Women in physics: Maria Sklodowska-Curie’s Contribution

Jorlys I. Alvarado Morales

Physics is the most fundamental of the natural science.  As mentioned in the article, “The Role of Physics in Science”, its goal is to use the results of several experiments to formulate scientific laws, usually expressed in the language of mathematics, which can then be used to predict other phenomena. In the past, while this science was emerging existed many scientific as Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and James Maxwell whose advances are the fundamental base in this science.  On the other hand women were not considered to practice science because societies were thinking that they were not capable. Maria Sklodowska Curies change the vision of the women of her time showing that with passion and determination everyone has the power to contribute and improve things that can resolve everyday problems.

According to the article, “Nobel Prize: Marie Sklodowska Curie”, Curie was born in Warsaw on November 7, 1867. She was the daughter of a secondary-school teacher and received a general education in local schools and some scientific training from her father. She became involved in a students' revolutionary organization and found it prudent to leave Warsaw, then in the part of Poland dominated by Russia, for Cracow, which at that time was under Austrian rule. As mentioned in the article, in 1891, she went to Paris to continue her studies at the Sorbonne where she obtained Licentiateships in Physics and the Mathematical Sciences. In 1894, she met Pierre Curie, professor in the School of Physics and in the following year, 1985, they got married. “She succeeded her husband as Head of the Physics Laboratory at the Sorbonne, gained her Doctor of Science degree in 1903, and following the tragic death of Pierre Curie in 1906, she took his place as Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences, the first time a woman had held this position”. She was also appointed Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris, founded in 1914.

Marie Curie’s researches, also with her husband, were practiced under difficult conditions, at that time, laboratory arrangements were poor and both had to undertake much teaching to earn a livelihood. The article points out that the discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896 inspired the Curies in their brilliant researches and analyses which led to the isolation of polonium, named after the country of Marie's birth, and radium. “Curie developed methods for the separation of radium from radioactive residues in sufficient quantities to allow for its characterization and the careful study of its properties, therapeutic properties in particular”.

Curie and her husband studied radioactive materials, particularly the uranium ore pitchblende, which had the curious property of being more radioactive than the uranium extracted from it. According to the article by 1898 they deduced a logical explanation: that the pitchblende contained traces of some unknown radioactive component which was far more radioactive than uranium; thus on December 26th Marie Curie announced the existence of this new substance. As Marie Curie wrote;

“My experiments proved that the radiation of uranium compounds can be measured with precision under determined conditions, and that this radiation is an atomic property of the element of uranium. Its intensity is proportional to the quantity of uranium contained in the compound, and depends neither on conditions of chemical combination, nor on external circumstances, such as light or temperature. I undertook next to discover if there were other elements possessing the same property, and with this aim I examined all the elements then known, either in their pure state or in compounds. I found that among these bodies, thorium compounds are the only ones which emit rays similar to those of uranium. During the course of my research, I had had occasion to examine not only simple compounds, salts and oxides, but also a great number of minerals. Certain ones proved radioactive; these were those containing uranium and thorium; but their radioactivity seemed abnormal, for it was much greater than the amount I had found in uranium and thorium had led me to expect. This abnormality greatly surprised us. When I had assured myself that it was not due to an error in the experiment, it became necessary to find an explanation. I then made the hypothesis that the ores uranium and thorium contain in small quantity a substance much more strongly radioactive than either uranium or thorium. This substance could not be one of the known elements, because these had already been examined; it must, therefore, be a new chemical element. I had a passionate desire to verify this hypothesis as rapidly as possible. And Pierre Curie, keenly interested in the question, abandoned his work on crystals (provisionally, he thought) to join me in the search for this unknown substance. We chose, for our work, the ore pitchblende, a uranium ore, which in its pure state is about four times more active than oxide of uranium. Since the composition of this ore was known through very careful chemical analysis, we could expect to find, at a maximum, 1 per cent of new substance. The result of our experiment proved that there were in reality new radioactive elements in pitchblende, but that their proportion did not reach even a millionth per cent! (Marie Curie, from Pierre Curie pp. 96-98)”

His work is reflected in the numerous awards bestowed on her. She received many honorary science, medicine and law degrees and honorary memberships of learned societies throughout the world. Together, with her husband, was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903, for their study into the spontaneous radiation discovered by Becquerel, who was awarded the other half of the Prize. In 1911 she received a second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry, in recognition of her work in radioactivity. As mentioned in the article, Curie and Henri Becquerel, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1903: "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel". She was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize. Marie Curie also received, with her husband, the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in 1903 and, in 1921, President Harding of the United States, on behalf of the women of America, presented her with one gram of radium in recognition of her service to science. 

According to the article “Biography of Madame Marie Curie: First Woman to win Noble Prize”, in 1921, Marie Curie toured the United States, where she was welcomed triumphantly, to raise funds for research on radium. “She returned with a gram of radium - only a speck, but so fiercely radioactive that it could fuel thousands of experiments - as well as expensive equipment and cash for the Radium Institute”. There, she was disappointed by the myriad of physicians and makers of cosmetics who used radioactive material without health precautions. Her death near Sallanches, France in 1934 was from anemia, almost certainly due to her massive exposure to radiation in her work. The author mentioned that her elder daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935, the year after Marie Curie's death.

As we can see Madame Marie Curie was an intelligent strong woman who changes the “women vision” of her epoch. One day she said: “I have no dress except the one I wear every day. If you are going to be kind enough to give me one, please let it be practical and dark so that I can put it on afterwards to go to the laboratory”. That’s prove that science was her passion and she leaved many things that women in that epoch do to be a great scientific. She proves that women are capable to practice science and do amazing advances that can improve our life. As I mentioned Curie was the first women who won Noble Prize. For all the contributions and advances that Curie do I think that she is one of the most important women of the history.

“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained”

Marie Curie

.Bibliography:

“Physics: Marie Curie Summary of Madame Marie Curie's contribution to Science. Biography, Quotes, Photographs” > http://www.spaceandmotion.com/physics-marie-curie-biography.htm<

“The Role of Physic in Science” >http://physics.about.com/od/ physics101thebasics/ f/Whatis Physics.htm<

Nobel Lectures, Physics 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967 > http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1903/marie-curie-bio.html,

>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HventDFyXKg<