LegacyĬurie made many breakthroughs in her lifetime. Her many years working with radioactive materials took a toll on her health.
She was known to carry test tubes of radium around in the pocket of her lab coat. How Did Marie Curie Die?Ĭurie died on July 4, 1934, of aplastic anemia, believed to be caused by prolonged exposure to radiation. In 1902, the Curies announced that they had produced a decigram of pure radium, demonstrating its existence as a unique chemical element.Īround this time, Curie joined with other famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Max Planck, to attend the first Solvay Congress in Physics and discuss the many groundbreaking discoveries in their field. They also detected the presence of another radioactive material in the pitchblende and called that radium. They named the element polonium, after Curie's native country of Poland. Working with the mineral pitchblende, the pair discovered a new radioactive element in 1898. Curie herself coined the word "radioactivity" to describe the phenomena.įollowing Curie’s discovery of radioactivity, she continued her research with her husband Pierre. This revolutionary idea created the field of atomic physics. The rays, she theorized, came from the element's atomic structure. (1985–) Radioactivity, Polonium and Radiumįascinated with the work of Henri Becquerel, a French physicist who discovered that uranium casts off rays weaker than the X-rays found by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, Curie took his work a few steps further.Ĭurie conducted her own experiments on uranium rays and discovered that they remained constant, no matter the condition or form of the uranium. Joliot-Curie shared the honor with her husband, Frédéric Joliot, for their work on the synthesis of new radioactive elements. Irène Joliot-Curie followed in her mother's footsteps, winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935. The couple had a second daughter, Ève, in 1904. In 1897, Marie and Pierre welcomed a daughter, Irène. Curie was derided in the press for breaking up Langevin's marriage, the negativity in part stemming from rising xenophobia in France. In 1911, Curie’s relationship with her husband's former student, Paul Langevin, became public. Despite her tremendous grief, she took over his teaching post at the Sorbonne, becoming the institution's first female professor. Marie suffered a tremendous loss in 1906 when Pierre was killed in Paris after accidentally stepping in front of a horse-drawn wagon. But after Marie discovered radioactivity, Pierre put aside his own work to help her with her research. At first, Marie and Pierre worked on separate projects. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves.” “You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals.” “It is important to make a dream of life and a dream reality.” “There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.”Ī romance developed between the brilliant pair, and they became a scientific dynamic duo who were completely devoted to one another.
A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales.” “One never notices what has been done one can only see what remains to be done.” “In science, we must be interested in things, not in persons.” “All my life through, the new sights of nature made me rejoice like a child.” “In the education of children the requirement of their growth and physical evolution should be respected, and that some time should be left for their artistic culture.” “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.” “I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.” “Life is not easy for any of us. “I believe that science has great beauty.
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