Remember remarkable Marie Curie

Marie (called Manya) Sklodowska was born in 1867, in Warsaw, one of five children to Vladislav and Bronislawa Sklodowska, both…

Marie (called Manya) Sklodowska was born in 1867, in Warsaw, one of five children to Vladislav and Bronislawa Sklodowska, both teachers. Poland was divided up between Austria, Prussia and Russia. The Sklodowska family was intensely nationalistic and the children were academic high-achievers. Manya was awarded a gold medal at her high school graduation in 1883, writes Dr William Reville

Manya's father, a teacher of maths and physics, schooled Manya in these subjects. At the age of 16, Manya made a pact with her older sister Brony to work and earn money to pay for Bronya's expenses in medical school in Paris. Later, Bronya would return the favour. Manya worked as a governess. She became engaged to the son of her employers. His parents didn't want their son to marry penniless Manya and forced the couple to break the engagement. However, she continued to work in the household to honour her pact with Bronya.

After a while, her father secured a better paid job and was able to send money monthly to Bronya in Paris. Bronya asked him to set aside a portion of this for Manya. By the end of 1891, Manya, aged 24, had enough money to begin her studies in Paris. Manya changed her name to Marie when she enrolled at the Sorbonne. She studied hard but her personal circumstances were straitened. During winter, she kept warm by wearing every stitch of clothes she owned and at times she fainted from hunger. In 1893, she won first place in her master's degree in physics and in 1894 she came second in her mathematics.

Marie was commissioned to investigate the magnetic properties of steel and sought laboratory space to do this work. This is how she met Pierre Curie, laboratory chief of the Municipal School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry in Paris. Pierre was about 10 years older than Marie, but they were mutually attracted to each other. Pierre persuaded her to begin her PhD studies.

READ MORE

In 1895, they married in a civil ceremony. Rather than a bridal gown Marie wore a dark blue suit, which served as a practical laboratory outfit for years afterwards. Their honeymoon was a bicycle tour of France. In 1897, their first child Irene was born and in 1904 a second daughter Eve was born. Marie kept up laboratory work with the full support of Pierre.

Marie's choice of subject for her PhD was influenced by two recent discoveries. In 1895, Wilhelm Roentgen had discovered x-rays that could penetrate the body and yield photographs of the bones inside. In 1896, Henri Becquerel reported that uranium compounds also emitted penetrating rays that could fog a photographic plate. Marie decided to work on the Becquerel rays.

The rays emitted by uranium render air electrically conducting, and Marie used this characteristic to examine different compounds of uranium. She validated and extended Becquerel's findings, but went much further by proposing that the uranium rays were a property of the uranium atoms.

Marie tested all the known elements to determine if uranium was unique. She discovered that thorium also emitted penetrating rays and she coined the word "radioactivity" to describe this phenomenon.

PIERRE joined Marie in her work on radioactivity. She had found that two uranium ores, pitchblende and chalcolite, were far more radioactive than pure uranium. She concluded that these ores contained undiscovered radioactive elements. In 1898, Marie and Pierre announced that the extra radioactivity was accounted for by two previously unknown radioactive elements - polonium (named after Poland) and radium.

Marie went on to purify radium. She used over eight tonnes of pitchblende and spent more than three years isolating one tenth of a gram of pure radium chloride. This Herculean effort was carried out in an abandoned, poorly ventilated and leaky shed.

In 1903, the Nobel Prize was awarded jointly to Pierre and Marie Curie and Henri Becquerel for their research into radioactivity. The husband and wife team's story stirred the public imagination.

It wasn't easy for women to get recognition. The general public impression was that Marie was a helper to her husband. Pierre won entry to the Académie des Sciences, but Marie was never accepted by the Académie.

In 1906, tragedy struck. Pierre was killed in a Paris street accident. Marie was distraught, but soldiered on. A few years later the world learned that she was having a passionate affair with another physicist, Paul Langevin, who had been a friend of Pierre. Public opinion was outraged and the press turned against Marie. During the controversy, the Nobel Committee awarded Marie a second Nobel Prize, in Chemistry this time, for the discovery of radium and polonium. It was suggested that she not come to Sweden to collect the prize until she had cleared her name. Marie replied that the award had nothing to do with her private life. She collected her Prize.

The Curies had taken no precautions against radioactivity, not knowing the dangers. Marie eventually died of radiation poisoning in 1934. To this day, her laboratory notebooks are too contaminated to handle. She was a very remarkable woman.

William Reville is Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Director of Microscopy at UCC