wrote and defended her doctoral dissertation in 1903 at the Sorbonne. According to the committee that awarded Curie her scientific degree, her work was greatest contribution, ever contributed 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 "for their study of the phenomenon of radioactivity discovered by Henri Becquerel." Curie became the first woman to be awarded 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.

In October 1904, Pierre was appointed professor of physics at the Sorbonne, and a month later Maria became head of his laboratory. In December, their second daughter, Eva, was born, who later became a concert pianist and biographer of her mother.

Maria has drawn strength from Pierre's support all these years. She 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, she withdrew into herself, but found the strength to continue her work. In May, after she refused the pension granted by the Ministry of Public Education, the faculty council of the Sorbonne appointed her to the department of physics, which had previously been headed by her husband. When Skłodowska-Curie gave her first lecture six months later, she became the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne.

After the death of her husband in 1906, she concentrated her efforts on isolating pure radium. In 1910, she, together with Andre Louis Debierne (1874–1949), managed to obtain this substance and thereby complete the cycle of research that began 12 years earlier. She proved that radium is a chemical element, developed a method for measuring radioactive emanation, 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, Sklodowska-Curie was nominated for elections to one of the most prestigious scientific societies - the Paris Academy of Sciences. Pierre Curie was elected to it only a year before his death. In the entire history of the Academy of Sciences, not a single woman has been a member, so the nomination of this candidacy led to a fierce battle between supporters and opponents of such a nomination. After several months of offensive controversy, in January 1911 her candidacy was rejected in the elections by a majority of one vote.

A few months later, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Skłodowska-Curie the 1911 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.” She became the first two-time Nobel Prize winner.

Data from the Curies' research prompted other physicists to study radioactivity. Already in 1903 E. Rutherford and F. Soddy ( Nobel laureates in chemistry) suggested that radioactivity is caused by the decay of atomic nuclei. As radioactive nuclei decay, they transform into other elements.

The Curies were among the first to realize that radium could also be used for medical purposes. Noticing the effect of radiation on living tissues, they suggested that radium preparations could be useful in the treatment of tumor diseases. The phenomenon of radioactivity is of utmost importance for living systems, and the discovery by the Curies of the biological effect of emanation was the foundation of radiobiology.

Shortly before the outbreak of World War I, the University of Paris and the Pasteur Institute established the Radium Institute for radioactivity research and Skłodowska-Curie was appointed director of the department basic research And medical use radioactivity. During the war, she trained military doctors in the use of radiology, for example, detecting shrapnel in the body of a wounded person using X-rays; in the front-line zone she helped create radiological installations and supply first aid stations with portable X-ray machines. The accumulated experience was summarized in a monograph Radiology and war in 1920.

After the war she returned to the Radium Institute. IN recent years Throughout her life, she supervised the work of students and actively promoted the use of radiology in medicine. She wrote a biography of Pierre Curie, published in 1923.

Sklodowska-Curie's greatest asset as a scientist was her unbending tenacity in overcoming difficulties: once she posed a problem, she did not rest until she managed to find a solution. A quiet, modest woman who was chastened by her fame, she remained unwaveringly loyal to the ideals she believed in and the people she cared about. She was a tender and devoted mother to her two daughters. She loved nature, and when Pierre was alive, the couple often took country walks on bicycles.

As a result of many years of working with radium, her health began to deteriorate noticeably. She died on July 4, 1934 from leukemia in a small hospital at the age of 66 years.

Works: Radioactivity/ Per. from French M. - L., 1947; Ed. 2nd. M., 1960; Recherches sur les Substances Radioactive. Paris, 1904; Traité de Radioactivité. 2 tome Paris, 1910; Les mesures en radioactivité et l'étalon du radium. J. Physique, vol. 2, 1912; Oeuvres de Marie Sklodowska, Curie. Warsaw, 1954; Autobiography. Warsaw, 1959.

Kirill Zelenin

Marie Curie went down in history as an outstanding physicist and chemist, a pioneer in the study of radiation.

She and her husband Pierre discovered previously unknown chemical elements - polonium and radium. Together they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903.

A few years later, in 1911, Maria received another one - in the field of chemistry.

Childhood. Studies

Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw on November 7, 1867. She was the youngest of five children: she had three older sisters and a brother.

Her parents were teachers and tried to ensure that their children received a decent education. Maria studied diligently and was distinguished by her hard work.

Sklodowska graduated from school at the top of her class at the age of 15. Maria and her older sister The Bronyas wanted to continue their education.

However, only men were admitted to the University of Warsaw. Therefore, at the age of 17, the girl worked as a governess to help pay for her sister’s studies at a medical school in Paris.

All this time she continued to study independently and soon entered the Sorbonne, settling in a modest home with her sister. After paying for housing, they often only had money left for bread and tea. However, when it came time for final exams, Maria again came out top in her class.

Scientific activities

In July 1893, Maria Skłodowska received a master's degree in physics and a scholarship that allowed her to obtain a second degree in mathematics. In 1894 she met Pierre Curie. He was a brilliant scientist, and by that time had already invented several instruments for measuring magnetic fields and electricity. They married in the summer of 1895.

Marie Curie was very interested in the reports of Wilhelm Roentgen on the discovery of x-rays, as well as Henri Becquerel on the radiation emitted by uranium ores. She decided to use devices invented by her husband to measure the weak electrical currents she discovered near uranium.

Her research showed that the effects of the rays are constant, even if the uranium ore is processed in different ways. She confirmed Becquerel's observation: more uranium in ore produces more intense radiation.

She then put forward a revolutionary hypothesis: the detected radiation was a natural property of uranium atoms. This meant that the generally accepted view of the atom as smallest particle matter turned out to be false. Pierre was so interested in his wife's research that he put aside his own developments and joined his wife's research.

Marie and Pierre Curie in the laboratory photo

The laboratory became crowded, and the Curies moved to an old barn, where they processed the ore themselves. In July 1898, scientists published their findings: bismuth compounds contained a previously unknown radioactive element. The Curies named it polonium, in honor of Mary's homeland, Poland.

By the end of the same year, they identified another radioactive element - radium, which they named after Latin word radius - ray. In 1902, the Curies announced their success in extracting purified radium. In 1903, Maria became the first woman in Europe to receive a doctorate in physics.

In November of the same year, the Curies, along with Henri Becquerel, were chosen as laureates of the Nobel Prize in Physics for their contributions to the understanding of the structure of the atom. In 1911, after Pierre's death, Maria was awarded the second Nobel Prize in Chemistry - for the discovery of the elements polonium and radium.

In 1914, when the war broke out, Marie Curie organized the supply of portable X-ray machines for doctors to the front and trained doctors to use them. Marie Curie died of aplastic anemia on July 4, 1934. The cause of this blood disease was prolonged radioactive exposure.

After the death of her husband, Maria replaced him as a teacher, becoming the first female teacher at the Sorbonne.
In 1944, a new discovery was named after Marie Curie. chemical element- curium.
Marie Curie's daughter, Irene, also managed to receive a Nobel Prize for the discovery of artificial radioactivity.

Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw into the family of a physics teacher at one of the city's gymnasiums. When Maria was not yet eleven, her mother, to whom the girl was very attached, died. Maria withdrew into herself and began to spend a lot of time in the chemical laboratory, doing what attracted her most. An acquaintance of her father, Russian chemistry professor Dmitry Mendeleev, seeing Maria at work in the laboratory, predicted a great future for her. However, this dream was difficult to realize, since the family was poor, and besides, in Russia women could not obtain higher education.

You may ask, what does Russia have to do with it? The fact is that in those years the Kingdom of Poland was part of Russian Empire. Therefore, Maria Skłodowska left Poland and moved to France. In Paris, she began working as a governess and at the same time became a student at the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the Sorbonne, and she studied in two departments at once - physics and mathematics.

After finishing her studies in 1894, Maria Sklodowska met her future husband Pierre Curie, who headed the physics laboratory at the municipal school of industrial physics and chemistry. Curie offered Maria a job in his laboratory. She accepted the proposal, and a year later she married Pierre. Since then they have worked together, and the main topic of their research has been radioactivity.

The Curie couple's interest in this phenomenon arose after the discovery of the French chemist Henri Becquerel, who discovered that some substances emit deeply penetrating radiation. First of all, Marie Sklodowska-Curie decided to establish whether there are other sources of it in nature, besides the uranium compounds that Becquerel wrote about.

Pierre Curie designed special instruments, with the help of which Maria was able to establish that, of all the known elements, only uranium and thorium are radioactive. However, after examining the uranium ore, she discovered that it contained a previously unknown, highly radioactive element.

After numerous chemical experiments in December 1898, Marie and Pierre Curie informed the public that they had discovered two new radioactive elements, they called them polonium and radium.

To obtain these elements, they had to process a huge amount uranium ore. For four whole years, physicists worked tirelessly and finally, in September 1902, they announced that they had obtained one tenth of a gram of radium chloride. To do this, they had to process several tons of uranium ore. For her research and discoveries, Maria Sklodowska and her husband received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1908.

Marie Curie was also a wonderful mother. She loved her daughter Irene, who was born in 1897, and later became a famous physicist, also receiving a Nobel Prize.

In December 1904, a second daughter, Eva, was born into the Curie family, who later became a famous pianist, as well as a biographer of her parents.

Maria herself continued to study science; This was not prevented even by the misfortune that befell her: in April 1906, Pierre Jury tragically died. Only after this did the Sorbonne council award Marie Sklodowska-Curie the title of professor and appoint her head of the department headed by her husband. Prior to this, the university only allowed her to be the head of her husband's laboratory, despite her achievements. Still, just a century ago, attitudes towards women were quite conservative.

From that time on, Sklodowska-Curie's main efforts were focused on obtaining metallic radium. The researcher spent four years searching for it, and finally, in 1910, success was achieved. For these studies, Marie Skłodowska-Curie was awarded a second Nobel Prize in chemistry. Thus, Marie Skłodowska-Curie not only became the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize, but she was the first person to win the Prize twice. It is curious that the French Academy of Sciences still rejected Sklodowska-Curie's candidacy for membership, for the simple reason that she was a woman.

Marie Sklodowska-Curie became the first director of the Radium Institute established for her. However, experiments with radioactive substances undermined her health, and on July 4, 1934, she died of leukemia.

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 obtain 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 to Paris with her.

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 a scientific internship in the laboratory, which was led by her cousin Jozef Boguski, an assistant.

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 did not have the opportunity to buy warm 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.

At the request of an industrial organization, Maria began to explore magnetic properties different metals. In the same year, Sklodowska 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 the two important discoveries 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.

About what ionizing radiation has negative impact, 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 her dangerous job. 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 her enormous assistance 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 the 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 Irène and her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie.
The records and documents that Maria kept in the 1890s are considered too dangerous to process due to high level 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 features and even a clematis flower; her portrait adorns banknotes, stamps and coins different countries peace.

A small, windswept barn filled with ore, huge vats emitting the pungent smell of chemicals, and two people, a man and a woman, casting a spell over them...

An outsider who saw such a picture could suspect this couple of something illegal. At best - in the underground production of alcohol, at worst - in the creation of bombs for terrorists. And it certainly would not have occurred to an outside observer that in front of him were two great physicists standing at the forefront of science.

Today the words “atomic energy”, “radiation”, “radioactivity” are known even to schoolchildren. Both military and peaceful atoms have firmly entered the life of mankind; even ordinary people have heard about the pros and cons of radioactive elements.

And for another 120 years nothing was known about radioactivity. And those who expanded the field of human knowledge made discoveries at the cost of their own health.

Mother of Marie Skłodowska-Curie. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Sisters' pact

November 7, 1867 in Warsaw, in the family teacher Vladislav Sklodovsky, a daughter was born, who was named Maria.

The family lived poorly, the mother suffered from tuberculosis, the father fought with all his might for her life, while at the same time trying to raise the children.

Such a life did not promise great prospects, but Maria, the first student in the class, dreamed of becoming a woman scientist. And this was at a time when even girls from rich families were not allowed into science, believing that it was exclusively the business of men.

But before dreaming about science, it was necessary to obtain a higher education, and the family did not have money for this. And then the two Skłodowski sisters, Maria And Bronislava, they enter into an agreement - while one studies, the second works to provide for both. Then it will be the second sister’s turn to provide for her relative.

Bronislava entered medical school in Paris, and Maria worked as a governess. The wealthy gentlemen who hired her would laugh for a long time if they knew what dreams this poor girl had in her head.

In 1891, Bronislava became a certified doctor, and kept her promise - 24-year-old Maria went to Paris, to the Sorbonne.

Science and Pierre

There was only enough money for a small attic in the Latin Quarter, and for the most modest food. But Maria was happy, immersed in her studies. She received two diplomas at once - in physics and mathematics.

In 1894, while visiting friends, Maria met Pierre Curie, head of the laboratory at the Municipal School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry, who has a reputation as a promising scientist and... a misogynist. The second was not true: Pierre ignored women not because of hostility, but because they could not share his scientific aspirations.

Maria amazed Pierre with her intelligence. She also appreciated Pierre, but when she received a marriage proposal from him, she responded with a categorical refusal.

Curie was dumbfounded, but the point was not in him, but in the intentions of Mary herself. As a girl, she decided to devote her life to science, abandoning family ties, and after receiving higher education, continue working in Poland.

Pierre Curie. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

Friends and relatives urged Maria to come to her senses - in Poland at that time there were conditions for scientific activity there wasn’t, and Pierre was not just a man, but perfect couple for a woman scientist.

Mysterious "rays"

Maria learned to cook for her husband’s sake, and in the fall of 1897 she gave birth to his daughter, who was named Irene. But she did not intend to become a housewife, and Pierre supported his wife’s desire for active scientific work.

Even before the birth of her daughter, Maria in 1896 chose the topic of her master's thesis. She was interested in the study of natural radioactivity, which was discovered by the French physicist Antoine Henri Becquerel.

Becquerel placed a uranium salt (potassium uranyl sulfate) on a photographic plate wrapped in thick black paper and exposed it to sunlight for several hours. He discovered that the radiation passed through the paper and affected the photographic plate. This seemed to indicate that the uranium salt emitted X-rays even after exposure to sunlight. However, it turned out that the same phenomenon occurred without irradiation. Becquerel, observed a new type of penetrating radiation emitted without external irradiation of the source. The mysterious radiation came to be called “Becquerel rays.”

Taking “Becquerel rays” as her research topic, Maria wondered whether other compounds emit rays?

She came to the conclusion that, in addition to uranium, similar rays are emitted by thorium and its compounds. Maria coined the concept of “radioactivity” to denote this phenomenon.

Marie Curie with her daughters Eva and Irene in 1908. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Parisian miners

After the birth of her daughter, Maria, returning to research, discovered that pitch blende from a mine near Joachimsthal in the Czech Republic, from which uranium was mined at that time, had a radioactivity four times higher than uranium itself. At the same time, analyzes showed that there was no thorium in the resin blend.

Then Maria put forward a hypothesis: the resin blend contains an unknown element in extremely small quantities, the radioactivity of which is thousands of times stronger than uranium.

In March 1898, Pierre Curie put aside his research and focused entirely on his wife's experiments, as he realized that Marie was on the verge of something revolutionary.

On December 26, 1898, Marie and Pierre Curie made a report to the French Academy of Sciences, in which they announced the discovery of two new radioactive elements - radium and polonium.

The discovery was theoretical, and to confirm it it was necessary to obtain the elements experimentally.

Calculations showed that to obtain elements it would be necessary to process tons of ore. There was no money for family or research. Therefore, the old barn became the place of processing, and chemical reactions carried out in huge vats. Analyzes of substances had to be carried out in a tiny, poorly equipped laboratory at a municipal school.

Four years of hard work, during which the couple regularly received burns. For chemical scientists this was a common thing. And only later it became clear that these burns were directly related to the phenomenon of radioactivity.

Radium sounds fancy. And expensive

In 1903, Maria Skłodowska-Curie defended her dissertation at the Sorbonne. When awarding the degree, it was noted that the work was the greatest contribution ever made to science by a doctoral dissertation.

That same year, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Becquerel and the Curies “for their study of the phenomenon of radioactivity discovered by Henri Becquerel.” Marie Curie became the first woman to receive a major scientific prize.

True, neither Maria nor Pierre were at the ceremony - they were sick. They associated their increasing ailments with a violation of the rest and nutrition regime.

The discovery of the Curies turned physics upside down. Leading scientists began researching radioactive elements, which by the middle of the 20th century would lead to the creation of the first atomic bomb, and then the first power plant.

And at the beginning of the 20th century, even a fashion for radiation appeared. Radium baths and drinking radioactive water were seen as almost a panacea for all diseases.

Radium had an extremely high value - for example, in 1910 it was valued at 180 thousand dollars per gram, which was equivalent to 160 kilograms of gold. It was enough to obtain a patent to completely solve all financial problems.

But Pierre and Marie Curie were scientific idealists and refused the patent. True, their money was still much better. Now they were willingly allocated funds for research, Pierre became a professor of physics at the Sorbonne, and Maria took the post of head of the laboratory of the Municipal School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry.

Eve Curie. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

"This is the end of everything"

In 1904, Maria gave birth to a second daughter, who was named Eva. It seemed like years were ahead happy life and scientific discoveries.

It all ended tragically and absurdly. On April 19, 1906, Pierre was crossing a street in Paris. Was rainy weather, the scientist slipped and fell under a horse-drawn carriage. Curie's head fell under the wheel, and death was instantaneous.

It was terrible blow for Maria. Pierre was everything to her - husband, father, children, like-minded person, helper. In her diary she will write: “Pierre is sleeping last dream underground... this is the end of everything... everything... everything.”

In her diary she will refer to Pierre for many years to come. The business to which they dedicated their lives became an incentive for Maria to move on.

She rejected the proposed pension, saying that she was capable of earning a living for herself and her daughters.

The Faculty Council of the Sorbonne appointed her to the department of physics, which was previously headed by her husband. When Skłodowska-Curie gave her first lecture six months later, she became the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne.

Shame of the French Academy

In 1910, Marie Curie succeeded in collaboration with Andre Debierne isolate pure metal radium, and not its compounds, as before. Thus, a 12-year cycle of research was completed, as a result of which it was indisputably proven that radium is an independent chemical element.

After this work, she was nominated for elections to the French Academy of Sciences. But here a scandal occurred - conservative-minded academicians were determined not to let the woman into their ranks. As a result, Marie Curie's candidacy was rejected by a margin of one vote.

This decision began to look especially shameful when, in 1911, Curie received her second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry. She became the first scientist to win the Nobel Prize twice.

The price of scientific progress

Marie Curie headed the institute for the study of radioactivity, and during the First World War she became the head of the Radiology Service of the Red Cross, engaged in equipment and maintenance of portable X-ray devices for x-ray examination of the wounded.

In 1918, Maria became scientific director of the Radium Institute in Paris.

In the 1920s, Marie Skłodowska-Curie was an internationally recognized scientist whose meeting was considered an honor by world leaders. But her health continued to rapidly deteriorate.

Many years of work with radioactive elements led to the development of aplastic radiation anemia in Maria. The harmful effects of radioactivity were first studied by scientists who began research into radioactive elements. Marie Curie died on July 4, 1934.

Maria and Pierre, Irene and Frederic

The daughter of Pierre and Maria Irene repeated the path of her mother. Having received a higher education, she first worked as an assistant at the Radium Institute, and from 1921 she began to engage in independent research. In 1926 she married a colleague, assistant of the Radium Institute Frederic Joliot.

Frederic Joliot. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

For Irene, Frederick became what Pierre was for Mary. The Joliot-Curies managed to discover a method that allows them to synthesize new radioactive elements.

Marie Curie was only a year shy of the triumph of her daughter and son-in-law - in 1935, Irène Joliot-Curie and Frédéric Joliot were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for the synthesis of new radioactive elements.” In his opening speech on behalf of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences K. V. Palmeier reminded Irene of how she attended a similar ceremony 24 years ago when her mother received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. “In collaboration with your husband, you are continuing this brilliant tradition with dignity,” he said.

Irene Curie and Albert Einstein. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Irene shared her mother’s final fate. From prolonged work with radioactive elements she developed acute leukemia. Nobel laureate and Chevalier of the Legion of Honor Irène Joliot-Curie died in Paris on March 17, 1956.

Decades after Marie Skłodowska-Curie passed away, things associated with her are kept in special conditions and are inaccessible to ordinary visitors. Her scientific notes and diaries still contain levels of radioactivity that are dangerous to others.