Marie Curie

Marie curie was born on November 7th 1867, in Warsaw, once the capitol of Poland. Her close friends and family had a nickname for her, Manya. Before Marie turned eleven, her mother had died of Tuberculosis, and her oldest sister had died of Typhus. Despite her grief and short comings, Marie graduated from high school at the early age of fifteen with the highest honors. Marie started to feel depressed, so her father sent her to live with her cousins in the country side.

A short time later, Marie moved back to Warsaw to continue her education. In those days, women were not allowed to study at the university. So Maria and her older sister Bronya joined other students at an illegal university. The classes were at night to avoid suspicion by the local police. Marie and Bronya decided to work together, because in order to get a real education they would have to go to a professional university. So Marie would work to help pay for Bronya’s education. Then after she finished school, Bronya would help pay for Marie’s education. Bronya went off to school in Paris, and Marie moved to a village away from Warsaw, and was hired by the owner of a beet-sugar factory to teach his children. She stayed there for three years.

Marie moved back to Warsaw in 1889. By this time her father was making good money. He was head of a reform school and was able to send Bronya money each month. Marie continued to work as a tutor. On Sundays, and at night, she went to the museum to study chemistry in an illegal lab for training Polish scientists. When Marie was around 24, she decided that she had saved enough money to go to school in Paris.

Marie had little money and food, and she was behind all of the other students. That didn’t stop her; she completed all of her studies and graduated with Master’s degrees in physics and math in only three years. She was so good in physics that she earned a scholarship, and the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry said that they would pay her to investigate the magnetic properties of different steels. But to do this type of work, Marie needed a lab. That’s how Marie met Pierre Curie.

Pierre Curie was Laboratory Chief at the Paris Municipal School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry; he was 10 years older then Marie. He made important discoveries on magnetism and crystals, but he never made a doctoral thesis. Pierre and Marie eventually became a couple, and he convinced her to stay in Paris instead of going back to Poland, she in return convinced him to make a doctoral thesis on his studies with magnesium. In July 1895, Pierre and Marie got married. Two years later they had their first daughter Irene. Marie started to look for a research topic that would help her earn a doctorate in science. No woman in the world had completed that degree.

In December 1895, a German physicist had discovered rays that could travel through flesh and solid wood. Marie was astonished, and decided to investigate these uranium rays. She used the lab where Pierre was a professor in. She started off by studying many chemical compounds that contained uranium. She found that the rays that came out depended on the amount of uranium in the compound. Marie tried out a lot of chemicals, and found that compounds that contained thorium, also gave off rays. Marie made up the term “radio activity” to describe the behavior of the two elements. Marie later saw that the mineral pitchblende, had more radioactivity then expected, because the uranium was not that high in it. She thought that pitchblende must have another element in it that has never been seen before. Pierre was so excited that he put aside his work to help Marie in the discovery.

In July 1898 they found their first discovery, and named it after Marie’s home land, “polonium”. A few months later, in December, they found the second element and named it “radium”. Many scientists were skeptical about the discovery, because Marie and Pierre didn’t have enough of the element. So they moved their studies to an abandoned shed. Here they found that radium gives off heat, and you can see the light. Pierre proved that radium could damage living flesh, this opened up a new way to treat cancer and other sicknesses. Marie lost twenty pounds during the time of her studies, and both she and Pierre were often sick and tired. Marie didn’t think that the radium was harmful to people, but doctors today think differently. Industrial firms helped the Curies