Madame Curie Marie Curie (1867-1934) is a French-Polish scientist who studied the phenomenon of radioactivity and discovered the two radioactive elements radium and polonium, and was awarded the Nobel Prize twice in her life. Mrs. Curie Marie Curie (1867-1934), a French-Polish scientist, studied the phenomenon of radioactivity, the discovery of radium and polonium, two radioactive elements, twice in his life was awarded the Nobel Prize. As an outstanding scientist, Mrs. Curie had a social impact that scientists generally do not have. Especially because she was a pioneer of successful women, her example inspired many people. Many people hear about her as children but get a simplified and incomplete picture. The world's perception of Madame Curie. Much was 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 American biographer Susan Quinn spent seven years collecting unpublished diaries and biographical information from Curie's family members and friends.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.
Madame Curie: A Great Scientist, Twice Winner of the Nobel Prize
In the history of world science, Marie Curie is a name that will always be immortalized. This great woman scientist, with her own diligence and talent, in the field of physics and chemistry, have made outstanding contributions, and thus become the only one in two different disciplines, twice won the Nobel Prize in the field of famous scientists.
I. Self-study at the University of Paris
Born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1867, 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. Mary's childhood was unfortunate; her mother had a serious contagious disease and it was her older 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 filled her with fantasies and made her 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 studied on her own. At the age of 19, she began a long career as a governess, and at the same time studied on her own. With a strong desire to learn, she listened to every class with full attention. Hard study made her health become worse and worse, but her academic performance was always among the best, which not only made her classmates envy, but also made the professors amazed. Two years after her enrollment, she took the examination for the degree of Bachelor of Science in Physics with full confidence, and she took the first place out of the 30 applicants. The following year, she took the B.S. degree in mathematics, again with second place honors.
Early in 1894, Marie accepted a scientific research project on the magnetism of various types of iron and steel, proposed by the French National Committee for the Promotion of Industry. In the course of completing this scientific project, she met the teacher of the School of Physics and Chemistry, Pierre Curie, who was a very 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. Standing on a new starting line.
Two, the light of radium
In 1896, the French physicist Becquerel published a work report, 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 eye invisible rays, this kind of rays and the general ray of light is different, through the black paper to make photographic negatives sensitized, it is the same as R?ntgen discovered X-rays, the light of the human eye. It is also different from the X-rays discovered by R?ntgen, which can occur automatically from uranium and uranium salts without the conditions of high vacuum gas discharge and applied high voltage. Uranium and its compounds constantly emit rays and radiate 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, and precisely measured 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 pitch 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, radium therapy is 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, have very important significance.
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 successful refining of radium, 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 her book, Monographa de 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, won the world's highest prize in science, which is unique in the history of world science!
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 had been away from her country and went to France to study. But she never forgot her motherland. When she was a child, her native Poland was occupied 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; more than 100 titles were awarded by governments and scientific research organizations all over the world. But as always, she is so modest and cautious. The great scientist Albert Einstein said, "In all the famous people I know, Mrs. Curie is the only one who is not overwhelmed by fame."