Aspirations come from hopes and dreams only a dedicated person can
conjure up. They can range from passing the third grade to making the
local high school football team. Marie Curie's aspirations, however,
were much greater.
Life in late 19th century Poland was rough. Being a female in
those days wasn't a walk in the park either. Marie Curie is recognized
in history by the name she took in her adopted country, France. Born in
Poland in 1867, she was christened Manya Sklodowska. In the year of her
birth, Poland was ruled by the neighboring Russia; no Pole could forget
it, or at least anyone involved in education, as both Manya's parents
were. Manya's mother was a headmistress of a girls' school. The Russians
insisted that Polish schools teach the Russian language and Russian
history. The Poles had to teach their children their own language and
history in secrecy.
Manya enjoyed learning but her childhood was always overshadowed
by depression. At the young age of six, her father lost his job and her
family became very poor. In the same year of 1873, her mother died of
tuberculosis. As if that wasn't enough tragedy for the family already,
two of her sisters died of typhus as well. Her oldest sister, Bronya,
had to leave school early to take care of the family. Despite all these
hardships and setbacks, Manya continued to work hard at school.
Although her sister Bronya had stopped going to school to act as
the family's housekeeper, she desperately wanted to go on studying to
become a doctor. This was almost impossible in Poland, however. In
Poland, women were not allowed to go to college. Many Poles took the
option to flee from Russian rule and live in France; this is exactly
what Bronya did. She had set her heart on going to Paris to study at
the famous Sorbonne University (The University of Paris). The only
problem now was that she had no money to get there.
Manya and Bronya agreed to help each other attain their
educations. Manya got a job as a governess and sent her earnings to
support Bronya in Paris. Then, when Bronya could afford it, she would
help Manya with her schooling and education in return. Manya went to live
in a village called Szczuki with a family called Zorawski. Aside from
teaching the two children of the family for seven hours a day, she
organized lessons for her own benefit as well. Manya spent her evenings,
late evenings, and even mornings devouring books on mathmatics and science.
Bronya finished her studies and married a Polish doctor, Casimir
Dluski. They invited Manya to live with them in Paris while she went to
college. Manya didn't want to leave her country and most importantly, her
family. Her eagerness for the quest of knowledge overcame her fear of the
unknown, nonetheless. She travelled to Paris in an open railroad car on a
trip that lasted three days in the Polish winter. She arrived safely to
her long-since-childhood dream, the city of Paris. Manya Sklodowska
quickly became Marie.
While Marie improved her French, she stayed with Bronya and her
husband. They lived more than an hour away from the university. Marie
wanted to be nearer to her work, so she eventually ended up moving out of
her sister's home and into a single cold damp room, eating only enough to
keep her alive. Fortunate enough for a scholarship, Marie was able to go
on studying until she had completed two courses. In her final exam-
inations, she came in first in the subject of mathematics and second in
physics. By 1894, at the age of 27, Marie had aquired not one, but two
degrees from France's top university and also became a totally fluent
speaker of the French language.
Marie had always ruled love and marriage out of her life's
program. She was obsessed by her dreams, harassed by poverty, and
overdriven by intensive work. Nothing else counted; nothing else existed.
She did, however, meet a young man every day at Sorbonne and at the
laboratory. Marie and her destiny actually met on coincidence. Marie
needed somewhere to conduct her experiments for research ordered by the
Society for the Encouragement of National Industry. The lab at Sorbonne
was too crowded with students, in addition to not having the
right equipment. A friend of hers suggested a friend's labratory. His
name was Pierre Curie. Marie soon completed her commitment to her adopted
country by marrying this Frenchman.
Marie and Pierre Curie got married in 1895. The two of them
combined probably made up the best team of scientists ever. Pierre had
made important discoveries about magnetism. Marie decided to follow this
up by looking at the magnetic properties of steel. In the same year of
their marriage, a German scientist by the name of Wilhelm Roentgen made an
accidental discovery. He found that certain substances produced rays of
energy that would pass through soft materials as opposed to hard
materials. Due to the fact that scientists often use the symbol "x" to
stand for anything unknown, he called his mysterious
discovery the "x-ray." The x-ray was more than an ammusing puzzle. By
directing x-rays and photographic film at a solid object that consisted
of both soft and hard substances a positive image can be made of the hard
substance. A prime example would be the human body. This discovery now
made it possible to look inside the human body without performing
surgery. Within the few days of the findings, x-rays were used to locate
a bullet in a man's leg. The world of medicine had acquired a major new
tool for examining the sick and injured.
The year after Roentgen's discovery, a French researcher and a
friend of the Curie's, Antoine Henri Becquerel found that a rare substance
called uranium gave off rays that seemed to be very much like the x-rays
that Wilhelm Roentgen had described.
In 1897, the year of Roentgen's discovery, Marie Curie gave birth
to her very first daughter, Irene. Despite being caught up in family
life, Marie was still determined to go on with her scientific work. She
decided to follow up Becquerel's discovery and do special research on the
study of uranium and the rays it produced.
Elements are the raw materials of our universe. Everything is
made up of these basic substances. Scientists are able to break things
down into their various elements and tests can be made to discover its
array of properties.
In the small damp labratory in the back of Sorbonne's School of
Physics and Chemistry, Marie began a long, tedious and painstaking
series of experiments that tested every element known to man. She found
that only the two elements uranium and thorium gave off rays.
"Radioactivity" was the name Marie gave to this property. Marie soon
again made another important discovery about a mineral called alled pitch-
blende, a black substance, somewhat stiff like that of tar, which contains
tiny quantities of uranium but absent of thorium. Pitchblende gave off
eight times more rays than the uranium that it contained. It was,
utilizing Marie's new term, more radioactive. Marie figured out that
pitchblende must therefore contain another element,which was also radio-
active that no one had discovered as of yet. Pierre was so overwhelmed
with this discovery, he quit his own work to join in his wife's research
and find out more on this new element. The Curie team decided to call it
radium.
Marie realized that the new element within the pitchblende was
in minute quantities only, therefore, to isolate any respectable amount
to test and measure large portions of pitchblende were needed. To
separate the radium from the pitchblende, it would have to be heated,
which purifies the substance. While working with the pitchblende, another
element was discovered which wasn't radioactive, therefore not radium.
Marie named this element polonium, in honor of her native homeland Poland.
Marie's experiments were now being conducted in an abandoned
wooden shed, furnished with only old kitchen tables, a cast-iron stove
and a blackboard. One evening, in 1902, after four long years of
exhausting work, Marie decided to go back to their lab and check on the
experiments they had done earlier in the day. When Marie and Pierre got
to the laboratory, they saw a "faint blue glow" in the darkness; it was
the radium.
Radium proved to be one of the world's most important
discoveries, especially for its miraculous medical uses. Radium was
measured to be two million times more radioactive than uranium. The
smallest amount of radium was capable of giving off immense radiation.
Radium is extremely powerful and, unless used with care and in a
controlled environment, very dangerous. Unfortunately, this was not
known in the days of the Curies. While working with radioactive
materials, both Pierre and Marie suffered from many illnesses and pains.
They encountered aching arms and legs, sores, colds and blisters that
never seemed to go away. They often pinned these problems to their lack
of rest due to being in the laboratory. Only later did the two connect
their improvement in health with their absense from the radium. The
Curie's great discovery prompted scientists and doctors to work and
further develop its uses. It was found that radiation could be used to
destroy unhealthy growth in the human body, thus helping to stop cancer.
Besides being able to cure, radium can also kill. Handling and
controlling the radium is the first and foremost dilemna. The Curie's
found this out the hard way...
The discovery of radium did, however, bring the Curies something
they were proud of. In 1903, Marie Curie was awarded the degree of Doctor
of Science. At the awards ceremony, Marie showed how grateful she was
by wearing a new dress. The Curies were then showered with awards and
honors from then on. That same year, Pierre was invited to London to
give a lecture on radium. In November of that year, the Royal Society,
Britain's leading association of scientists, presented Pierre and his wife
with one of its highest awards, the Davy Medal. Not a month later, they
heard from the Academy of Sciences in Sweden that the Nobel Prize for
physics was to be awarded to the Curies along with Henri Becquerel. Marie
and Pierre felt too ill to make the jounrney to Sweden to accept the prize
in person, so Becquerel accepted the medals for them. The Nobel Prize
included a rather large sum of money... 70,000 gold francs. The Curies
accepted the money finance for their experiments. This released Pierre
from his teaching so that he could concentrate on research and to repay to
kindness and support they had received from their friends and family over
the years. They also gave gifts to poor Polish students and made a few
improvements to their small apartment.
One new comer that the Curies didn't mind was Eve, their second
daughter, born in December in 1904. Her arrival didn't disrupt the Curies
research and teaching, as their first child Irene had threatened.
The Curie's lust for science still lingered.
In the year of 1905, Pierre was elected a member of the French
Academy of Sciences and became a Professor of Physics at the Sorbonne.
Early in the following year, tragedy struck. Crossing the road in a
shower of rain, Pierre stepped out from behind from a cab straight into
the path of a heavy horse drawn wagon. The driver tried to stop the
wagon, but all was in vain. The weight of his load was too great for him
to stop, and the left back wheel crushed Pierred as he lay stunned in the
road. Pierre Curie died instantly.
Marie was shattered by the news of her husband's death but soon
recovered the determination to carry on with her work. The French govern-
ment proposed to recognize Pierre's work to the nation by granting Marie a
pention for herself and her children. She refused saying, "I am young
enough to earn my living and that of my children..."
The Sorbonne agreed with her because The Faculty of Science voted
unanimously that she should succceed Pierre as Professor. It was a unique
tribute, for she became not only the first woman professor at Sorbonne but
the first at any French university.
Marie had felt it was her duty to succeed her husband. He had
always said he would have liked to see Marie teach a class at Sorbonne.
Marie at last showed her final feeling on the matter by the way in which
she gave her first public speech lecture to a packed crowd.
In the year of 1910, four years after Pierre's death, Marie
published a long account of her discoveries of radioactivity. This led
to her being awarded a second Nobel Prize. Not for another fifty years
would anyone accomplish such a remarkable honor. This time, Marie went
to Stochholm in Sweden to accept her prize in person. 1911 should have
been a year of triumph, but it turned out to be a awful year of anguish,
however. The awarding of Marie's second Nobel Prize was controversal
because many say it was given to her out of pity of her husband. That
same year, Marie failed by two votes to be elected to be in the Academy
of Sciences. Worse yet, some newspapers said that her close friendship
with the scientist Paul Langevin was wrong because he was a married man
with four children.
Marie received many spiteful letters and became distressed. A
spell in the nursing home and a trip to England helped her to recover.
Marie's real cure for her problems was definitely her work. The Sorbonne
at last decided to give her what she needed to do it properly - a special
institute for the study of radium, newly-built on a road renamed in honor
of her husband, "Rue Pierre Curie." Marie was thrilled with this new
project and gave it, as her own personal gift, the precious radium she
and Pierre had prepared with their own hands. This radium was precious
in every sense. It was vital for further scientific research. It was
essential for it's use in medicine and it was worth more than a million
gold francs.
The Radium Institution was finished on July 13, 1914. Less than
a week later, World War I broke out. Marie gave up all thought of
scientific work in her new institute and threw herself behind the cause
of her adopted country. Before dedicating herself to the war, Marie made
a special trip to Bordeaux, in western France and put the precious gram of
radium away in a bank vault.
Marie donated all her money toward the war efforts including her
own personal savings in gold to be melted down. She even offered her
medals, but the bank refused them. Marie quickly saw that there was one
service that she could do for France that no one else could - organize a
mass x-ray service for the treatment of wounded soldiers. During the
course of the war, Marie, along with volunteers, equipped 20 cars as
mobile x-ray units and set up more than 200 hospital rooms with x-ray
equiptment. Over a million men were x-rayed, which saved tens of
thousands of lives and prevented an untold number of amputations. Between
1916 and 1918, Marie Curie trained 150 people including 20 American
Expeditionary Force members in x-ray technology of radiology. After the
war ended, Marie continued to train radiologists for another two years.
Marie disliked reproters and kept away from journalists. One
American reporter, Mrs. Marie Melaney was persistent. Marie finally gave
in to her and agreed to an interview. The two quickly became friends.
Mrs. Melaney understood how Marie had put aside her scientific work
during the war and knew that in the whole of France there was only one
gram of radium that Marie had presented to the newly-established
institute. Mrs. Melaney went back to the United States and asked the
country for a sum of $100,000 for another gram of radium for Marie's
research. Marie was widely known and millions dutifully complied. In
1921, Marie was invited to the United States to receive her radium. After
stepping out into the public just once, the world fell in love.
She became sort of and ambassador for science, travelling to
other countries, educating as well as still receiving honors. In 1925,
the Polish government erected another radium institute, this time in her
honor - The Marie Sklodowska/Curie Institute. The President of Poland
laid the first corner stone while Marie laid the second. The women of
the United States acknowledged her a second time and collected enough
money to produce yet another gram of radium to be presented to the
Polish Institute for its research and treatment program.
In may of 1934, Marie Curie was stricken to her bed due to the
flu. Being too weak to fight against the virus, she died in a sanitarium
in the French Alps. She was quietly buried on July 6, 1934 and laid to
rest next to her husband Pierre.
Marie Curie was a woman of the ages. She represented true
humanity in the pusuit of perfection. Marie found humanity's perfection
in chemistry and her work. Loving what she did and devoting herself to
the sciences is what made her happy in the sense that true perfection was
found.
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