Marie Curie

marie

Curie

Mother of modern physics

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Life

My name is Marie Curie and i was born in Varsavia in 1867. I was a Polish and naturalised-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. I also was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields.

radioactivity

In 1895, Wilhelm Roentgen discovered the existence of X-rays, although the mechanism behind their production is unclear. In 1896, Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium salts emitted rays with penetrating power similar to X-rays. Influenced by these two important findings, I decided to investigate uranium rays as a possible research area for my thesis and use an innovative technique to examine the samples. Fifteen years ago, my husband and his brother developed a version of an electrometer, a sensitive device used to measure electric charge. Using my husband's electrometer, she discovered that the uranium rays caused the air surrounding the sample to conduct electricity. I suspect that the radiation is not the result of interactions between molecules, but must come from the atoms themselves. This hypothesis was an important step in refuting the hypothesis that atoms are indivisible.

In December 1903 the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Pierre Curie, Henri Becquerel and me the Nobel Prize in Physics "in recognition of the extraordinary services we have rendered by our joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel."

I also won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of the elements polonium and radium, using techniques I invented for isolating radioactive isotopes. Under my direction, the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms by the use of radioactive isotopes.

Nobel Prize in Physics and Chemistry