Marie Curie, A Handful of Scientific Firsts

There are far too few women recognized in science, but one whose name is usually on the top of the list when people are asked to name any is Marie Curie (born Marja Sklodowska in Poland on November 7th, 1867). I highly recommend reading her biography written by her daughter Eve in 1937. You could choose any of the half dozen or more others, and I admit I haven't read them, but this one was good. The 2019 movie Radioactive, starring the talented Rosamund Pike, was based on a different biography, and it was poorly edited, so I don't recommend watching it.

photo from Amazon.com

So, why do we remember Marie Curie? A glance at a science book will tell you some interesting facts:

• She was the first female to receive a Nobel prize (1903 in physics, with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel). This makes her and her husband the first married couple to share a Nobel, too.
• She coined the term "radioactive" during her studies that earned her the 1903 Nobel.
• She was the first person to win a second Nobel prize (1911 in chemistry for discovering radium and polonium).
• She is the only person to win two Nobel prizes in different scientific fields (Linus Pauling has won 2 Nobel prizes, but they were in medicine and peace).
• She was the first female to earn a doctorate in physics and gain professor status at the University of Paris (1906).

Marie was a pure scientist, a pure researcher. Even before entering university, she did her best to improve herself by reading anything in science that she could, on any topic. Under Russian rule, Poland suffered a hard lifestyle, but Marie demonstrated her academic brilliance early in school. But education then and there kept discoveries from the outside world secret. So, to help spread learning to fellow members of the lower class, in high school she organized a group called the "Floating University", a grassroots movement to secretly teach anatomy, natural history, and sociology to young students and housewives. She even put off applying to university so her older sister Bronya would have a chance instead; Bronya would live away from home to attend medical school, while Marie worked as a governess for 3 years to support her. 

When Marie finally began university in Paris at age 20, she scrimped to live in a room with no heat, lights, or water. She'd read until her fingers were numb, and she hardly ate. But she was absorbed in math and sciences. She was analyzing rocks in a crowded lab, and a friend introduced her to Pierre Curie, 15 years older than her, who ran another laboratory there. So she began doing research there and fell in love with the mind of her future husband. They were so similar in their devotion to science, but they married and continued to work closely together.

In 1896, Wilhelm Roentgen discovered how to make X-rays. But he had a device to do that. Henri Becquerel noticed a "rare metal" called uranium also sent out rays that did similar things to X-rays, but they did it without adding any energy to them! Marie took this new knowledge and studied many materials and learned that the element thorium had this property, and she named it radioactivity. When she found more radioactivity in one material than the uranium and thorium in it could produce, she felt it was because a third radioactive element was there. A new element!

Roentgen's wife's hand via X-rays, a metal cross imaged from Becquerel's uranium

Marie and Pierre worked for years to purify this element, and when it was finally found in 1898, Marie gave it the name polonium in honor of her patriotism towards her home country. To do this meant examining an ore called pitchblende and refining it from huge quantities down to a tiny amount. And, they felt there was another element there adding to the radioactivity. They gave it the name radium even though they had not found it yet. Chemists that they talked to were very skeptical saying they didn't even know the atomic weight of radium, so the Curies had to show them a sample before they believed it existed.

Four years later, they did.

Pierre and Marie, from mariecurie.org.uk

They worked in an unused shed on campus, one with no floor, and with a leaky skylight that made the place hot in summer and freezing in winter. They crushed and treated with chemicals tons of scrap pitchblende from a nearby mine with the help of only one assistant. Marie did most of the heavy work shoveling and crushing and treating with chemicals to separate all the other elements in it, while Pierre did the careful measurements. One night, they left home when Marie said, "Suppose we go down there for a moment?" As they entered the dark lab, Marie told Pierre not to turn on any lights. There, on the benches in tiny glass containers glowed even tinier specks of radium, just 0.1 gram or 0.0035 ounces.

The "laboratory" shed, from history.aip.org

They were too proud to patent the purification process, and they spent the next few years learning more about radium's properties. They hated and feared the fame they'd gained and avoided going to any parties held in their honor. Pure scientists are that way. Pierre died in a traffic accident in 1906, leaving a very distraught Marie to continue studies on radioactivity. 

Scientists and doctors learned that exposure to radium destroyed certain tumors, and the treatment called Curietherapy was born. This prompted a great deal of work to produce more radium. When World War I broke out, Marie took to the battlefields with her daughter Marie in her "little Curie" car to use a Roentgen device to take X-rays and provide on-the-spot diagnosis of injuries. In doing so, she taught many nurses how to take X-rays and treated a million wounded soldiers. Before that, she'd never even learned to drive a car!

 

Marie Curie in her wartime "little Curie" (from The Radioactive Woman: Marie Curie's WWI Legacy)

Marie gave speeches around the world, despite her shyness, and she won awards from many countries. She died on July 4, 1934 after suffering from aplastic anemia, probably caused by exposure to X-rays.