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ISHER BY JOHN F ’ IVE ELEMENTS ‘ACT ION / LEWES THEATRE CLUB PRODUCT ILL CL ARKE B but the press made much of them. Opinions differ as to whether they were lovers in this brief affair, but there is no evidence whatsoever that she had enticed him from his wife. Langevin challenged the publisher of the letters to a duel; pistols were drawn but neither duellist fired, and with this farce public interest waned and the affair ended. Much later Marie’s granddaughter Hélène married Langevin’s grandson. The chemistry Nobel prize In 1910 Marie was proposed for election to the Academy of Sciences. Had she been elected she would have been its first female member, but in 1911 she lost by one vote to the inventor Edouard Branly. She was deeply upset and never applied again; for years she stopped publishing in the society’s journals. On 8 November 1911 she was awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry for discovering polonium and radium. This time she went to Stockholm to receive it, taking her sister Bronia and elder daughter Irène, and in her acceptance speech mentioned that she alone had coined the term radioactivity but that polonium and radium were joint discoveries with Pierre. In 1912 the Pasteur Institute and the Sorbonne decided that an ‘Institut du Radium’ be established in the newly-named Rue Pierre Curie, and Marie became director of its Curie laboratory. At the outbreak of the first world war, using her knowledge of x-rays, she set up a Red Cross radiology unit. Her daughter Irène, now aged 17, helped her and nursed on the front lines. In 1920 she met the influential American journalist Marie Meloney who persuaded her to visit the USA in 1921 to raise money for radium research. There she met the president Warren Harding, and returned to France with a gram of radium and a generous research grant. Her eyesight now deteriorated badly from cataracts, and her general health, never very good, worsened. In March 1925 Irène presented her doctoral thesis on α-radiation at the Sorbonne, and in 1926 married Frédéric Joliot, a physicist at the Radium Institute. From 1932 Marie’s health declined further – though she continued working – and she died on 4 July 1934 from leukaemia (Irène was to die later from the same disease, aged 59). Marie was buried at Sceaux with Pierre, and Polish soil was scattered over her coffin. Her remains and those of Pierre were later re-interred in the Panthéon in Paris, France’s national burial place for the famous, as was Langevin. Marie Curie was a truly remarkable woman. Despite the exhausting labour of her early work with pitchblende and bringing up two children, she was physically quite frail and became more so, probably due to radiation exposure. In Pierre she found a partner who shared her obsessive love for science and aversion to publicity. She was never a feminist, though she believed strongly that men and women should have www.chemistryworld.org equal opportunities in education and work. Albert Einstein, who knew her well, wrote: ‘Marie Curie is the only one whom fame has not corrupted’. Marie toiling to extract radium from pitchblende in her ‘hut’ – as portrayed in a modern theatre production Marie has been commemorated in stamps, banknotes and in this stained glass medallion by Polish artist Jozef Mazur The Curie legacy The extended Curie family won no less than six Nobel prizes – in addition to Marie and Pierre’s three, Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie won the chemistry prize in 1935 ‘in recognition of their synthesis of new radioactive elements’, and Eve Curie’s husband, Henry Labouisse, received the 1965 peace prize on behalf of Unicef. The Joliot-Curies worked at Marie’s Radium Institute from 1934 onα-particle bombardment of elements, transmuting these to radioactive products (for example converting aluminium to radioactive phosphorus). Although Rutherford and others had earlier transmuted stable light elements, these were the first transformations to produce radioactive isotopes. In 1939, Marguerite Perey, a student of Marie’s at the Radium Institute, discovered francium as a radioactive decay product of actinium, and in 1962 she was elected as the first female member of the Academy of Sciences, the honour so shamefully denied to Marie in 1911. The Curie name lives on in many ways, including the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris; the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, Poland; the Curie Institute (from the earlier Radium Institute) in Paris, and the Marie Curie charities. Also named after the Curies were the element curium, the Curie (Ci) unit of radioactivity and the minerals curite, sklodowskite, and cuprosklodowskite. But perhaps Marie’s most lasting legacy is the inspirational example set to generations of scientists – both male and female – that rigorous and determined investigation can lead to remarkable discoveries. Bill Griffith is professor of inorganic chemistry at Imperial College London, UK References and Further reading 1 M Sklodowska-Curie, Compt. Rend. Acad. Sci., 1898, 126, 1101 2 P Curie and M Sklodowska-Curie, Compt. Rend. Acad. Sci., 1898, 127, 175 (Po); P Curie, M Sklodowska-Curie and G Bémont, Compt. Rend. Acad. Sci., 1898, 127, 1215 (Ra) 3 M Curie and A Debierne, Compt. Rend. Acad. , US IT Y OF BUFFALO Sci., 1910, 151, 523 A Romer, Radiochemistry and the Discovery of Isotopes. Dover, New York 1970 – contains translations of (1) and (2) and some other papers R Reid, Marie Curie. Heinemann, Collins, London 1974 IVERS , UN ISH ROOM POL Chemistry World | January 2011 | 45

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View plaintext

ISHER

BY JOHN F

’

IVE ELEMENTS

‘ACT

ION

/ LEWES THEATRE CLUB PRODUCT

ILL CL ARKE

B

but the press made much of them. Opinions differ as to whether they were lovers in this brief affair, but there is no evidence whatsoever that she had enticed him from his wife. Langevin challenged the publisher of the letters to a duel; pistols were drawn but neither duellist fired, and with this farce public interest waned and the affair ended. Much later Marie’s granddaughter Hélène married Langevin’s grandson.

The chemistry Nobel prize In 1910 Marie was proposed for election to the Academy of Sciences. Had she been elected she would have been its first female member, but in 1911 she lost by one vote to the inventor Edouard Branly. She was deeply upset and never applied again; for years she stopped publishing in the society’s journals.

On 8 November 1911 she was awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry for discovering polonium and radium. This time she went to Stockholm to receive it, taking her sister Bronia and elder daughter Irène, and in her acceptance speech mentioned that she alone had coined the term radioactivity but that polonium and radium were joint discoveries with Pierre.

In 1912 the Pasteur Institute and the Sorbonne decided that an ‘Institut du Radium’ be established in the newly-named Rue Pierre Curie, and Marie became director of its Curie laboratory. At the outbreak of the first world war, using her knowledge of x-rays, she set up a Red Cross radiology unit. Her daughter Irène, now aged 17, helped her and nursed on the front lines. In 1920 she met the influential American journalist Marie Meloney who persuaded her to visit the USA in 1921 to raise money for radium research. There she met the president Warren Harding, and returned to France with a gram of radium and a generous research grant.

Her eyesight now deteriorated badly from cataracts, and her general health, never very good, worsened. In March 1925 Irène presented her doctoral thesis on α-radiation at the Sorbonne, and in 1926 married Frédéric Joliot, a physicist at the Radium Institute. From 1932 Marie’s health declined further – though she continued working – and she died on 4 July 1934 from leukaemia (Irène was to die later from the same disease, aged 59). Marie was buried at Sceaux with Pierre, and Polish soil was scattered over her coffin. Her remains and those of Pierre were later re-interred in the Panthéon in Paris, France’s national burial place for the famous, as was Langevin.

Marie Curie was a truly remarkable woman. Despite the exhausting labour of her early work with pitchblende and bringing up two children, she was physically quite frail and became more so, probably due to radiation exposure. In Pierre she found a partner who shared her obsessive love for science and aversion to publicity. She was never a feminist, though she believed strongly that men and women should have www.chemistryworld.org equal opportunities in education and work. Albert Einstein, who knew her well, wrote: ‘Marie Curie is the only one whom fame has not corrupted’.

Marie toiling to extract radium from pitchblende in her ‘hut’ – as portrayed in a modern theatre production

Marie has been commemorated in stamps, banknotes and in this stained glass medallion by Polish artist Jozef Mazur

The Curie legacy The extended Curie family won no less than six Nobel prizes – in addition to Marie and Pierre’s three, Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie won the chemistry prize in 1935 ‘in recognition of their synthesis of new radioactive elements’, and Eve Curie’s husband, Henry Labouisse, received the 1965 peace prize on behalf of Unicef. The Joliot-Curies worked at Marie’s Radium Institute from 1934 onα-particle bombardment of elements, transmuting these to radioactive products (for example converting aluminium to radioactive phosphorus). Although Rutherford and others had earlier transmuted stable light elements, these were the first transformations to produce radioactive isotopes. In 1939, Marguerite Perey, a student of Marie’s at the Radium Institute, discovered francium as a radioactive decay product of actinium, and in 1962 she was elected as the first female member of the Academy of Sciences, the honour so shamefully denied to Marie in 1911.

The Curie name lives on in many ways, including the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris; the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, Poland; the Curie Institute (from the earlier Radium Institute) in Paris, and the Marie Curie charities. Also named after the Curies were the element curium, the Curie (Ci) unit of radioactivity and the minerals curite, sklodowskite, and cuprosklodowskite. But perhaps Marie’s most lasting legacy is the inspirational example set to generations of scientists – both male and female – that rigorous and determined investigation can lead to remarkable discoveries. Bill Griffith is professor of inorganic chemistry at Imperial College London, UK

References and Further reading 1 M Sklodowska-Curie, Compt. Rend. Acad. Sci.,

1898, 126, 1101 2 P Curie and M Sklodowska-Curie, Compt. Rend.

Acad. Sci., 1898, 127, 175 (Po); P Curie, M Sklodowska-Curie and G Bémont, Compt. Rend. Acad. Sci., 1898, 127, 1215 (Ra) 3 M Curie and A Debierne, Compt. Rend. Acad.

, US

IT Y OF BUFFALO

Sci., 1910, 151, 523 A Romer, Radiochemistry and the Discovery of Isotopes. Dover, New York 1970 – contains translations of (1) and (2) and some other papers R Reid, Marie Curie. Heinemann, Collins, London

1974

IVERS

, UN

ISH ROOM

POL

Chemistry World | January 2011 | 45

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