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Her years of constant exposure to radiation had taken The 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to
its toll. She was afflicted with double cataracts, and Marie Curie, née Sklodowska "in recognition of her
services to the advancement of chemistry by the
her health continued to deteriorate although doctors discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by
were unable to accurately diagnose her condition. the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and
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When Marie was too sick to go to the lab, she worked compounds of this remarkable element. "
at home on her manuscript of Radioactivity, which was
published posthumously in 1935. On 4 July 1934, Marie Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance
Skłodowska Curie died at age 66. The cause of death and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for
something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.
was listed as aplastic pernicious anemia; however, we ~Marie Skłodowska Curie
now know it was the ravages of radiation sickness.

1 Sceaux (pronounced: so), Hauts-de-Seine, is a commune in the southern suburbs of Paris, France,
Posthumous honors located 9.7 km (6.0 mi) from the city’s center.
2 Pierre was buried beside his mother in the Curie family plot in Sceaux, on the outskirts of Paris, where
In April 1995, on the orders of French President, François eventually his father and Marie joined them. In 1995, Pierre and Marie were reinterred in the Pantheon,
Mitterrand , the remains of Pierre and Marie Curie the national sepulcher for the most eminent French citizens. Marie was the first woman to be interred in
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were moved from their original resting place (the Curie the Pantheon on her own merits.
3 The College of Sorbonne was founded in 1150. The Sorbonne is a building in the Latin Quarter of Paris,
family plot in Sceaux) and enshrined in the crypt of the which from 1253 on housed the College of Sorbonne, part of one of the first universities in the world,
Panthéon in Paris, the mausoleum reserved for France’s later renamed University of Paris and commonly known as “the Sorbonne”. Today, it continues to house
the successor universities of the University of Paris, such as Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Sorbonne
most revered dead. Marie was the first woman to be University, Sorbonne Nouvelle University, and Paris Descartes University, as well as the Chancellerie des
honored in this way “for her own merits.” Universités de Paris. Sorbonne Université is also now the university resulting from the merger on January
1, 2018 of Paris 6 UPMC (University of Pierre and Marie Curie) and Paris 4 Sorbonne.
4 A titular professorship is a tenured, full professor position.
5 Paul Langevin (23 January 1872 – 19 December 1946) was a French physicist who developed Langevin
dynamics and the Langevin equation. Previously a doctoral student of Pierre Curie and later a lover
of Marie Curie, he is also famous for his two US patents with Constantin Chilowsky in 1916 and 1917
involving ultrasonic submarine detection. He is entombed at the Panthéon.
6 A group of 10 children were taught by prominent professors: Jean Baptiste Perrin (a French
physicist who, in his studies of the Brownian motion of minute particles suspended in liquids, verified
Albert Einstein’s explanation of this phenomenon and thereby confirmed the atomic nature of matter
[sedimentation equilibrium] for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1926), Paul
Langevin, Émmanuel-Édouard Chavannes (a French Sinologist and expert on Chinese history and
religion), Henri Mouton from the Pasteur Institute, and a sculptor who was engaged for modeling and
drawing.
7 William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin (26 June 1824 – 17 December 1907) was an Irish-Scottish
mathematical physicist, and engineer. At the University of Glasgow, he did important work in the
mathematical analysis of electricity and formulation of the first and second laws of thermodynamics,
and did much to unify the emerging discipline of physics in its modern form. Absolute temperatures are
stated in units of kelvin in his honor. While the existence of a lower limit to temperature (absolute zero)
was known prior to his work, Lord Kelvin is known for determining its correct value as approximately
−273.15 degree Celsius or −459.67 degree Fahrenheit.
8 André-Louis Debierne (14 July 1874 – 31 August 1949) was a French chemist and is considered the
Figure 5. The Curies’ tombs in the Pantheon discoverer of the element actinium. Debierne was a close friend of Pierre and Marie Curie and was
associated with their work. His doctoral advisor was Pierre Curie. In 1899, he discovered the radioactive
Marie’s office and laboratory in the Curie Pavilion of element actinium, as a result of continuing the work with pitchblende that the Curies had initiated. After
the death of Pierre Curie in 1906, Debierne helped Marie Curie carry on and worked with her in teaching
the Radium Institute are preserved today as the Curie and research. In 1910, he and Marie Curie prepared radium in metallic form in visible amounts. They
Museum. Today, her personal artifacts that are stored at did not keep it metallic, however. Having demonstrated the metal’s existence as a matter of scientific
curiosity, they reconverted it into compounds with which they might continue their researches. Debierne,
the National Library of France are still so radioactive (and who started as Marie’s laboratory assistant, became her faithful collaborator until her death and then
succeeded her as head of the laboratory.
will remain so for at least another 1,500 years) that they 9 Ernest Gaston Joseph Solvay (16 April 1838 – 26 May 1922) was a Belgian chemist, industrialist and
are stored in lead-lined boxes. philanthropist. In 1861, he developed the ammonia-soda process for the manufacturing of soda ash
(anhydrous sodium carbonate) from brine (as a source of sodium chloride) and limestone (as a source
(Irène died in 1956 at age 58 of leukemia, likely caused of calcium carbonate). He perfected the process until 1872, when he patented it. The exploitation of
his patents brought Solvay considerable wealth, which he used for philanthropic purposes, including
by radiation exposure in her own work. Frédéric died the establishment of International Institutes for Physics and Chemistry. In 1911, he established
the prestigious conferences of top scientists in physics, known as the Solvay Conferences, whose
in 1958 at age 58 of liver disease. Their daughter, participants included luminaries such as Max Planck, Ernest Rutherford, Maria Skłodowska-Curie,
Hélène Langevin-Joliot, is currently a professor of Henri Poincaré, Albert Einstein, and Paul Langevin. The first and the fifth of these (1911 and 1927) are
particularly noteworthy, as they helped define the foundations for the first and second incarnations of
nuclear physics at the University of Paris. Her husband, quantum theory.
10 Félix Édouard Justin Émile Borel (7 January 1871 – 3 February 1956) was a French mathematician and
Michel Langevin, was a grandson of the physicist, Paul politician. As a mathematician, he was known for his founding work in the areas of measure theory and
Langevin, and was also a nuclear physicist at the Radium probability.
11 Marguerite Borel known as Camille Marbo (11 April 1883 – 5 February 1969) née Marguerite Appell,
Institute.) was a 20th-century French writer, president and laureate of the Prix Femina in 1913, and president of the
Société des gens de lettres. She was the daughter of mathematician, Paul Appell (1855–1930).
We’ll continue our exploration of Power Teams in the 12 Marie Mattingly Meloney (1878–1943), who used Mrs. William B. Meloney as her professional and social
Laboratory in the Q1 2020 edition of SCC Quarterly. name, was one of the leading woman journalists of the United States, a magazine editor, and a socialite
who in the 1920s organized a fund drive to buy radium for Marie Curie and began a movement for better
housing. In the 1930s, she was a friend and confidante of Eleanor Roosevelt. She was nicknamed Missy.
~ Martha Abell Shrader 13 François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand (26 October 1916 – 8 January 1996) was a French statesman
SCC Soft Computer who served as President of France from 1981 to 1995, the longest time in office in the history of France.
14 The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1911. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2019. Wed. 6 Nov 2019.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1911/summary/