CURIE, Marie
(1867–1934) and Pierre (1859–1906), French
physicists and Nobel laureates, who were wife and husband; together,
they discovered the chemical elements radium and polonium. The Curies’ study
of radioactive elements contributed to the understanding of atoms
on which modern nuclear physics is based.
Pierre Curie was born in Paris on May 15, 1859, and studied
science at the Sorbonne. In 1880 he and his brother Jacques (1855–1941)
observed that an electric potential is produced when pressure is
exerted on a quartz crystal. The brothers named the phenomenon piezoelectricity.
In the course of later studies of magnetism, Pierre Curie discovered
a certain temperature (the Curie point) at which magnetic substances
lose their magnetism. In 1895 he was named professor in the School
of Physics and Chemistry in Paris.
Originally named Marja Sklodowska, Marie Curie was born in
Warsaw on Nov. 7, 1867. Her father taught high school physics. In
1891 she went to Paris (where she changed her name to Marie) and
enrolled in the Sorbonne. Two years later she passed the examination
for her degree in physics, ranking in first place. She met Pierre
Curie in 1894, and they married in 1895.
Marie Curie was interested in the recent discoveries of radiation.
Wilhelm Roentgen had discovered X rays in 1895, and in 1896 Antoine
Henri Becquerel had discovered that the element uranium gives off
similar invisible radiations. Curie thus began studying uranium
radiations, and, using piezoelectric techniques devised by her husband,
carefully measured the radiations in pitchblende, an ore containing
uranium. When she found that the radiations from the ore were more
intense than those from uranium itself, she realized that unknown
elements, even more radioactive than uranium, must be present. Marie
Curie was the first to use the term radioactive to
describe elements that give off radiations as their nuclei break
down.
Pierre Curie ended his own work on magnetism to join his wife’s
research, and in 1898 the Curies announced their discovery of two
new elements: polonium (named by Marie in honor of Poland) and radium. During
the next four years the Curies, working in a leaky wooden shed,
processed a ton of pitchblende, laboriously isolating from it a
fraction of a gram of radium. They shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in
physics with Becquerel for the discovery of radioactive elements.
Marie Curie was the first female recipient of a Nobel Prize.
In 1904 Pierre Curie was appointed professor of physics at
the University of Paris, and in 1905 he was named a member of the
French Academy. Such positions were not then commonly held by women,
and Marie was not similarly recognized. Pierre’s life ended
on April 19, 1906, when he was run over by a horse-drawn cart. His
wife took over his classes and continued her own research. In 1911
she received an unprecedented second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry,
for her work on radium and radium compounds. She became head of
the Paris Institute of Radium in 1914 and helped found the Curie
Institute. Marie Curie’s final illness was diagnosed as
pernicious anemia, caused by overexposure to radiation. She died
in Haute Savoie on July 4, 1934.
The Curies had two daughters, one of whom was also a Nobel
Prize winner. Irène Joliot-Curie and her husband, Frédéric,
received the 1935 Nobel Prize in chemistry for the synthesis of
new radioactive elements.