“There is nothing to be afraid of in life. Life just needs to be understood.”
“Life is not simple for any of us. How to deal with it? We must persevere and above all believe in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that it must certainly be achieved.”
Marie Curie is not only the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize, but also the first person to receive the award twice, and the only woman to receive it in two different categories. Secluded, dignified and modest, she gained the admiration of scientists all over the world.
Marie Curie valued education from an early age and as a child stood out above other children. At the age of 5, Maria learned to read and write, listening to her sister learn the alphabet. From the beginning of her schooling, she was a brilliant student, and at the end of high school she was awarded a gold medal for her success. However, her homeland, Poland, was then under Russian domination, and women could not attend university. As her desire for education was strong, Marie Curie (then Sklodowska) found a solution and soon connected with a group of young people who organized their studies in a non-compulsory organization called the Mobile University.
In 1891, she went to Paris to live with her sister and studied mathematics, physics and chemistry at the Sorbonne. She finished her studies at the Sorbonne as the best student, first in the physics and chemistry class, and second in the mathematics class.
She met her future husband, Pierre Curie, who was then a doctoral student in Becquerel’s laboratory, in 1894 and married him the very next year, after Pierre defended his doctorate.
She began her first research under the influence of Becquerel, who discovered in 1896 that uranium salts emit rays that are as penetrating as x-rays. Encouraged by this discovery, Marie Curie decided to study uranium rays as part of her doctoral dissertation. She showed that this radiation originates from the atom itself. She then continued her systematic studies of radioactive substances, especially uranium, and came to the discovery that uranium pitch has four times stronger radiation than elemental uranium, which led to the conclusion that some other elements are also present. Through various researches, she came to the discovery that this activity of uranium particles is also characteristic of some other substances (thorium) and decided to call this phenomenon radioactivity. Her husband, Pierre Curie was intrigued by her discoveries and decided to join her.
In 1898, the Kiri couple discovered the existence of a new element. The newly discovered element was called “polonium”, in honor of Mary, the homeland of Poland. A few months later, they announced other results of their research and the existence of another element. Because of its high radioactivity, it was called “radium”. They came to this discovery after painstaking work in a laboratory located in a shed and extensive research in which they processed 8 tons of uranium ore, and only in 1902 did they isolate one tenth of a gram of radium.
The crown of all research came in 1903. years. Pierre Curie, Marie Curie and Henri Becquerel received the Nobel Prize in Physics, in recognition of their outstanding achievements in the field of radioactivity. Thus, Mrs. Curie became the first woman to be awarded by the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences.
In the same year, Maria received her doctorate from the University of Paris and became the first woman in France to achieve that academic degree. After these successes, recognitions from other European countries followed.
The Kiri couple not only discovered new elements, but also the effects of radioactivity on cells. They made an important discovery – that sick, cancerous cells exposed to radiation are destroyed much faster than healthy ones. In order to enable the operation of this, the first laboratory in the world, which carried out experiments by treating cancer cells with radioactive substances, it sought the help of other countries, and the USA was one of the countries from which it received valuable help. President Harding, on behalf of the women of America, gave her 1 gram of radium for her institute, which for her was “countless times more precious than gold”.
This discovery played a huge role in the subsequent research and development of therapy for the treatment of many forms of cancer. Radiological therapy is still the main therapeutic method in the treatment of cancerous diseases.
After becoming an unfortunate widow in 1906, Marie Curie was asked to take over her late husband’s university professorship. That’s how she became the first woman professor at the Sorbonne.
She continued to work hard and dedicatedly, and in 1910, with the help of her colleague, she isolated pure metallic radium. The award for all the research and discovery of the chemical elements radium and polonium, for the isolation of radium and the study of the nature of that element and its compounds, arrived the following year in the form of another Nobel Prize. This time it was the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Thus, Marie Curie became the first scientist with two Nobel Prizes.
Through further research, she realized that X-rays can help locate foreign objects in the body and thus facilitate the surgeon’s work. During the First World War, Marie Curie, with the help of her daughter Irene, who she also included in her scientific activities, devoted herself to developing the medical application of radiography. She designed a vehicle that was used for radiography, and which was sent to the front to help wounded soldiers. The vehicle became known as the “little kiri”, as it was fondly called. Marie Curie personally brought him to the front line. The vehicles were equipped with radon, a radioactive gas derived from radium, which Maria personally collected and placed in gas pipes.
At the time when Marie Curie was researching the harmful effects of radiation, they were still unknown, so the Curie couple conducted research without any protection from radioactive substances. It was even said that Marie Curie loved the beautiful blue-green light with which substances glowed in the dark, and that she even carried test tubes with radioactive isotopes in her pocket and kept them in her desk drawer. The intensity of radioactivity to which the Curies were exposed was so high that their laboratory equipment, books and notes are still considered too dangerous to handle.
Marie Curie died of leukemia on July 4, 1934. She was buried in the cemetery in Scow next to her husband Pierre. In honor of their achievements, in 1995 the French moved their remains to the Panthéon in Paris.
News and Science 
Leave a comment