The life and work of Marie Curie
The marriage of Pierre and Marie Curie in 1895 marked the start of a partnership
that was soon to achieve results of world significance. Following Henri
Becquerel’s discovery in 1896 of a new phenomenon, which Marie later called
‘radioactivity’, Marie Curie decided to find out if the radioactivity discovered in
uranium was to be found in other elements. She discovered that this was true for
thorium. Turning her attention to minerals, she found her interest drawn to
pitchblende, a mineral whose radioactivity, superior to that of pure uranium, could
be explained only by the presence in the ore of small quantities of an unknown
substance of very high activity. Pierre Curie joined her in the work that she had
undertaken to resolve this problem, and that led to the discovery of the new
elements, polonium and radium. While Pierre Curie devoted himself chiefly to the
physical study of the new radiations, Marie Curie struggled to obtain pure radium
in the metallic state. This was achieved with the help of the chemist André-Louis
Debierne, one of Pierre Curie’s pupils. Based on the results of this research, Marie
Curie received her Doctorate of Science, and in 1903 Marie and Pierre shared with
Becquerel the Nobel Prize for Physics for the discovery of radioactivity. The births
of Marie’s two daughters, Irène and Eve, in 1897 and 1904 failed to interrupt her
scientific work. She was appointed lecturer in physics at the École Normale
Supérieure for girls in Sèvres, France (1900), and introduced a method of teaching
based on experimental demonstrations. In December 1904 she was appointed chief
assistant in the laboratory directed by Pierre Curie. The sudden death of her
husband in 1906 was a bitter blow to Marie Curie, but was also a turning point in
her career: henceforth she was to devote all her energy to completing alone the
scientific work that they had undertaken. On May 13, 1906, she was appointed to
the professorship that had been left vacant on her husband’s death, becoming the
first woman to teach at the Sorbonne. In 1911 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Chemistry for the isolation of a pure form of radium. During World War I, Marie
Curie, with the help of her daughter Irène, devoted herself to the development of
the use of X-radiography, including the mobile units which came to be known as
‘Little Curies’, used for the treatment of wounded soldiers. In 1918 the Radium
Institute, whose staff Irène had joined, began to operate in earnest, and became a
centre for nuclear physics and chemistry. Marie Curie, now at the highest point of
her fame and, from 1922, a member of the Academy of Medicine, researched the
chemistry of radioactive substances and their medical applications. In 1921,
accompanied by her two daughters, Marie Curie made a triumphant journey to the
United States to raise funds for research on radium. Women there presented her
with a gram of radium for her campaign. Marie also gave lectures in Belgium,
Brazil, Spain and Czechoslovakia and, in addition, had the satisfaction of seeing
the development of the Curie Foundation in Paris, and the inauguration in 1932 in
Warsaw of the Radium Institute, where her sister Bronia became director. One of
Marie Curie’s outstanding achievements was to have understood the need to
accumulate intense radioactive sources, not only to treat illness but also to
maintain an abundant supply for research. The existence in Paris at the Radium
Institute of a stock of 1.5 grams of radium made a decisive contribution to the
success of the experiments undertaken in the years around 1930. This work
prepared the way for the discovery of the neutron by Sir James Chadwick and,
above all, for the discovery in 1934 by Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie of artificial
radioactivity. A few months after this discovery, Marie Curie died as a result of
leukaemia caused by exposure to radiation. She had often carried test tubes
containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket, remarking on the pretty blue-green
light they gave off. Her contribution to physics had been immense, not only in her
own work, the importance of which had been demonstrated by her two Nobel
Prizes, but because of her influence on subsequent generations of nuclear
physicists and chemists.
