Madame Curie Marie Curie (1867-1934) French nationality Polish scientist, research on the phenomenon of radioactivity, the discovery of radium and polonium, the two radioactive elements, a lifetime of two Nobel Prizes.
Madame Curie, formerly known as Marie Sklodowska, was born on November 7, 1867, in the city of Warsaw, Poland, into a family of teachers.
As a distinguished scientist, Madame Curie had a social impact that scientists in general did not have. Especially because she was a pioneer of successful women, her example inspired many people. Many people hear her story as children but get a simplified and incomplete picture.
The world's perception of Mrs. Curie. It was largely influenced by her second daughter's biography, Madame Curie, published in 1937. The book glorified Madame Curie's life and dealt with the twists and turns she encountered throughout her life in a matter-of-fact manner.
American biographer Susan Quinn spent seven years collecting unpublished diaries and biographical information from Curie's family members and friends. A new book, Maria Curie: A Life, published last year, paints a more detailed and in-depth picture of her hard, bitter and struggling life.
Marie Curie is a name that will always be immortalized in the history of world science. This great woman scientist, with her diligence and talent, has made outstanding contributions in both physics and chemistry, and as a result has become the only famous scientist who has won the Nobel Prize twice in two different disciplines. Einstein, in his evaluation of the life of Mrs. Curie, said:
"The greatest feat of her life - positively the existence of the radioactive elements and their isolation - was therefore made possible, not only by bold intuition, but also by zeal and tenacity in working under unimaginable and extremely difficult circumstances. Such difficulties are rare in the history of experimental science. If even a small part of the strength of character and enthusiasm of Madame Curie existed among the intellectuals of Europe, Europe would face a brighter future."
I. Self-education to the University of Paris
Born in Warsaw, Poland, Marie Curie was the youngest of five children in her family. Her father was a secondary school mathematics and science teacher with a very limited income, and her mother was also a secondary school teacher. Marie's childhood was unfortunate; her mother had a serious contagious disease and it was her big sister who took care of her while she was growing up. Later, her mom and big sister fell ill and died when she was less than 10 years old. Her life was full of hardships. Such a living environment not only cultivated her ability to live independently, but also enabled her to hone a very strong character from an early age.
Mary has been a very diligent student since she was a child, and has a strong interest and special hobby in learning, never letting go of any opportunity to learn, and showing a tenacious enterprising spirit everywhere. From the beginning of elementary school, she took the first place in every subject, and at the age of 15, she graduated from secondary school with a gold medal. Her father had studied physics at St. Petersburg University, and her father's hunger for scientific knowledge and strong sense of enterprise also y inspired little Mary. Since she was a child, she loved all kinds of instruments in her father's laboratory, and when she grew up, she read many books on natural sciences, which made her full of fantasies, and she was eager to explore the world of science. At the age of 19, however, she began to work as a permanent tutor, and at the same time she studied on her own in order to prepare for her future studies. At the age of 24, she finally arrived at the Faculty of Science of the University of Paris. With a strong desire to learn, she listened to every class with full attention. The hard work of studying made her health become worse and worse, but her academic performance was always among the best, which not only made her classmates envious, but also made the professors amazed. Two years after her enrollment, she took the examination for the Bachelor's Degree in Physics with full confidence, and she took the first place out of the 30 applicants. The following year, she came in second with honors for her bachelor's degree in mathematics.
Early in 1894, Marie accepted a scientific research project on the magnetism of various types of iron and steel proposed by the National Committee for the Promotion of Industry of France*** and the State. In the course of completing this scientific project, she met the teacher of the School of Physics and Chemistry, Bier Curie, who was an accomplished young scientist. The desire to use science for the benefit of mankind **** led to their union. After her marriage, Marie was respectfully addressed as Madame Curie, and in 1896, Madame Curie completed her postgraduate exams with a first-place finish. The next year, she also completed the study of the magnetism of various kinds of steel. However, she was not satisfied with the results achieved, determined to take the doctoral examination, and determined her own research direction. She stood on a new starting line.
Two, the light of radium
1896, France **** and the country's physicists Becquerel published a working paper, a detailed description of his discovery of the element uranium through a number of experiments, uranium and its compounds have a special ability, it can automatically and continuously put out a kind of human eyes invisible rays, this kind of rays and the general light is different, can be through the black paper to make the Photographic film sensitization, it is also different from the discovery of roentgen rays with roentgen, in the absence of high-vacuum gas discharge and the conditions of the external high voltage, but can occur automatically from uranium and uranium salts. Uranium and its compounds constantly emit rays, radiating energy outward. This intrigued Madame Curie. What was the source of this energy? And what was the nature of this distinctive ray? Madame Curie was determined to unravel its secrets. 1897, Madame Curie chose her own research topic - the study of radioactive substances. This research topic brought her into the new world of science. She diligently reclaimed a virgin land and finally accomplished one of the most important discoveries in modern scientific history - the discovery of the radioactive element radium, and laid the foundation of modern radiochemistry, making a great contribution to mankind.
In her experimental research, Mrs. Curie designed a measuring instrument that could not only measure the presence or absence of rays from a certain substance, but also the strength of the rays. After repeated experiments, she found that the strength of uranium rays was proportional to the amount of uranium in a substance, but not to the state of uranium or external conditions.
Mrs. Curie carried out a comprehensive examination of the known chemical elements and all compounds, and made an important discovery: an element called thorium can also automatically emit invisible rays, which indicates that the phenomenon of the element being able to emit rays is by no means limited to the characteristics of uranium but is the same as that of some of the elements ****. She called this phenomenon radioactivity, and the elements with this property are called radioactive elements. The rays they emit are called "radioactivity". She also predicted on the basis of the results of her experiments that minerals containing uranium and thorium must be radioactive and minerals not containing uranium and thorium must not be radioactive. Instrumental examination fully verified her prediction. She excluded those minerals that did not contain radioactive elements and concentrated on those that did, measuring precisely the intensity of radioactivity of the elements. In her experiments, she found that the intensity of radioactivity of a pitchblende was much higher than expected, which indicated that the experimental minerals contained a new, unknown radioactive element, and that the amount of this element must have been very small, because this mineral had already been precisely analyzed by many chemists. She decisively announced her discovery in the report of her experiments, and endeavored to confirm it by experiment. At this critical moment, her husband, Pierre Curie, also realized the importance of his wife's discovery and stopped his own research on crystallization to join her in studying the new element. After several months of work, they isolated a substance mixed with bismuth from the ore that was far more radioactive than uranium, polonium, which was later listed as number 84 on the periodic table. A few months later, they discovered another new element and named it radium. However, Mr. and Mrs. Curie were not immediately delighted with their success. When they got their hands on a little compound of the new element, they realized that their original estimate had been too optimistic. In fact, the ore contained less than one part per million of radium. It is only because the mixture is extremely radioactive that substances containing traces of radium salts exhibit radioactivity hundreds of times greater than that of uranium.
The road to science is never smooth. The discovery of polonium and radium, and the properties of these radioactive new elements, shook up some of the basic theories and fundamental concepts that had been in place for centuries. Scientists have traditionally believed that the atoms of various elements are the smallest unit of material existence, and that atoms are indivisible and unchangeable. The radiation emitted by the radioactive elements polonium and radium cannot be explained according to the traditional view. Therefore, both physicists and chemists, although interested in the research work of Madame Curie, have doubts in their minds. The chemists, in particular, were more critical. In order to finally confirm this scientific discovery, and to further study the various properties of radium, Mr. and Mrs. Curie had to isolate more, and pure, radium salts from the bituminous ore.
Everything unknown is mysterious. At the beginning of their research work to isolate the new element, they did not know any of its chemical properties. The only clue to finding the new element was that it was highly radioactive. They created a new method of chemical analysis accordingly. But they had no money, no real laboratory, only some simple instruments they had bought or designed themselves. They divided their research for reasons of efficiency. Mr. Curie experimented to determine the properties of radium; Madame Curie continued to refine pure radium salts.
Where there is a will, there is a way! Any mystery of nature will be unraveled by those who attack it tenaciously. at the end of 1902, Madame Curie refined one-tenth of a gram of extremely pure radium chloride, and accurately determined its atomic weight. From then on, the existence of radium was confirmed. Radium is an extremely difficult to obtain natural radioactive material, its form is glossy, white crystals like fine salt. In spectral analysis, it does not have the same spectral lines as any known element. Although radium is not the first radioactive element discovered by mankind, it is the most radioactive element. By utilizing its powerful radioactivity, many new properties of radioactivity can be further identified. so that many elements can be used for further practical applications. Medical research found that radium rays for a variety of different cells and tissues, the role is very different, those cells that reproduce quickly, once the radium irradiation are soon destroyed. This discovery made radium a powerful means of treating cancer. Cancerous tumors are composed of cells that multiply abnormally fast, and radium rays do far more damage to them than to the healthy tissue around them. This new method of treatment was soon developed in all countries of the world. In France*** and the United States, radium therapy was known as Curie therapy. The discovery of radium fundamentally changed the basic principles of physics, for the promotion of the development of scientific theory and application in practice, are of great importance.
Three, the heart of gold
Because of the amazing discovery of Mr. and Mrs. Curie, in December 1903, they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics with Becquerel. The couple's scientific achievements cover the world, however, they are extremely contemptuous of fame and fortune, the most bored with those boring entertainment. They devoted themselves to the cause of science without any personal gain. After the success of radium refining, some people advised them to apply for a patent from the government and monopolize the manufacture of radium so as to make a fortune. Mrs. Curie said: "That is against the spirit of science, the research results of scientists should be published publicly, and other people should not be subjected to any restriction if they want to develop it". "Besides, radium is good for patients, we should not use it to make a profit". Mr. and Mrs. Curie also took the Nobel Prize money they received and gave it away in large quantities.
In 1906, Mr. Curie unfortunately died in a car accident, Mrs. Curie suffered great pain, she was determined to redouble her efforts to complete the two people **** the same scientific volunteers. The University of Paris decided that Madame Curie would succeed Mr. Curie in teaching physics. Madame Curie became the first ever female professor at the prestigious University of Paris, still at the time when the couple isolated the first radium salts, and began research on the various properties of radiation. Between 1889 and 1904 alone, they published 32 scholarly reports documenting their explorations in the science of radioactivity, and in 1910, Madame Curie completed the book Monographs on Radioactivity. She also collaborated with others to successfully produce metallic radium, and in 1911, Mrs. Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. A woman scientist, in less than 10 years, twice in two different fields of science in the world's highest prize for science, which in the history of world science is unique!
In 1914, the Institut de Radium was established in Paris, and Madame Curie served as its research director. Later she continued to teach at the university and to work on radioactive elements. She was unstinting in her efforts to spread scientific knowledge to all who wanted to learn. She began at the age of 16 and studied and worked as an adult for exactly 50 years. But she still doesn't change that strict lifestyle. She grew up with a high degree of self-sacrifice, and in her early years she was willing to work as a servant in other people's homes to pay for her sister's schooling. During her studies in Paris, she read in the library every night until it closed in order to save money on lamp oil and heating expenses. The bituminous uranium ore needed to extract pure radium was very expensive at that time, and they saved little by little from their own living expenses and bought 8 or 9 tons of it successively. After Mr. Curie's death, Mrs. Curie gave the radium, which had been refined with great efforts and valued at up to more than 1,000,000 gold francs, to a laboratory for researching the cure of cancer without any compensation.
In 1932, at the age of 65, Mrs. Curie returned to her homeland to attend the opening ceremony of the Warsaw Radium Institute. Since her youth, Mrs. Curie has been away from her country, and went to France **** and the country to study. But she never forgot her motherland. When she was a child, her native Poland was invaded by Tsarist Russia, and she hated the invaders very much. When the couple isolated a new element from a mineral, she named it polonium. This is because the root of polonium is the same as the root of the name of Poland. It was a way of expressing her deep nostalgia for her country, which had been enslaved by the Tsarist Russians.
On July 14, 1937, Madame Curie died after a long illness. She eventually died of pernicious anemia. She spent her life creating and developing the science of radioactivity, fearlessly studying intensely radioactive substances for a long time until she finally devoted her life to this science. During her life, she won 10 kinds of famous prizes, including the Nobel Prize, and 16 medals issued by international high-level academic institutions; and she was awarded more than 100 titles by governments and scientific research institutes all over the world. But she is as modest and prudent as ever. The great scientist Albert Einstein commented, "Of all the famous people I know, Madame Curie is the only one who is not turned upside down by fame."
Appendix: Chronology of Mr. and Mrs. Curie (1867-1934)
Born November 7, 1867
Born in Warsaw, Kingdom of Poland, to a family of secondary school teachers. His father, Uladislaw Skorodowski, was a math teacher at the secondary school, and his mother, Bronislawa Bergowska Skorodowska, was the principal of a girls' boarding school. Infant name Maria Skorodovska. Maria was fifth in line and was preceded by three sisters and one brother, Sophie, Bronislava, Helena and her brother Josef.
Poland was then under the rule of Tsar Alexander II of Russia (1818-1881).
1868 One year old
Father Skorodowski was deputy inspector of the public high school in Novolipki. Mother was weak and suffered from lung disease and had to resign as principal of the girls' school.
The family moved out of the house on Ferretta Road where they had lived for eight years.
1873 Age six
Father demoted by Russian authorities. In order to subsidize the family, boarders were taken in at home and tutored. At first there were only two or three, but it grew to ten.
Maria goes to a private boarding school, the principal of which is Mrs. Sikorska.
1879-1878 Nine and eleven years old
Oldest sister (1876) died of typhus, and mother (1878) succumbed to a prolonged lung disease.
1881 Age fourteen
Leaves boarding school and transfers to a public secondary school under Russian administration.
Russian Tsar Alexander II is assassinated and Alexander III (1844-1894) assumes the throne.
1882 Age fifteen
Bierre Curie (b. May 15, 1859, age twenty-three), a young French scholar, was employed at the école de Physique et de Chimie of the City of Paris as head of the physics laboratory.
He invented the Curie electrostatic meter with his brother Jacques Curie***.
1883 Sixteen years old
June: graduation from secondary school. The authorities of the public high school, especially the German teacher Buster Medin and the superintendent Mrs. Meyer, persist in their policy of national oppression by the Russian authorities.
After graduation, goes on vacation to relatives in the countryside of southern Poland. Sometimes he crossed the border with his teenage companions to play in the mountains of Galicia, where he could speak Polish aloud and sing Polish songs at the top of his voice.
1884 Seventeen years old
September: returned to Warsaw. Works as a governess in the city.
Joins the "mobile university" where young Polish patriots meet regularly and secretly, attends lectures, conducts scientific experiments, and works to combat illiteracy.
1886 Nineteen years old
January: goes to work as a tutor in Prok, Szczuchowski, Sopot. To finance her second sister Bronislava's education in Paris (the university in Warsaw does not accept girls) and to save for her own advancement.
1891 Twenty-four years old
September: went to Paris to study.
November: Enrolled in the Physics Department of the Faculty of Science at the University of Sorbonne (University of Paris).
1893 Twenty-six years old
July: Passed the Physics Bachelor's Degree Examination.
The "Alexander Scholarship" of 600 rubles from Warsaw solved her financial difficulties and enabled her to continue her studies in France.
Bierre Curie invented the Curie balance, an accurate balance without weights.
October: British physicist Thomson (Lord Colvin, 1824-1907) crosses the sea to visit Curie.
1894 Twenty-seven years old
Accepts a remunerated assignment from the National Commission for the Promotion of Industry to study the magnetism of iron and steel as a supplement to study expenses.
April: Introduced to Bier Curie by the Polish scholar Joseph Kowalski, professor of physics at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, in order to take advantage of the better-equipped laboratories headed by Curie.
July: passes the Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics.
Receives Biel-Curie's thesis "On the principle of symmetry in physical phenomena: the principle of symmetry of electric and magnetic fields".
Bierre Curie discovered that the magnetization of a paramagnetic mass is inversely proportional to the absolute temperature (T), initially called Curie's Law. Later in 1907 by the French physicist Weiss further research, to be refined, named Curie's law, equation: X = C / (T - Q) ferromagnetic material, the transition temperature is called the Curie point (Q), to reach this temperature, the loss of ferromagnetism, paramagnetism.
The reign of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia (1868-1918).
1895 Twenty-eight years old
March: Pierre Curie (age 36) passes the doctoral examination with a dissertation titled: "Magnetism of Matter at Various Temperatures". Spinning off as Professor of Physical Chemistry.
April: Marie Skorodowska's dissertation, "The Radioactivity of the Compounds of Uranium and Thorium," is read by Lippmann to the Academy of Sciences.
July 26: Marie marries Bierre Curie in the Paris suburb of Sauternes.
Marie Curie becomes a teacher at a girls' high school.
December: German physicist Theorchen (1845-1923), rector of the University of Würzburg, discovers X-rays and submits three research papers, including "Preliminary Report on a New Ray". The rays were conventionally called "roentgen rays", but later became known as X-rays.
1896 Twenty-nine years old
March: The French physicist Berkeler (1852-1908) discovered the radioactivity of uranium by studying uranium salts, which was then called the Berkeler ray.
August: Mary passes an examination for the title of university graduate as teacher.
Supported by the principal of the School of Physics and Chemistry, Schuizenberg (1827-1897), Marie secures a position and works in the school's physics laboratory, ****ing with Bier (head of the room).
Death of Nobel (1833-1896), Swedish chemist.
1897 Thirty years old
Thesis: "Magnetization of Tempered Steel".
September 12: Birth of Irene Curie, Nagan.
Curie's mother dies.
1898 Thirty-one years old
Discovery of the radioactivity of thorium: the discovery had also been made independently by the German chemist Schmidt (1865-1949) at the end of the previous year or the beginning of the current one.
July: Mr. and Mrs. Curie presented to the Academy of Sciences "On a New Radioactive Substance in Asphalt Uranium Ore," describing the discovery of a new radioactive element, No. 84, four hundred times stronger than uranium and similar to bismuth, and Mrs. Curie suggested constructing the name Polonium for the new element after her native country, Poland.
From then on, Mr. and Mrs. Curie worked closely together **** the same research to establish the earliest working methods of radiochemistry.
December: Mr. and Mrs. Curie and their colleague Belmont presented to the Academy of Sciences "on the asphalt uranium ore contains a new substance with high radioactivity", explaining the discovery of a new element 88, radioactive than uranium a million times stronger, named radium (Radium).
Marie Curie's report on the discovery of the new element polonium was published in Polish in the monthly Warsaw pictorial Sviatro.
1899 Thirty-two years old
After the suggestion of Suez (1831-1914), a correspondent member of the French Academy of Sciences and a professor of geology at the University of Vienna, the Vienna Academy of Sciences intervened and received a gift from the Austrian government of one ton of asphalt uranium ore residue from the St. Joachimstal mine in the Czech Republic, which it belonged to, to be used in the refining of pure radium.
Three papers: "Studies on Induced Radioactivity" (co-author: De Birner), "The Chemistry of Radium Radioactivity", and "Charges Simultaneously Induced in Radioactivity".
Madame Curie's study of radium, her discovery of the production of ozone in the air in the presence of rays, and her noticing that the rays imparted color to glass and porcelain, led to the establishment of radiochemistry, the study of chemical reactions induced by radiation.
Distributed radium to Rutherford, Berkeler, Willard (1860-1934), Paulson, and other members of the scientific and medical communities.
October: Beale's student, the chemist De Bilna (1874-1949), used ammonium hydroxide and rare earth elements*** to precipitate and isolate actinium (Actinitum), the third new radioactive element contained in pitchblende uranium ore. He later participated in the refining of pure radium.
The atomic physicist Rutherford (1871-1937) discovered what he called radium shot gas, thorium shot gas, that is, radioactive noble gas radon (Radon). Soon the German Dunn (1848-?) also discovered radium gas in 1900. Rutherford distinguished between α-rays, β-rays and γ-rays according to the penetrating ability of radioactive radiation.
German physicists Elster (1854-1920) and Geitel (1855-1923) discovered the law of decay of emitted particles.
The French-Jewish officer Dreyfus (1859-1935) was wrongly accused, and the writer Zola (1840-1902) published "I Complain" to demand his acquittal. Biel-Curie participated in the above struggles, administering justice and protesting against the government's wrongful conviction.
1900 Thirty-three years old
March: Biel gets the position of tutor at the Ecole Polytechnique.
Marie teaches physics at the école Normale Supérieure des Femmes de Sèvres, southwest of Paris.
Marie's thesis "On the atomic weight of radioactive barium compounds".
The Curies presented their paper "On new radioactive substances and the lines emitted by them" at the International Physical Society in Paris
October: on the recommendation of Pencalle (1854-1912), Biel taught at the Chair of Physics, Chemistry, and Museums (P.C.N.) at the University of Sulphur, which was organized for medical students.
Two German scholars, Warkoff and Giesel, claimed that radium had a peculiar effect on biological tissues. Later, Mr. and Mrs. Curie proved that radium rays burned the skin.
1901 Thirty-four years old
The Curies' paper "On Radioactive Elements".
Bierre Curie and De Bilna's paper "On Inductive Radioactivity due to Radium Salts". Essay by Biel-Curie and Berkeler, On the Physiological Action of Radium Rays.
The Nobel Prize Committee of the Swedish Academy of Sciences begins the process of awarding prizes in accordance with Nobel's will, and the German physicist Wilhelm R?ntgen is awarded the first prize in physics in 1901 for his discovery of X-rays.
1902 Thirty-five years old
After three years and nine months of refining, the Curies isolated a trace amount (one centigram) of radium chloride RaCl2 from tons of residue and measured the atomic weight of radium at 225, a precise number later obtained as 226.
Marie's paper, "On the Atomic Weight of Radium".
Bier's paper "On the Absolute Calculation of Time".
Biehl's student (1888) Lang Zhiwan (1872-1946) went to work under his teacher, practicing magnetism until 1904, when he moved to the French Academy of Sciences.
German chemist McWhorter independently discovered tellurium-like substances, which were later clarified as polonium.
Russian chemist Mendeyev (1834-1907) came to visit the laboratory, *** with the discussion of radioactivity questioning.
1903 Thirty-six years old
June: Mary presented her doctoral thesis, "The Study of Radioactive Substances", to the University of Thorburn and was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science.
Bier's dissertation "On induced radioactivity and radium gas". Biel and Laborde's dissertation, "On the Heat Automatically Released by Radium Salts," in which they noted that compounds of radium constantly emit heat, one hundred calories per hour per gram of radium.
October 10: Lu Xun, a writer in China, under the pen name Zishu, publishes for the first time in the eighth issue of the monthly magazine Zhejiang Chiu (浙江潮), published in Tokyo, the article "Saying", which introduces radium. The article translates Mrs. Curie as "Mrs. Gouri". It is the old translation of radium.
December: The Nobel Prize Committee of the Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that the Nobel Prize in Physics would be awarded to Henri Berkeler and Mr. and Mrs. Curie for the former's discovery of natural radioactivity and the latter's research on the phenomenon of natural radium emission.
1904 Thirty-seven years old
January: the journal Radium is founded, edited by Denne (1872-1935). Denne had been conducting research under Biel's direction since 1901.
Biel and the biologist Bouchard (1837-1915) (Balthasar) for their paper "Physiological Action of Radium Gas", research in this area later led to the invention of Curie therapy, i.e. radium therapy.
Bier and Laborde's paper "On the radioactivity of the gases emitted from hot springs".
Summer: Beale suffers an attack of rheumatism and is unable to travel to Sweden to receive the prize. A little later, the Swedish side handed over the Nobel Prize, the medal, and the prize money (equivalent to 70,000 francs) to the French minister for transmission.
October: Pierre Montsourboune University President Liar recommended that he be appointed as the new Chair of Physics in the Faculty of Science of the University.
November: Marie was appointed director of the Physics Laboratory of the Faculty of Science of the University of Sorbonne.
December: birth of second daughter, Eve Curie.
1905 Thirty-eight years old
June: Mr. and Mrs. Curie travel to the Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, fulfilling the requirement that Nobel Prize winners must travel in person to receive the prize and give an academic lecture.
July: Beale is elected to the French Academy of Sciences.
1906 Thirty-nine years old
April 19: Beale was killed in a car accident at the age of forty-seven when he was run over by a horse-drawn carriage.
Marie declines the Ministry of Education's offer to receive a state pension as the widow of the late Professor Lilly.
May: appointed to the Faculty of Science of the University of Sorbonne to take over from Pierre in the teaching of physics, with a salary of 10,000 francs a year; in November he began lecturing on the modern theory of the relation between electricity and conducting materials.
July 10: Lang Zhiwan, "Introduction to the Writings of Mr. Curie" published in the Monthly Review.
1907 Forty years old
Madame Curie manages to accept five or six graduate students. Accepts three Carnegie Fellowships for research in the United States in two years.
Radium chloride was refined and measured to have an atomic weight of 226.
Together with her friends Lang Zhiwan and Peihan (1870-1942), she organized a children's class for two years to instruct some eight or nine children of scientists such as Irène Curie and Francie Peihan. Lang Zhiwan taught mathematics, Marie taught physics, Peihan taught chemistry, Henri Mouton taught museums, and Mrs. Peihan taught literature and history.
1908 Forty-one years old
Writes a preface to the Collected Writings of Pierre Curie, tracing the author's performance. The book was commissioned by the Société Fran?aise de Physique to be edited by Lang Zhiwan (and Chenevo?). edited and published in Paris.
Promoted to professor.
1909 Forty-two years old
The German paper "Atomic weight of radium" is published in volume XXXVIII of the Annales de Radioactivity et d'Electronique.
Irene Curie enrolls in a regular school.
1910 Forty-three years old
February: death of Dr. Eugène Curie, father of Biel.
The paper "On Polonium", co-authored with De Bilna, is published in the journal Radium.
The two volumes of On Radioactivity are published.
Extracts the pure element radium, determines its physicochemical properties, determines the half-life of radon and several other elements, and organizes the systematic relations of the metamorphoses of the radioactive elements.
September: participated in the radiology conference held in Brussels, Belgium. Planck, Einstein, Rutherford, and Lang Zhiwan all attended.
Publishes Tables of Radioactivity Coefficients.
Ordered to prepare 21 milligrams of metallic radium, sealed in small test tubes and deposited at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Paris.
1911 Forty-four years old
January: accepts a friend's suggestion to run for membership of the French Academy of Sciences. Many decent scientists and fair-minded members of the public supported the candidacy enthusiastically, and the Parisian newspaper L'Inquisitrice expressed the public's ardent desire by publishing Marie Curie's photograph and handwriting in a prominent front-page spread on January 9, the day of the Academy's review of qualifications. In the end, due to the stubbornness of the Academy and the opposition of some people actually lost the election by one vote.
October: Participation in the Second Solvay Conference on Quantum Mechanics in Bruchhammer.
December: The Nobel Prize Committee of the Swedish Academy of Sciences announces the award of this year's Chemistry Prize to Marie Curie for her discovery of the chemical properties of the elements radium and polonium, which advanced chemical research.
Travels to Stockholm to receive the prize and give an academic lecture. Widowed sister Bronislava and her eldest daughter accompanied her.
1912 Forty-five years old
May: Receives a delegation of Polish professors. The delegation comes with a letter from the Polish writer Hinckwitz (1846-1916), in which Mrs. Curie agrees to direct the establishment of a radiology laboratory in Warsaw.
December: hospitalized for convalescence due to illness.
The paper "Measurement of radioactivity and the standard of radium" is published in the second issue of the Journal of Physics.
Travels to Lagnon and St.
1913 Forty-six years old
Summer: after undergoing a kidney operation, travels to England to recuperate, at the invitation of an English friend, Mrs. Eldon.
Attends meeting of the Britannic Society in Birmingham. Meets with Rutherford. After meeting Madame Curie at the Brussels conference in 1910, Rutherford wrote home about Madame Curie, "She is pale and overworked, and looks much older than her years, and is so weak from too much work that, in short, it is sad to look at her."
The paper "Exposure to Radioactive Objects" was published.
Traveled to Warsaw to inaugurate the Radiological Laboratory.
1914 Forty-seven years old
July: Inauguration of the Laboratory of Biology and Curie Therapeutics, the Curie Building, of the Radium Institute, which was set up at the suggestion of Dr. Roh, director of the Pasteur Institute. Madame Curie serves as a member of the Institute's Board of Governors.
The paper "The Radioactive Elements and Their Classification" is published in the Monthly Review.
July: Outbreak of the First World War.
One gram of highly valuable experimental radium (worth one million francs, $150,000 at the time) is sealed in a 50-pound lead jar and secreted in a bank vault to avoid being lost in the war.
Appointed by the French Women's Association (French Red Cross), she was in charge of the Radiology Department, guiding the X-ray photography work in various places and cooperating with the field ambulance.
1915 Forty-eight years old
Moved from the Physics Laboratory of the University of Sorbonne to the Radiology Laboratory of the Radium Institute.
Traveled around the country and abroad, directing eighteen field medical service teams.
1916 Forty-nine years old
Offers a crash course in radiology to sanitarians at the Radium Institute, teaching doctors a new method of finding the location of foreign objects (e.g., shrapnel) in the human body, which is praised by the Allied military.
Accepts Irena (nineteen), Marsch Klein (later Mrs. Biel-Weiss), and others as assistants.
1917 Fifty years old
May: Wakanuki Wan,