MadameMaria Curie - Skłodowska

The Daughter of PolandA Scientific Genius of the World

Ms. Beata Paszyc, Vice Honorary Consul, Republic of Poland

Copyright 2011

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.

Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

Childhood

• Maria Sklodowska was born in Warsaw, Poland November 7, 1867

• Mother was a school principal, Father a teacher

• Three sisters and one brother

• Lost her sister at the age of 9 and mother at the age of 11

Warsaw, PolandHouse and surroundings

Her chi ldhood home is now a museum

Warsaw, Poland(Russian Empire)

• Following three partitions 1772,1793, 1795 (by Prussia, Austria-Hungary & Russia) POLAND as a country in

Europe ceased to exit for 123 years

Maria grew up under the Russian Empire . Despite that, she was very patriotic and attended school studying

diligently and preserving the Polish language.

Adolescence

• Maria was an excellent student; loved physics, chemistry, math, biology & music

• Spoke Polish, Russian, French & English

• Fond of nature

• Graduated High School with Honors

• Governess and first love

• “Flying University”

• Training at lab in Warsaw

• Maria attended began boarding school that her mother had operated while she was well; then a gymnasium for girls, from which she graduated on 12 June 1883 with honors. She spent the following year in the countryside with her father's relatives and the next with her father in Warsaw, where she did some tutoring.

• On both the paternal and maternal sides, the family had lost their property and fortunes through patriotic involvements in Polish national uprisings. This condemned each subsequent generation, including that of Maria, her elder sisters, and brother to a difficult struggle to get ahead in life.

• Maria made an agreement with her sister, Bronisława, that she would give her financial assistance during Bronisława's medical studies in Paris, in exchange for similar assistance two years later.[8] In connection with this, Maria took a position as governess: with , the Żorawski family relatives of her father. While working for them, she fell in love with their son, Kazimierz Żorawski, His parents, however, rejected the idea of his marrying the penniless relative, and Kazimierz was unable to oppose them. Maria lost her position as governess.

• Maria made an agreement with her sister, Bronisława, that she would give her financial assistance during Bronisława's medical studies in Paris, in exchange for similar assistance two years later.[8] In connection with this, Maria took a position as governess: with , the Żorawski family relatives of her father. While working for them, she fell in love with their son, Kazimierz Żorawski, His parents, however, rejected the idea of his marrying the penniless relative, and Kazimierz was unable to oppose them. Maria lost her position as governess

• Maria tutored, studied at the clandestine Floating University, and began her practical scientific training in a laboratory The laboratory was run by her cousin Józef Boguski, who had been assistant in St. Petersburg to the great Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleyev

• SOURCE????

Paris• Left Poland for France at

the age 24 (changes her name to Marie Sklodovska)

• Student at Sorbonne

• Studied, worked and lived on 3 francs a month

• Visited Poland, patriotic.

With Sister Bronislawa 1886

Pierre• Pierre Curie born in

Paris, May 15, 1859

• Son of a physician

• Professor of Physics at Sorbonne

• Pierre’s untimely death April 19, 1906

Marie’s favorite photo of Pierre

• Maria ruled out love and marriage from her life, disappointed by her first love.• In Paris she was poor; she vowed to follow her vocation in solitude. • She was obsessed by her work and extremely driven. • She met Pierre when he was 35 and they discussed science together. He was an

extraordinary scientist, who had received his MA in physics at the age of 18.

Marie & Pierre

• Met at Sorbonne

• Worked together, formed friendship& fell in love

• “Our work drew us closer and closer, until we were both convinced that neither of us could find a better life companion.”

Marriage

• Marie and Pierre married in a civil ceremony on July 26, 1895

• They had two daughters, Irene and Eve

Wedding 1895

“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.”

-Marie Curie referring to he wedding dress

Family • Mother of Irene and Eve

• Irene Curie – Joliot Noble Prize Winner

• Eve Curie wrote “Madame Curie” Biography“I have frequently

been questioned, especially by women, of how I could reconcile family life with a scientific career. Well, it has not been easy.”

Trips to Poland (Tatra Mountains) Marie with Pierre and daughter Irene

• Obtained Masters degrees in Physics and Mathematics

• Later, in 1903,

Doctorate in Physics.

• Marie and Pierre worked 4 years in a shed to separate “polonium” and “radium” into a pure state.

“A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician: he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales. “

Polonium & Radium

• “We believe the substance contains a metal not yet observed. If the existence of this new metal is confirmed we propose to call it : “Polonium” from the name of the original country of one of us”

Year 1898

1902 they explained their discovery of another new element, which they named "radium" from the Latin word for ray.

• Pierre was so intrigued by Marie's work that he joined forces with her. Her research had revealed that two uranium ores, pitchblende and chalcolite, were much more radioactive than pure uranium itself.

She concluded that the highly radioactive nature of these ores might be due to one or more additional, as yet undiscovered, radioactive elements. Pierre put aside his research on crystals to help expedite Marie's discovery of the possible new elements. They worked as a team, each taking on specific scientific tasks.

Perhaps the most famous of all women scientists, Maria Curie-Sklodowska is notable for her many firsts:

• She was the first to use the term radioactivity for this phenomenon.

• She was the first woman in Europe to receive her doctorate of science.

• In 1903, she became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize for Physics. The award, jointly awarded to Curie, her husband Pierre, and Henri Becquerel, was for the discovery of radioactivity.

• She was also the first female lecturer, professor and head of Laboratory at the Sorbonne University in Paris (1906).

• 1906 marks a very dark period of her life.• • On 19 April 1906, Pierre was killed in a street accident. Walking across the Rue Dauphine in

heavy rain, he was struck by a horse-drawn vehicle and fell under its wheels, his skull was fractured.

• Skłodowska–Curie was devastated by the death of her husband. She noted that, as of that moment she suddenly had become "an incurably and wretchedly lonely person". On 13 May 1906, the Sorbonne physics department decided to retain the chair that had been created for Pierre Curie and they entrusted it to Skłodowska–Curie together with full authority over the laboratory. This allowed her to emerge from Pierre's shadow. She became the first woman to become a professor at the Sorbonne, and in her exhausting work regime she sought a meaning for her life.

• Quote: page 259 10 days after this tragic accident she resumed the course at the precise sentence where Pierre Curie left it.

• In 1911, she won an unprecedented second Nobel Prize (this time in chemistry) for her discovery and isolation of pure radium and radium components.

• She was the first person ever to receive two Nobel Prizes and win the award in two different fields and only person to win the award in different sciences.

• She was the first mother-Nobel Prize Laureate of daughter-Nobel Prize Laureate. Her oldest daughter Irene Joliot-Curie also won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1935).

“I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new

discoveries.”

Curie was the only woman at the 1911 conference, organized and subsidized by

Belgian industrialist Ernest Solvay.

Discussions at this gathering of the world's top physicists opened the way to a new physics that would bring together relativity, the quantum, and radioactive atoms. Langevin, at far right, stands next to the young Albert Einstein. Rutherford stands above Curie, who confers with Poincaré.

World War I

Marie Curie at the wheel of Renault car converted into a radiological unit, in which

from August 1914 she traveled from hospital to hospital.

Marie Curie and her daughter Irène at the Hoogstade Hospital in Belgium, 1915. Radiographic equipment is installed.

The United States of America

In 1921 President Harding presented Madame Curie with a gram of radium bought for her by the Americans.

Pres. Warren G. Harding escorting Madame Curie down steps to south grounds

of the White House 5/20/21

“We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it.

It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity.”

Radium Institute, Paris 1919• Under Curie’s direction

the Radium Institute in Paris became a world center for the study of radioactivity.

• Between 1919 and Curie's death in 1934, scientists at her Radium Institute published 483 works, including 31 papers and books by Curie herself.

• Until the end of her life she continued research to isolate, concentrate, and purify polonium and actinium.

Radium Institute, Warsaw, 1932

• Thanks to the initiative of Maria, Radium  Institute was opened in Warsaw. Skłodowska laid the corner stone in 1925.

• Seven years later, in the presence of the next President of the Republic of Poland, Skłodowska formally opened the Institute, which was directed by her sister Bronislawa.

• Now called the Maria Sklodowska-Curie Institute of Oncology.

Farewell• Marie Curie – Sklodovska

died on July 4, 1934.• “The disease was an

aplastic pernicious anemia of rapid, feverish development” (due to long exposure to radiation)

• She was buried twice: On July 6, 1934, she in the same cemetery in Sceaux with Pierre. Over 60 years later the remains of Pierre and Marie Curie were re-interred in France's national mausoleum, the Panthéon, in Paris.

• She is the first woman which has been laid to rest under the famous dome of the Pantheon in Paris (1995) for her own merits.

• She received 15 gold medals, 19 degrees, and many other honors.

Curie – Sklodowska Remembered

“Marie Curie is, of all celebrated beings, the only one whom fame has not corrupted.”

Albert Einstein Maria Curie-Sklodowska Museum in Warsaw,

Poland

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Tributes• As one of the most famous female scientists to date, Marie Curie has been an icon in the scientific world and has

inspired many tributes and recognitions.

• The curie (symbol Ci), a unit of radioactivity, is named in honour of her and Pierre,[36][37] as is the element with atomic number 96 — curium.

• Three radioactive minerals are named after the Curies: curite, sklodowskite, and cuprosklodowskite.• Skłodowska-Curie's likeness appeared on the Polish late-1980s inflationary 20,000-złoty banknote. Her likeness

also has appeared on stamps and coins, as well as on the last French 500-franc note, before the franc was replaced by the euro.

• Marie Curie was voted the "Most inspirational woman in science" in a 2009 poll carried out by New Scientist magazine on behalf of the L'Oréal UNESCO 'For Women In Science' programme. Curie received 25.1 per cent of all the votes cast, nearly twice as many as second-place Rosalind Franklin (14.2 per cent).[38][39]

• Polish institutions named after Maria Skłodowska–Curie include:• Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, in Lublin, founded in 1944;• Soviet postage stamp• Medallion, University at Buffalo• Maria Skłodowska–Curie Institute of Oncology, in Warsaw• French institutions named after Maria Skłodowska–Curie include:• Pierre and Marie Curie University, the largest science, technology, and medicine university in France, and the

successor institution to the faculty of science at the University of Paris, where she taught; it is named in honor of her and Pierre. The university is home to the laboratory where they discovered radium.

• The Curie Institute and Curie Museum, in Paris• In 2007, the Pierre Curie Paris Métro station was renamed the "Pierre et Marie Curie" station.• American institutions named after Maria Skłodowska–Curie include:• Curie Community at the Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine, in Chicago, a memorial gathering room for

students at the university• In Bayside, Queens, New York, another school named for her, Marie Curie M.S. 158, specializes in science and

technology; as does Curie Metropolitan High School — located in Archer Heights, on Chicago's Southwest Side — which has a Technical, Performing Arts and IB program

• The Maria Skłodowska-Curie Medallion, a stained-glass panel created by Jozef C. Mazur, may be found at the University at Buffalo Polish Room.

• Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon starred in the 1943 U.S. Oscar-nominated film, Madame Curie, based on her life. "Marie Curie" also is the name of a character in a 1988 comedy, Young Einstein, by Yahoo Serious.

• More recently, in 1997, a French film about Pierre and Marie Curie was released, Les Palmes de M. Schutz. It was adapted from a play of the same name. In the film, Marie Curie was played by Isabelle Huppert. Unlike the 1943 drama, Les Palmes de M. Shutz is a light comedy.

• A KLM McDonnell Douglas MD-11 (registration PH-KCC) is named in her honor.[40]

Maria Curie - Sklodowska University, est. 1944;

Currently, 36,000 students; international exchange programs.

“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.”