![]() ![]() ![]() This short history of the discoveries is retraced from three laboratory notebooks in which one can distinguish the writings of Pierre and Marie (Adloff 1998) and from three notes published in the Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences ( C.R. However, within eight months in 1898 she discovered two elements, polonium and radium, founding a new scientific field-radioactivity. The topic was moribund when Marie Curie entered the scene. ![]() One reason was the proliferation of false or doubtful observations of radiation similar to uranic rays in a variety of substances. Marie Curie, in a biography of Pierre Curie, confirmed, “we felt the investigation of the phenomenon very attractive, so much the more so as the topic was quite new and required no bibliographical research.”Īfter initial excitement, interest in the new rays had faded rapidly. What was the source of this inexhaustible energy that apparently violated the Carnot principle that energy can be transformed but never be created or destroyed? Pierre Curie, already a famous physicist for his work on magnetism and crystal symmetry, had a feeling that the phenomenon was quite extraordinary, and he helped his wife reach a decision in her choice of thesis topic. Uranium compounds and minerals appeared to maintain an undiminished ability to blacken a photographic plate over a period of several months. On the other hand, the uranic rays, discovered in 1896 by Henri Becquerel, raised a puzzling problem. X-rays, discovered by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen in 1895, were still a topical question, but had lost the charm of novelty. In 1897 at the age of 30, Maria Skłodowska, who had married Pierre Curie in 1895, concluded her studies at the Sorbonne in Paris and was thinking of a subject for a thesis. Follow him on Twitter at on Facebook, or on Instagram.An illustration from Vanity Fair magazine, 1904 (Library of Congress). His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities, the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Marie Curie’s Research Papers Are Still Radioactive 100+ Years Laterīased in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. Marie Curie Attended a Secret, Underground “Flying University” When Women Were Banned from Polish Universities How American Women “Kickstarted” a Campaign to Give Marie Curie a Gram of Radium, Raising $120,000 in 1921 Marie Curie Invented Mobile X-Ray Units to Help Save Wounded Soldiers in World War I Marie Curie Became the First Woman to Win a Nobel Prize, the First Person to Win Twice, and the Only Person in History to Win in Two Different Sciences That movement continues to make discoveries more than a century later - and her original thesis itself remains radioactive.Īn Animated Introduction to the Life & Work of Marie Curie, the First Female Nobel Laureate She clearly knew how vast a field her work, with and without her husband, had opened up: “Our researches upon the new radio-active bodies have given rise to a scientific movement,” she writes at the end of Recherches sur les substances radioactives. By 1911 Pierre had been dead for half a decade, but Marie’s scientific genius couldn’t be stopped from continuing their pioneering research as far as she could take it in her own lifetime. Unlike her Nobel Prize in physics, which she shared with her husband Pierre and the physicist Henri Becquerel, Marie Curie won her Nobel Prize in chemistry alone. ![]() “Following on from the discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Roentgen in 1895 and Henri Becquerel’s discovery that uranium salts emitted similar penetration properties,” says The Document Centre, Curie “ investigated uranium rays as a starting point, but in the process discovered that the air around uranium rays is made to conduct electricity.” So says science Youtuber Toby Hendy in the introduction below to Curie’s thesis–a thesis that made her the first woman in France to receive a doctoral degree in physics. In Recherches sur les substances radioactives (or Research on Radioactive Substances), Curie “talks about the discovery of the new elements radium and polonium, and also describes how she gained one of the first understandings of the new physical phenomenon of radioactivity.” What’s more, her first Nobel came in 1903, the very same year she completed her PhD thesis at the Sorbonne. Or rather, she won two, one for physics and another for chemistry, making her the only Nobel Laureate in more than one science. For her groundbreaking research on radioactivity, Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |