Page 18 - index

Laboratory Leaders (Continued)

Recognizing the importance of this hypothesis—and The price of fame for the celebrity scientists
increasingly intrigued by her work, Pierre gave up his Winning the Nobel Prize had assuaged the Curies' financial
research into crystals and symmetry in nature and joined worries, but they now found themselves the focus of unwanted
Marie in her work. At the end of June 1898, they had attention by the press and the public who were enchanted by
isolated a substance that was approximately 300 times the story of the brilliant scientists. They found themselves thrust
more strongly active than uranium. When they suddenly into the spotlight.
published their findings in July 1898, they suggested
calling this new element polonium, after Poland, Marie’s Still, it was Pierre, not Marie, who was promoted to a full
beloved homeland. In this publication, for the first time, professorship. However, because Pierre was able to hire more
they used the term coined by Marie herself: assistants, he made Marie the official head of the laboratory,
Radioactivity. In December 1898, the Curies informed enabling her to conduct experiments and be paid for it for the
18
the Academy of Sciences that they had discovered first time. When Paul Appell , dean of the faculty of sciences,
another new element, for which they suggested the asked Pierre for permission to submit his name as a possible
name, radium, derived from the Polish word for recipient for the Legion of Honor in July 1903, Pierre replied,
happiness, radość. They were able to produce about 0.1 "I do not feel the slightest need of being decorated, but I am in the
gram that had been derived laboriously from tons of greatest need of a laboratory.” Although he was given a chair at
uranium ore. 13 the Sorbonne in 1904 with the promise of a laboratory, two years
later, construction still had not yet begun. Pierre Curie would
This part of their life together has become the stuff of never obtain a real laboratory …
legend. To separate and analyze these elements (and
to handle the tons of slag and pitchblende), they needed We’ll conclude the story of Pierre and Marie Curie in the Q3 2019
more space. The director of ESPCI allowed them to set edition of SCC Quarterly.
up shop in a crowded, damp shed where Marie carried ~ Martha Abell Shrader
14
out the laborious chemical separations while Pierre SCC Soft Computer
took the measurements after each successive step.
After thousands of crystallizations, Marie presented the
findings of her work in her doctoral thesis on 25 June
15
Affectionately called Manya, Marie Curie was born Marya Salomea Skłodowska on 7 November 1867 in Warsaw,
1903. The examination committee stated that Marie’s 1 Congress Poland, Russian Empire.
findings represented the greatest scientific contribution 2 3 This society was a group of industrialists who paid Marie to investigate the magnetic properties of different steels.
Jonas Ferdinand Gabriel Lippmann (16 August 1845 – 13 July 1921) was a Franco-Luxembourgish physicist and in-
ever made in a doctoral thesis. Her theory created a new ventor, and Nobel laureate in physics for his method of reproducing colors photographically based on the phenomenon
field of study, atomic physics, and she became the first of interference. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1908 for being the inventor of a method for reproducing
colors by photography.
4
woman in France to earn a doctorate in science. 5 The Curie law / Curie-Weiss law is a law of magnetism.
Pierre was promoted to Professor of General Physics and Electrical Theory at ESPCI upon earning his doctorate of
science.
6 Sceaux (pronounced: so), Hauts-de-Seine, is a commune in the southern suburbs of Paris, France, located 9.7 km (6.0
The 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics mi) from the city’s center.
7
Pierre’s father, a retired doctor, moved in with them and helped raise Irène.
In November 1903, Pierre was named, along with 8 9 Wilhelm Röntgen is considered the father of diagnostic radiology.
Born into a renowned family of scientists, Henri Becquerel had inherited their interest in science as well as the minerals
Becquerel, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics. and compounds studied by his father and grandfather. Henri’s grandfather, César, had studied phosphorescent minerals;
his father, Edmond, ultraviolent light.
Although the nominating committee objected to 10 Inspired by Röntgen’s work, Becquerel was exploring the possibility that X-rays were related to the fluorescence of the
including a woman as a Nobel Laureate, Pierre insisted uranium salts he’d been working with. Late one evening, he left a chunk of uranium atop a photographic plate in his
desk drawer. Upon returning to the lab days later, he opened the drawer; it appeared as if the plate had been exposed to
that the original research was Marie’s—and that she had intense light.
11
Becquerel had made several important observations (e.g., that gases through which uranium rays passed gained the
conceived experiments and generated theories about ability to conduct electricity). After his important work was largely ignored in favor of Röntgen’s work on X-rays,
Becquerel left the field.
About 70 percent uranium, uraninite (formerly, pitchblende)—the crystallized form of uranium oxide is a radioactive,
the nature of radioactivity. After much debate, the 12 uranium-rich mineral and ore.
committee agreed to include her, making her the first 13 in demonstrable amounts, determine their atomic weight, and isolate them. To accomplish this, they would need tons of
To be able to show with certainty that they had discovered two new elements, the Curies would have to produce them
16
woman to win a Nobel Prize. costly pitchblende (uraninite). They were able to obtain several tons of slag from the slag heaps in the forests surround-
ing the Joachimsthal mine in Bohemia. They later obtained several tons of pitchblende from the Austrian Academy of
Sciences. The Austrians hoped she would find a use for a mineral their mines yielded as a waste byproduct.
14
Marie would process 20 kilos of raw material at a time. This work was tedious and backbreaking. She would first have
Because of their teaching obligations and both being too to clear away all the forest debris and then spend days at a time stirring the boiling mass with a heavy iron rod that was
ill to travel—most likely because of excessive exposure to almost as big as she was.
15
Of the three members of the examination committee, two would receive the Nobel Prize: Gabriel Lippmann, her
17
radioactive materials —the Curies were unable to go to former teacher, in 1908 for physics, and Henri Moissan, in 1906 for chemistry (investigation and isolation of the element
fluorine). Lippmann was also both Pierre’s and Marie’s doctoral advisor.
Stockholm until June 1905 to receive the prize. 16 For his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity, Henri Becquerel was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in
1903, the other half being given to Pierre and Marie Curie for their study of the radiation phenomena discovered by
Becquerel.
17 Marie had also recently suffered a miscarriage.
18 Paul Émile Appel was a French mathematician and Rector of the University of Paris.
SCC Quarterly | Volume 5 • Issue 2 | Laboratory Leaders