Marie and Pierre Curie and the discovery of polonium and radium

intro

by Nanny Fröman *

Introduction

Marie and Pierre Curie's pioneering research was again brought to heed when on April xx 1995, their bodies were taken from their identify of burying at Sceaux, just outside Paris, and in a solemn anniversary were laid to rest under the mighty dome of the Panthéon. Marie Curie thus became the first woman to exist accorded this mark of honor on her own merit. 1 woman, Sophie Berthelot, admittedly already rested there but in the chapters of married woman of the chemist Marcelin Berthelot (1827-1907).

It was François Mitterrand who, before catastrophe his fourteen-year-long presidency, took this initiative, as he said "in society to finally respect the equality of women and men before the police and in reality" ("pour respecter enfin …l'égalité des femmes et des hommes dans le droit comme dans les faits"). In bespeak of fact – every bit the press pointed out – this initiative was symbolic three times over. Marie Curie was a adult female, she was an immigrant and she had to a high degree helped increase the prestige of France in the scientific world.

At the end of the 19th century, a number of discoveries were made in physics which paved the fashion for the breakthrough of modern physics and led to the revolutionary technical development that is continually changing our daily lives.

Around 1886, Heinrich Hertz demonstrated experimentally the beingness of radio waves. Information technology is said that Hertz but smiled incredulously when anyone predicted that his waves would i twenty-four hour period be sent round the earth. Hertz died in 1894 at the early historic period of 37. In September 1895, Guglielmo Marconi sent the first radio bespeak over a distance of 1.v km. In 1901 he spanned the Atlantic. Hertz did not live long enough to feel the far-reaching positive furnishings of his great discovery, nor of course did he have to see it abused in bad tv programs. It is hard to predict the consequences of new discoveries in physics.

On November eight, 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen at the University of Würzburg, discovered a new kind of radiation which he called X-rays. Information technology could in time be identified every bit the short-moving ridge, high frequency counterpart of Hertz's waves. The ability of the radiation to pass through opaque textile that was impenetrable to ordinary calorie-free, naturally created a great awareness. Röntgen himself wrote to a friend that initially, he told no i except his wife nearly what he was doing. People would say, "Röntgen is out of his mind". On January 1, 1896, he mailed his offset announcement of the discovery to his colleagues. "… und nun ging der Teufel los" ("and now the Devil was let loose") he wrote. His discovery very presently fabricated an impact on applied medicine. In physics information technology led to a concatenation of new and sensational findings. When Henri Becquerel was exposing salts of uranium to sunlight to study whether the new radiation could take a connection with luminescence, he found out by chance – cheers to a few days of cloudy atmospheric condition – that another new type of radiation was existence spontaneously emanated without the salts of uranium having to be illuminated – a radiation that could pass through metallic foil and darken a photographic plate. The two researchers who were to play a major part in the continued study of this new radiation were Marie and Pierre Curie.

Marie

Marie Curie.

Marie Curie.

Marie Sklodowska, as she was chosen before matrimony, was born in Warsaw in 1867. Both her parents were teachers who believed deeply in the importance of education. Marie had her first lessons in physics and chemistry from her male parent. She had a brilliant bent for study and a great thirst for knowledge; however, advanced report was non possible for women in Poland. Marie dreamed of beingness able to study at the Sorbonne in Paris, but this was beyond the ways of her family. To solve the trouble, Marie and her elder sis, Bronya, came to an arrangement: Marie should go to work equally a governess and help her sister with the money she managed to salve so that Bronya could study medicine at the Sorbonne. When Bronya had taken her degree she, in her turn, would contribute to the cost of Marie's studies.

So it was not until she was 24 that Marie came to Paris to study mathematics and physics. Bronya was at present married to a medico of Polish origin, and information technology was at Bronya's urgent invitation to come and live with them that Marie took the step of leaving for Paris. By then she had been away from her studies for six years, nor had she had any preparation in agreement speedily spoken French. But her bully interest in studying and her joy at beingness at the Sorbonne with all its opportunities helped her surmount all difficulties. To save herself a ii-hours journey, she rented a niggling attic in the Quartier Latin. There the cold was so intense that at night she had to pile on everything she had in the way of clothing so as to be able to sleep. But as compensation for all her privations she had total liberty to be able to devote herself wholly to her studies. "It was similar a new world opened to me, the world of science, which I was at terminal permitted to know in all liberty," she writes. And it was French republic'southward leading mathematicians and physicists whom she was able to go to hear, people with names nosotros now encounter in the history of scientific discipline: Marcel Brillouin, Paul Painlevé, Gabriel Lippmann, and Paul Appell. After two years, when she took her caste in physics in 1893, she headed the list of candidates and, in the post-obit twelvemonth, she came 2d in a degree in mathematics. Afterwards three years she had brilliantly passed examinations in physics and mathematics. Her goal was to accept a teacher's diploma and then to return to Poland.

Marie Sklodowska, before she left for Paris.

Marie Sklodowska, earlier she left for Paris.

Pierre

Pierre Curie.

Pierre Curie.

Now, however, at that place occurred an outcome that was to exist of decisive importance in her life. She met Pierre Curie. He was 35 years, viii years older, and an internationally known physicist, but an outsider in the French scientific community – a serious idealist and dreamer whose greatest wish was to be able to devote his life to scientific work. He was completely indifferent to outward distinctions and a career. He earned a living as the head of a laboratory at the School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry where engineers were trained and he lived for his research into crystals and into the magnetic properties of bodies at unlike temperatures. He had not attended ane of the French elite schools but had been taught past his male parent, who was a physician, and by a private teacher. He passed his baccalauréat at the early historic period of 16 and at 21, with his blood brother Jacques, he had discovered piezoelectricity, which ways that a difference in electrical potential is seen when mechanical stresses are applied on certain crystals, including quartz. Such crystals are at present used in microphones, electronic apparatus and clocks.

Marie, too, was an idealist; though outwardly shy and retiring, she was in reality energetic and single-minded. Pierre and Marie immediately discovered an intellectual analogousness, which was very soon transformed into deeper feelings. In July 1895, they were married at the town hall at Sceaux, where Pierre'due south parents lived. They were given money as a nuptials present which they used to buy a bicycle for each of them, and long, sometimes adventurous, cycle rides became their fashion of relaxing. Their life was otherwise quietly monotonous, a life filled with piece of work and report.

Persuaded by his father and by Marie, Pierre submitted his doctoral thesis in 1895. It concerned diverse types of magnetism, and contained a presentation of the connection between temperature and magnetism that is now known as Curie's Police force. In 1896, Marie passed her teacher's diploma, coming first in her group. Their daughter Irène was born in September 1897. Pierre had managed to arrange that Marie should be allowed to work in the schoolhouse'south laboratory, and in 1897, she concluded a number of investigations into the magnetic properties of steel on behalf of an industrial clan. Deciding after a time to keep doing inquiry, Marie looked around for a subject field for a doctoral thesis.

Becquerel's discovery had not aroused very much attention. When, just a day or and then after his discovery, he informed the Monday coming together of l'Académie des Sciences, his colleagues listened politely, then went on to the next item on the agenda. It was Röntgen's discovery and the possibilities it provided that were the focus of the interest and enthusiasm of researchers. Becquerel himself fabricated certain important observations, for instance that gases through which the rays passed become able to conduct electricity, but he was soon to exit this field. Marie decided to brand a systematic investigation of the mysterious "uranium rays". She had an excellent aid at her disposal – an electrometer for the measurement of weak electric currents, which was constructed by Pierre and his brother, and was based on the piezoelectric effect.

Surprising results

Results were not long in coming. Just afterwards a few days, Marie discovered that thorium gives off the same rays as uranium. Her connected systematic studies of the diverse chemical compounds gave the surprising result that the strength of the radiation did not depend on the chemical compound that was being studied. It depended merely on the amount of uranium or thorium. Chemic compounds of the same element more often than not have very different chemical and physical properties: ane uranium chemical compound is a dark pulverisation, another is a transparent yellow crystal, but what was decisive for the radiation they gave off was merely the amount of uranium they contained. Marie drew the conclusion that the ability to radiate did not depend on the system of the atoms in a molecule, it must be linked to the interior of the atom itself. This discovery was absolutely revolutionary. From a conceptual indicate of view it is her nearly important contribution to the evolution of physics. She now went through the whole periodic system. Her findings were that only uranium and thorium gave off this radiation.

Marie's next thought, seemingly uncomplicated merely bright, was to study the natural ores that contain uranium and thorium. She obtained samples from geological museums and establish that of these ores, pitchblende was four to 5 times more agile than was motivated by the amount of uranium. Information technology was her hypothesis that a new element that was considerably more active than uranium was nowadays in small-scale amounts in the ore.

Marie and Pierre – a fruitful collaboration

Fascinating new vistas were opening upwards. Pierre gave up his research into crystals and symmetry in nature which he was securely involved in and joined Marie in her project. They found that the strong action came with the fractions containing bismuth or barium. When Marie continued her analysis of the bismuth fractions, she establish that every time she managed to take away an amount of bismuth, a residue with greater activity was left. At the end of June 1898, they had a substance that was most 300 times more strongly active than uranium. In the piece of work they published in July 1898, they write, "We thus believe that the substance that nosotros accept extracted from pitchblende contains a metal never known before, akin to bismuth in its analytic properties. If the existence of this new metallic is confirmed, we suggest that it should be called polonium after the name of the state of origin of one of u.s.." It was also in this work that they used the term radioactivity for the beginning time. Later another few months of piece of work, the Curies informed the l'Académie des Sciences, on Dec 26, 1898, that they had demonstrated strong grounds for having come upon an additional very active substance that behaved chemically almost like pure barium. They suggested the name of radium for the new element.

Backbreaking work

In gild to be sure of showing that it was a affair of new elements, the Curies would have to produce them in demonstrable amounts, determine their diminutive weight and preferably isolate them. To exercise and so, the Curies would need tons of the plush pitchblende. However, it was known that at the Joachimsthal mine in Bohemia big slag-heaps had been left in the surrounding forests. Marie considered that radium ought to be left in the remainder. A sample was sent to them from Bohemia and the slag was found to be even more than active than the original mineral. Several tons of pitchblende was after put at their disposal through the good offices of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

It was now that at that place began the heroic époque in their life that has get legendary. At this stage they needed more than room, and the chief of the school where Pierre worked once once again came to their help. They could utilize a big shed which was non occupied. There the very laborious work of separation and analysis began. Marie carried out the chemical separations, Pierre undertook the measurements after each successive step. Physically information technology was heavy work for Marie. She processed xx kilos of raw cloth at a time. Showtime of all she had to articulate abroad pine needles and any perceptible droppings, then she had to undertake the work of separation. "Sometimes I had to spend a whole mean solar day stirring a boiling mass with a heavy iron rod nigh every bit large as myself. I would be broken with fatigue at twenty-four hour period's finish," she writes.

In a preface to Pierre Curie'southward collected works, Marie describes the shed as having a bituminous floor, and a glass roof which provided incomplete protection against the rain, and where it was like a hothouse in the summer, draughty and common cold in the winter; yet it was in that shed that they spent the best and happiest years of their lives. At that place they could devote themselves to work the livelong mean solar day. Sometimes they could non practice their processing outdoors, so the noxious gases had to exist let out through the open windows. The only furniture were old, worn pino tables where Marie worked with her plush radium fractions. Since they did non accept any shelter in which to store their precious products the latter were bundled on tables and boards. Marie could retrieve the joy they felt when they came into the shed at night, seeing "from all sides the feebly luminous silhouettes" of the products of their piece of work. The dangerous gases of which Marie speaks contained, among other things, radon – the radioactive gas which is a matter of concern to us today since small amounts are emitted from certain kinds of building materials. Wilhelm Ostwald, the highly respected German language chemist, who was one of the commencement to realize the importance of the Curies' research, traveled from Berlin to Paris to run across how they worked. Neither Pierre nor Marie was at habitation. He wrote: "At my earnest asking, I was shown the laboratory where radium had been discovered shortly before … Information technology was a cross between a stable and a potato shed, and if I had non seen the worktable and items of chemical apparatus, I would have thought that I was been played a practical joke."

Marie Presents her doctoral thesis

At the same fourth dimension as the Curies were engaged in their arduous work, each of them had their teaching duties. From 1900 Marie had had a office-time teaching post at the École Normale Supérieur de Sèvres for girls. After thousands of crystallizations, Marie finally – from several tons of the original fabric – isolated one decigram of almost pure radium chloride and had determined radium's diminutive weight as 225. She presented the findings of this work in her doctoral thesis on June 25, 1903. Of the iii members of the examination committee, ii were to receive the Nobel Prize a few years later: Lippmann, her former teacher, in 1908 for physics, and Moissan, in 1906 for chemistry. The committee expressed the stance that the findings represented the greatest scientific contribution ever fabricated in a doctoral thesis.

A little celebration in Marie's honour, was arranged in the evening by a inquiry colleague, Paul Langevin. The guests included Jean Perrin, a prominent professor at the Sorbonne, and Ernest Rutherford, who was then working in Canada only temporarily in Paris and anxious to encounter Marie Curie. He had good reason. His study of the deflection of radiation in magnetic fields had not met with success until he had been sent a strongly radioactive preparation past the Curies. Past that fourth dimension he was already famous and was shortly to exist considered as the greatest experimental physicist of the day. It was a warmish evening and the grouping went out into the garden. Pierre had prepared an constructive finale to the solar day. When they had all sat down, he drew from his waistcoat pocket a little tube, partly coated with zinc sulfide, which contained a quantity of radium salt in solution. Of a sudden the tube became luminous, lighting up the darkness, and the group stared at the display in wonder, quietly and solemnly. Only in the low-cal from the tube, Rutherford saw that Pierre'south fingers were scarred and inflamed and that he was finding it hard to agree the tube.

Serious health problems

A week earlier Marie and Pierre had been invited to the Royal Institution in London where Pierre gave a lecture. Earlier the crowded auditorium he showed how radium rapidly affected photographic plates wrapped in paper, how the substance gave off heat; in the semi-darkness he demonstrated the spectacular light effect. He described the medical tests he had tried out on himself. He had wrapped a sample of radium salts in a thin rubber covering and bound it to his arm for ten hours, then had studied the wound, which resembled a burn, solar day by day. After 52 days a permanent gray scar remained. In that connexion Pierre mentioned the possibility of radium being able to be used in the treatment of cancer. But Pierre's scarred hands shook so that in one case he happened to spill a little of the costly preparation. Fifty years afterwards the presence of radioactivity was discovered on the bounds and certain surfaces had to be cleaned.

In bodily fact Pierre was ill. His legs shook and then that at times he found it hard to stand upright. He was in much hurting. He consulted a doctor who diagnosed neurasthenia and prescribed strychnine. And the skin on Marie'south fingers was croaky and scarred. Both of them constantly suffered from fatigue. They evidently had no thought that radiation could accept a detrimental effect on their full general state of health. Pierre, who liked to say that radium had a 1000000 times stronger radioactivity than uranium, often carried a sample in his waistcoat pocket to show his friends. Marie liked to have a little radium salt by her bed that shone in the darkness. The papers they left backside them give off pronounced radioactivity. If today at the Bibliothèque Nationale you want to consult the iii blackness notebooks in which their work from December 1897 and the iii following years is recorded, y'all have to sign a certificate that yous practice so at your own risk. People will have to do this for a long time to come. In fact it takes ane,620 years earlier the activity of radium is reduced to a one-half.

Rutherford was simply as unsuspecting in regard to the hazards as were the Curies. When it turned out that ane of his colleagues who had worked with radioactive substances for several months was able to discharge an electroscope by exhaling, Rutherford expressed his delight. This confirmed his theory of the existence of airborne emanations.

In view of the potential for the use of radium in medicine, factories began to exist congenital in the USA for its big-calibration product. The question came up of whether or not Marie and Pierre should apply for a patent for the production process. They were both against doing then. Pure research should be carried out for its own sake and must not become mixed up with manufacture's profit motive. Researchers should be disinterested and make their findings available to anybody. Marie and Pierre were generous in supplying their fellow researchers, Rutherford included, with the preparations they had so laboriously produced. They furnished industry with descriptions of the production process.

Nobel Prize

In 1903, Marie and Pierre Curie were awarded half the Nobel Prize in Physics. The citation was, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiations phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel." Henri Becquerel was awarded the other one-half for his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity. In a letter to the Swedish Academy of Sciences, Pierre explains that neither of them is able to come to Stockholm to receive the prize. They could not become abroad considering of their didactics obligations. He adds, "Mme Curie has been ill this summer and is non yet completely recovered." That was certainly true but his own health was no ameliorate. Not until June 1905 did they become to Stockholm, where Pierre gave a Nobel lecture.

At the prize award ceremony, the president of the Swedish Academy referred in his voice communication to the old proverb: "union gives strength." He went on to quote from the Book of Genesis, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help encounter for him."

Although the Nobel Prize alleviated their financial worries, the Curies now all of a sudden found themselves the focus of the involvement of the public and the press. Their seemingly romantic story, their labours in intolerable conditions, the remarkable new chemical element which could disintegrate and requite off heat from what was plainly an inexhaustible source, all these things fabricated the reports into fairy-tales. At the center was Marie, a frail woman who with a gigantic wand had ground down tons of pitchblende in order to extract a tiny amount of a magical chemical element. Even Le Figaro, otherwise a sensible newspaper, began with "In one case upon a fourth dimension …" They were pursued by journalists from the whole world – a situation they could non deal with. Marie wrote, "The shattering of our voluntary isolation was a cause of existent suffering for united states and had all the effects of disaster." Pierre wrote in July 1905, "A whole yr has passed since I was able to do any work … evidently I have not found the way of defending usa confronting frittering away our fourth dimension, and yet it is very necessary. It is a question of life or death from the intellectual point of view."

But as Elisabeth Crawford emphasizes in her book The Ancestry of the Nobel Institution, from the latter's viewpoint, the awarding of the 1903 Prize for Physics was masterly. Formerly, merely the Prize for Literature and the Peace Prize had obtained wide press coverage; the Prizes for scientific subjects had been considered all also esoteric to exist able to involvement the general public. The mayhem centered on the honour of the Prize to the Curies, peculiarly Marie Curie, angry one time and for all the curiosity of the printing and the public. The work of researchers was exciting, their findings fascinating.

The health of both Marie and Pierre Curie gave rise to concern. Their friends tried to make them work less. All their symptoms were ascribed to the drafty shed and to overexertion. Their dearest wish was to have a new laboratory just no such laboratory was in prospect. When Paul Appell, the dean of the kinesthesia of sciences, appealed to Pierre to let his proper noun be put forrard equally a recipient for the prestigious Legion of Honor on July fourteen,1903, Pierre replied, "… I do not feel the slightest need of existence decorated, but I am in the greatest demand of a laboratory." Although Pierre was given a chair at the Sorbonne in 1904 with the promise of a laboratory, as late as 1906 it had still not begun to exist built. Pierre was given access to some rooms in a edifice used for written report past young medical students. Pierre Curie never obtained a real laboratory.

Dreadful catastrophe

On April 19, 1906, Pierre Curie was run over past a horse-fatigued wagon near the Pont Neuf in Paris and killed. Now Marie was left alone with two daughters, Irène aged 9 and Ève aged 2. Stupor broke her downward totally to begin with. But even now she could draw on the toughness and perseverance that were fundamental aspects of her character. When she was offered a pension, she refused information technology: I am 38 and able to support myself, was her answer. She was appointed to succeed Pierre as the head of the laboratory, beingness undoubtedly most suitable, and to exist responsible for his teaching duties. She thus became the first woman ever appointed to teach at the Sorbonne. Later on some months, in November 1906, she gave her start lecture. The big amphitheater was packed. Besides as students, her audience included people from far and well-nigh, journalists and photographers were in attendance. Many people had expected something unusual to occur. Mayhap some manifestation of the celebrated occasion. When Marie entered, thin, stake and tense, she was met by an ovation. However the expectations of something other than a clear and factual lecture on physics were not fulfilled. But Marie's personality, her aura of simplicity and competence made a great impression.

Irène was now 9 years old. Marie had definite ideas about the upbringing and teaching of children that she now wanted to put into practice. Her circle of friends consisted of a small group of professors with children of schoolhouse age. Marie organized a private schoolhouse with the parents themselves acting as teachers. A group of some ten children were accordingly taught only past prominent professors: Jean Perrin, Paul Langevin, Édouard Chavannes, a professor of Chinese, Henri Mouton from the Pasteur Plant, a sculptor was engaged for modeling and drawing. Marie took the view that scientific subjects should be taught at an early historic period but non according to a as well rigid curriculum. It was important for children to be able to develop freely. Games and physical activities took up much of the time. Quite a lot of time was taken for travel, too, for the children had to travel to the homes of their teachers, to Marie at Sceaux or to Langevin'due south lessons in 1 of the Paris suburbs. The footling group became a kind of school for the elite with a great emphasis on science. The children involved say that they take happy memories of that time. For Irène it was in those years that the foundation of her evolution into a researcher was laid. The educational experiment lasted two years. Afterward the pupils had to prepare for their forthcoming baccalauréat examination and to follow the traditional educational programs.

A second Nobel Prize

In 1908 Marie, as the start woman e'er, was appointed to become a professor at the Sorbonne. She went on to produce several decigrams of very pure radium chloride before finally, in collaboration with André Debierne, she was able to isolate radium in metallic form. André Debierne, who began as a laboratory assistant, became her faithful collaborator until her death and so succeeded her equally head of the laboratory. In 1911 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The citation past the Nobel Commission was, "in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemical science past the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the report of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element."

Now that the archives have been fabricated available to the public, it is possible to written report in detail the events surrounding the awarding of the ii Prizes, in 1903 and 1911. In a letter of the alphabet in 1903, several members of the l'Académie des Sciences, including Henri Poincaré and Gaston Darboux, had nominated Becquerel and Pierre Curie for the Prize in Physics. Marie's name was not mentioned. This caused Gösta Mittag-Leffler, a professor of mathematics at Stockholm University College, to write to Pierre Curie. That letter of the alphabet has never survived only Pierre Curie's answer, dated Baronial 6, 1903, has been preserved. He wrote, "If information technology is true that one is seriously thinking about me (for the Prize), I very much wish to be considered together with Madame Curie with respect to our enquiry on radioactive bodies." Drawing attention to the role she played in the discovery of radium and polonium, he added, "Do y'all not think that it would be more satisfying from the artistic bespeak of view, if we were to be associated in this manner?" (plus joli d'un point de vue artistique).

Some biographers have questioned whether Marie deserved the Prize for Chemistry in 1911. They have claimed that the discoveries of radium and polonium were office of the reason for the Prize in 1903, even though this was not stated explicitly. Marie was said to have been awarded the Prize over again for the same discovery, the award possibly existence an expression of sympathy for reasons that volition be mentioned below. Actually, withal, the citation for the Prize in 1903 was worded deliberately with a view to a future Prize in Chemical science. Chemists considered that the discovery and isolation of radium was the greatest upshot in chemical science since the discovery of oxygen. That for the first time in history information technology could exist shown that an element could exist transmuted into another element, revolutionized chemistry and signified a new epoch.

A terrible twelvemonth

Rejected past the university

Despite the second Nobel Prize and an invitation to the first Solvay Conference with the globe's leading physicists, including Einstein, Poincaré and Planck, 1911 became a dark year in Marie's life. In 2 smear campaigns she was to experience the inconstancy of the French press. The start was started on sixteen Nov 1910, when, by an commodity in Le Figaro, it became known that she was willing to exist nominated for election to fifty'Académie des Sciences. Examples of factors other than merit deciding an election did exist, but Marie herself and her eminent enquiry colleagues seemed to have considered that with her uncommonly vivid scientific merits, her ballot was self-evident. Notwithstanding, it turned out that it was not merit that was decisive. The dark underlying currents of anti-Semitism, prejudice confronting women, xenophobia and even anti-scientific discipline attitudes that existed in French guild came welling up to the surface. Usually the election was of no interest to the printing. The most rabid paper was the ultra-nationalistic and anti-Semitic L'Action Française, which was led by Léon Daudet, the son of the writer Alphonse Daudet. Dreyfus had got redress for his wrongs in 1906 and had been decorated with the Legion of Honour, only in the optics of the groups who had been against him during his trial, he was still guilty, was all the same "the Jewish traitor." The pro-Dreyfus groups who had supported his crusade were suspect and the scientists who were supporting Marie were among them. Jokes in bad taste alternated with outrageous accusations. It was said that in her career, Pierre's research had given her a costless ride. She came from Poland, though absolutely she was formally a Catholic simply her name Sklodowska indicated that she might be of Jewish origin, and and so on. A week before the election, an opposing candidate, Édouard Branly, was launched. The vote on Jan 23, 1911 was taken in the presence of journalists, photographers and hordes of the curious. The election took identify in a tumultuous atmosphere. In the get-go circular Marie lost by one vote, in the second by two. In all, fifty-eight votes were bandage. A Nobel Prize in 1903 and support from prominent researchers such as Jean Perrin, Henri Poincaré, Paul Appell and the permanent secretary of the Académie, Gaston Darboux, were not sufficient to brand the Académie open up its doors. This event attracted international attention and indignation. It deeply wounded both Marie and indeed Édouard Branly, too, himself a well-merited researcher.

The Langevin thing

However, Marie's tribulations were not at an end. When, at the beginning of Nov 1911, Marie went to Belgium, being invited with the globe'southward well-nigh eminent physicists to attend the starting time Solvay Conference, she received a bulletin that a new campaign had started in the printing. At present it was a thing of her private life and her relations with her colleague Paul Langevin, who had also been invited to the briefing. He had had marital problems for several years and had moved from his suburban home to a modest apartment in Paris. Marie was depicted every bit the reason. Both were described in slanderous terms. The scandal developed dramatically. Marie stands upwardly in her own defence and managed to force an amends from the paper Le Temps. The same 24-hour interval she received word from Stockholm that she had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Nevertheless, the very newspapers that made her a legend when she received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903, at present completely ignored the fact that she had been awarded the Prize in Chemistry or simply reported it in a few words on an inside folio. The Langevin scandal escalated into a serious affair that shook the academy world in Paris and the French authorities at the highest level. Madame Langevin was preparing legal action to obtain custody of the four children. With a burglary in Langevin's apartment certain messages were stolen and delivered to the printing. Léon Daudet fabricated the whole thing into a new Dreyfus thing. Day later day Marie had to run the gauntlet in the newspapers: an alien, a Polish adult female, a researcher supported by our French scientists, had come and stolen an honest French adult female'due south husband. Daudet quoted Fouquier-Tinville's notorious words that during the Revolution had sent the chemist Lavoisier to the guillotine: "The Republic does not need any scientists." Marie's friends immediately backed her up. Jean Perrin, Henri Poincaré and Émile Borel appealed to the publishers of the newspapers. Henri Poincaré's cousin, Raymond Poincaré, a senior lawyer who was to get President of French republic in a few years time, was engaged every bit advisor. But the scandal kept up its impetus with headlines on the first pages such as "Madame Curie, can she still remain a professor at the Sorbonne?" With her children Marie stayed at Sceaux where she was practically a prisoner in her ain home. Her friends feared that she would collapse. The drama culminated on the morn of 23 November when extracts from the letters were published in the newspaper L'Oeuvre. There was no proof of the accusations made confronting Marie and the authenticity of the letters could be questioned but in the heated atmosphere there were few who thought clearly.

In her volume Souvenirs et rencontres, Marguerite Borel gives a dramatic description of what happened. Émile Borel was extremely indignant and acted apace. Marie had to be fetched from Sceaux and live with them until the storm was over. Marguerite and André Debierne went out to Sceaux where they plant a hostile and angry oversupply gathered outside Marie's home. Someone shouted, "Go abode to Poland." A stone striking the house. Having managed to persuade Marie to become with them, they guided her, property Ève past the hand, through the crowd. Marie saturday strong and deathly stake throughout their journey. Marguerite wanted to take her hand, simply did not venture to do so. On their return, Marie and Ève were installed in 2 rooms in the Borels' dwelling. Henriette Perrin looks after Irène. But the Borels' home was owned by the École Normale Supérieure and Émile Borel was called upwardly to the Minister of Education (Théodore Steeg, le ministre de l'Instruction publique) who informed him that he had no right to let Marie Curie stay in his domicile. It would cast a shadow on the École Normale. If Borel persisted in keeping his guest, he would be dismissed. "And so be it then, I shall persist," was Borel'due south answer. For Marguerite Borel'south part, she had to suffer a stormy battle with her father, Paul Appell, then dean of the faculty at the Sorbonne. He was furious that the Borels have gotten mixed up in the matter. He revealed that with several other influential people he was planning an interview with Marie in order to request her to go out French republic: her situation in Paris was incommunicable. "I have done everything for her, I accept supported her candidature to the Académie, just I cannot hold dorsum the flood at present engulfing her." Marguerite replied, "If yous requite in to that idiotic nationalist movement and insist that Marie should leave France, you will never come across me any more." Appell, who was in the process of putting on his shoes, threw one of them to striking the door – simply the interview with Marie did non accept place. Langevin who had been repeatedly insulted, then felt forced to challenge Gustave Téry, the editor of the paper that printed the messages, to a duel. Fighting a duel was a usual mode of obtaining satisfaction in France at that time, although scarcely in academic circles. Paper publishers who had come up confronting each other in this dispute had already fought duels. Swords were by and large used and a duellist was unremarkably content with inflicting a thorough scratch on his opponent for the duel to be considered decided. But fatal accidents did in fact occur. Langevin constitute information technology difficult to find seconds, but managed to persuade Paul Painlevé, a mathematician and later on Prime Minister, and the director of the School of Physics and Chemistry. The duel, with pistols at a distance of 25 meters, was to take place on the morning of November 25. Painlevé, not being used to the routines, surprised anybody present by beginning to count in a loud vocalism unusually chop-chop: one, two, 3. Téry did not raise his pistol. Langevin, who had start raised his, then lowered information technology. No shot was fired. The journalists wrote most the silence and virtually the pigeons quietly feeding on the field. In the midst of all its gravity, the duel had turned into a farce.

All the same, the publication of the messages and the duel were besides much for those responsible at the Swedish University of Sciences in Stockholm. Marie received a letter from a member, Svante Arrhenius, in which he said that the duel had given the impression that the published correspondence had not been falsified. He asked her to cable that she would not be coming to the prize award ceremony and to write him a letter to the issue that she did not desire to accept the Prize until the Langevin court proceedings had shown that the accusations against her were absolutely without foundation. Of those most closely afflicted, the person who remained level-headed despite the enormous strain of the critical state of affairs was in fact Marie herself. In a well-formulated and affair-of-fact reply, she pointed out that she had been awarded the Prize for her discovery of radium and polonium, and that she could not take the principle that appreciation of the value of scientific work should be influenced by slander concerning a researcher's private life. On December 6, Langevin wrote a long letter to Svante Arrhenius, whom he had met previously. He described the whole situation, explained what circles were behind the smear campaign. He appealed to the Nobel Committee not to let it be influenced past a entrada which was fundamentally unjust. Nor, in fact, was information technology then influenced.

Marie gathered all her strength and gave her Nobel lecture on December eleven in Stockholm. The lecture should exist read in the low-cal of what she had gone through. She made clear by her selection of words what were unequivocally her contributions in the collaboration with Pierre. She spoke of the field of research which "I have called radioactivity" and "my hypothesis that radioactivity is an atomic holding," but without detracting from his contributions. She alleged that she besides regarded this Prize as a tribute to Pierre Curie.

Still, this enormous effort completely drained her of all her strength. She sank into a depressed state. On December 29, she was taken to a infirmary whose location was kept secret for her protection. When she had recovered to some extent, she traveled to England, where a friend, the physicist Hertha Ayrton, looked after her and saw that the printing was kept away. A whole twelvemonth passed before she could work as she had done before.

In her book, Marguerite Borel quotes Jean Perrin'south words, 'But for the five of us who stood up for Marie Curie against a whole world when a landslide of filth engulfed her, Marie would have returned to Poland and we would have been marked by eternal shame.' The five were Jean and Henriette Perrin, Émile and Marguerite Borel and André Debierne.

Legal proceedings were never taken. Langevin and his wife reached a settlement on ix December without Marie's proper noun being mentioned. We shall never know with any certainty what was the nature of the relationship between Marie Curie and Paul Langevin. Information technology is referred to by Paul Langevin's son, André Langevin, in his biography of his father, which was published in 1971. He writes, "Is information technology not rather natural that friendship and mutual admiration several years later Pierre'south death could develop pace by stride into a passion and a relationship?" It can exist added as a footnote that Paul Langevin's grandson, Michel (now deceased), and Marie's granddaughter, Hélène, afterwards married. Hélène Langevin-Joliot is a nuclear physicist and has made a shut study of Marie and Pierre Curie'southward notebooks and so equally to obtain a motion picture of how their collaboration functioned.

Marie had opened upward a completely new field of research: radioactivity. Diverse aspects of information technology were existence studied all over the world. In Uppsala Daniel Strömholm, professor of chemical science, and The Svedberg, and then associate professor, investigated the chemistry of the radioactive elements. In 1909 they were close to the discovery of isotopes. However it was the British physicist Frederick Soddy who in the following year, finally clarified the concept of isotopes. Marie's laboratory became the Mecca for radium inquiry. Eva Ramstedt, who took a doctorate in physics in Uppsala in 1910, studied with Marie Curie in 1910-11 and was later on acquaintance professor in radiology at Stockholm University Higher in 1915-32. The Norwegian chemist Ellen Gleditsch worked with Marie Curie in 1907-1912.

State of war

When, in 1914, Marie was in the procedure of beginning to pb one of the departments in the Radium Institute established jointly past the University of Paris and the Pasteur Found, the Commencement World War broke out. Marie placed her two daughters, Irène aged 17 and Ève aged 10, in safety in Brittany. She herself took a railroad train to Bordeaux, a train overloaded with people leaving Paris for a safer refuge. Simply Marie had a different reason for her journey. She had with her a heavy, 20-kg pb container in which she had placed her valuable radium. One time in Bordeaux the other passengers rushed away to their various destinations. She remained standing at that place with her heavy pocketbook which she did not have the strength to bear without aid. Some official finally helped her find a room where she slept with her heavy bag past her bed. The adjacent day, having had the bag taken to a bank vault, she took a railroad train back to Paris. It was now crowded to bursting bespeak with soldiers. Throughout the war she was engaged intensively in equipping more than 20 vans that acted as mobile field hospitals and about 200 fixed installations with X-ray appliance.

Pierre Curie.

Marie driving i of the radiology cars in 1917.

She trained young women in elementary X-ray technology, she herself drove i of the vans and took an active office in locating metal splinters. Sometimes she found she had to give the doctors lessons in elementary geometry. Irène, when 18, became involved, and in the primitive weather condition both of them were exposed to big doses of radiation.

After the Peace Treaty in 1918, her Radium Institute, which had been completed in 1914, could now be opened. It became French republic'southward most internationally celebrated research institute in the inter-war years. Even so, as her French biographer Françoise Giroud points out, the French state did not do much in the manner of supporting her. In the USA radium was manufactured industrially but at a price which Marie could not afford. She had to devote a lot of time to fund-raising for her Institute. She besides became deeply involved when she had become a member of the Commission for Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations and served as its vice-president for a fourth dimension. She ofttimes took part in its meetings in Geneva, where she too met the Swedish consul, Anna Wicksell.

Missy

Marie regularly refused all those who wanted to interview her. However, a prominent American female journalist, Marie Maloney, known as Missy, who for a long fourth dimension had admired Marie, managed to meet her. This meeting became of smashing importance to them both. Marie told Missy that researchers in the USA had some fifty grams of radium at their disposal. "And in France, and so?" asked Missy. "My laboratory has scarcely more than one gram," was Marie's answer. "Just you ought to have all the resources in the world to continue with your enquiry. Someone must run into to that," Missy said. "Simply who?" was Marie's answer in a resigned tone. "The women of America," promised Missy.

Missy, like Marie herself, had an enormous force and strong inner stamina under a frail exterior. She now arranged 1 of the largest and almost successful research-funding campaigns the world has seen. Outset of all she got the New York papers to promise not to print a word on the Langevin matter and – so as to feel safe – unbelievably enough managed to take over all their material on the Langevin affair. Due to the press, Marie became enormously popular in America, and everyone seemed to desire to see her – the great Madame Curie. Missy had to struggle hard to get Marie to have a program for her visit on a par with the campaign. Finally, she had to turn to Paul Appell, now the university chancellor, to persuade Marie. In spite of her diffidence and distaste for publicity, Marie agreed to get to America to receive the gift – a single gram of radium – from the paw of President Warren Harding. "I understand that it will be of the greatest value for my Constitute," she wrote to Missy. When all this became known in French republic, the newspaper Je sais tout arranged a gala performance at the Paris Opera. It was attended past the almost prominent personalities in France, including Aristide Briand, then Foreign Minister, who was later, in 1926, to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Jean Perrin made a speech about Marie's contribution and the promises for the future that her discoveries gave. The nifty Sarah Bernhardt read an "Ode to Madame Curie" with allusions to her as the sister of Prometheus. Afterward being dragged through the mud 10 years before, she had become a modernistic Jeanne d'Arc.

Pierre Curie.

Missy Maloney, Irène, Marie and Ève Curie in the USA.

Missy had undertaken that everything would exist arranged to crusade Marie the least possible try. In spite of this Marie had to attend innumerable receptions and do a round of American universities. Outwardly the trip was one bully triumphal procession. She became the recipient of some twenty distinctions in the form of honorary doctorates, medals and membership in academies. Great crowds paid homage to her. Just for Marie herself, this was torment. Where possible, she had her 2 daughters represent her.

Marie and Missy became close friends. The inexhaustible Missy organized further collections for one gram of radium for an plant which Marie had helped institute in Warsaw. Marie'southward second journey to America ended just a few days before the great stock commutation crash in 1929.

In the last x years of her life, Marie had the joy of seeing her girl Irène and her son-in-law Frédéric Joliot practise successful inquiry in the laboratory. She lived to see their discovery of bogus radioactivity, but not to hear that they had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for information technology in 1935. Marie Curie died of leukemia on July iv, 1934.

Epilogue

It is worth mentioning that the new discoveries at the end of the nineteenth century became of importance also for the quantum of modern art. X-ray photography focused art on the invisible. The human body became dissolved in a shimmering mist. Wassily Kandinsky, ane of the pioneers of abstruse painting, wrote about radioactivity in his autobiographical notes from 1901-thirteen. He claimed that in his soul the disuse of the atom was synonymous with the decay of the whole world. The thickest walls had of a sudden collapsed. Everything had become uncertain, unsteady and fluid. He would non have been surprised if a stone had been pulverized in the air before him and become invisible.

For the physicists of Marie Curie's day, the new discoveries were no less revolutionary. Although admittedly the world did non decay, what yet did was the classical, deterministic view of the world. Radioactive decay, that heat is given off from an invisible and apparently inexhaustible source, that radioactive elements are transformed into new elements simply as in the ancient dreams of alchemists of the possibility of making gold, all these things contravened the near entrenched principles of classical physics. For radioactive decay to be understood, the evolution of breakthrough mechanics was required. Only it should be noted that the birth of breakthrough mechanics was not initiated by the study of radioactivity but by Max Planck'southward written report of radiations from a black body in 1900. Information technology was an quondam field that was not the object of the same interest and publicity as the new spectacular discoveries. It was not until 1928, more than a quarter of a century later, that the type of radioactivity that is chosen blastoff-decay obtained its theoretical explanation. Information technology is an example of the tunnel effect in quantum mechanics.

Much has inverse in the conditions nether which researchers piece of work since Marie and Pierre Curie worked in a drafty shed and refused to consider taking out a patent as being incompatible with their view of the role of researchers; a patent would nonetheless accept facilitated their research and spared their health. Only in one respect, the state of affairs remains unchanged. Nature holds on just as hard to its really profound secrets, and it is just equally difficult to predict where the answers to fundamental questions are to exist constitute.

Names mentioned in the text

Appell, Paul (1855-1930), mathematician
Arrhenius, Svante (1859-1927), Nobel Prize in Chemical science 1903
Ayrton, Hertha (1854-1923), English physicist
Becquerel, Henri (1852-1908), Nobel Prize in Physics 1903
Borel, Émile (1871-1956), mathematician
Borel, Marguerite, author, married to Émile Borel
Branly, Édouard (1844-1940), physicist
Briand, Aristide (1862-1932), eminent French statesman, Nobel Peace Prize 1926
Brillouin, Marcel (1854-1948), theoretical physicist
Darboux, Gaston (1842-1917), mathematician
Daudet, Léon (1867-1942), editor of L'Action Française
Debierne, André (1874-1949), Marie Curie's colleague for many years
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955), Nobel Prize in Physics 1921
Giroud, Françoise (1916- ), writer, one-time minister
Gleditsch, Ellen (1879-1968), chemist
Hertz, Heinrich (1857-1894), physicist
Langevin, Paul (1872-1946), physicist
Lippmann, Gabriel (1845-1921), Nobel Prize in Physics 1908
Marconi, Guglielmo (1874-1937), Nobel Prize in Physics 1909
Mittag-Leffler, Gösta (1846-1927), mathematician
Moissan, Henri (1852-1907), Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1906
Ostwald, Wilhelm (1853-1932), Nobel Prize in Chemical science 1909
Painlevé, Paul (1863-1933), mathematician
Perrin, Jean (1870-1942) Nobel Prize in Physics 1926
Planck, Max (1858-1947), Nobel Prize in Physics 1918
Poincaré, Henri (1854-1912), mathematician, philosopher
Poincaré, Raymond (1860-1934), lawyer (president 1913-1920)
Ramstedt, Eva (1879-1974), physicist
Röntgen, Wilhelm Conrad (1845-1923), Nobel Prize in Physics 1901
Rutherford, Ernest (1871-1937), Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1908
Soddy, Frederick (1877-1956), Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1921
Strömholm, Daniel (1871-1961), pharmacist, professor at Uppsala University
Svedberg, The (1884-1971), Nobel Prize in Chemical science 1926

Bibliography

Bensuade-Vincent, Bernadette, Marie Curie, femme de scientific discipline et de légende, Reveu du Palais de la découverte, Vol. 16. northward ° 157 avril 1988, 15-30.

Crawford, Elisabeth, The Beginnings of the Nobel Institution, The Science Prizes 1901-1915, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, & Edition de la Maison des Sciences, Paris, 1984.

Curie, Eve, Madame Curie, Gallimard, Paris, 1938. In English, Doubleday, New York.

Curie, Marie, Pierre Curie and Autobiographical Notes, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1923. After Marie Curie refused to authorize publication of her Autobiographical Notes in any other land.

Gleditsch, Ellen, Marie Sklodowska Curie (in Norwegian), Nordisk Tidskrift, Årg. 35, 1959.

Kandinsky, Wassily, Await Into the Past 1901-1913, The Blue Rider, Paul Klee. Franz Marc, New York, 1945.

Langevin, André, Paul Langevin, mon père, Les Éditeur Français Réunis, Paris, 1971.

Marbo, Camille (Pseudonym for Marguerite Borel), Souvenirs et Rencontres, Grasset, Paris, 1968.

McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch, Nobel Prize Women in Science, Their Lives, Struggles and Momentous Discoveries, A Birch Lane Press Book, Carol Publishing Group, New York, 1993.

Nobel Lectures including Presentation Speeches and Laureates' Biographies, Physics 1901-21. Published for the Nobel Foundation in 1967 by Elsevier Publishing Visitor, Amsterdam-London-New York.

Nobel Lectures including Presentation Speeches and Laureates' Biographies, Chemical science 1901-21. Published for the Nobel Foundation in 1967 by Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam-London-New York.

Pflaum, Rosalynd, Yard Obsession: Madame Curie and Her Globe, Doubleday, New York, 1989.

Quinn, Susan, Marie Curie: A Life, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1995.

Ramstedt, Eva, Marie Sklodowska Curie, Kosmos. Papers on Physics (in Swedish) published by Svenska Fysikersamfundet, nr 12, 1934.

Reid, Robert, Marie Curie, William Collins Sons & Co Ltd, London, 1974.

Science, Technology and Society in the Fourth dimension of Alfred Nobel. Proceedings of a Nobel Symposium. Edited by Carl Gustaf Bernhard, Elisabeth Crawford, Per Sörbom. Published for the Nobel Foundation by Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1982.

Other sources

Muzeum Marii Curie-Sklodowskiej
(Polskie Towarzystwo Chemiczne)
00-227 Warsawa, ul. Freta 16
tel: 48-22-31 lxxx 92
fax: 48-22-31 13 04
Contact person: Malgorzata Sobieszczak-Marciniak

Web site of Fifty'Institut Curie et fifty'Histoire (in French)

* Originally delivered every bit a lecture at the Imperial Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden, on February 28, 1996.

Translation from Swedish to English by Nancy Marshall-Lundén.

First published i Dec 1996