Marie Curie: A Life (Radcliffe Biography Series)

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Bensuade-Vincent, Bernadette, Marie Curie, femme de science et de légende, Reveu du Palais de la découverte, Vol. 16. n ° 157 avril 1988, 15-30. In a preface to Pierre Curie’s 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 cold in the winter; yet it was in that shed that they spent the best and happiest years of their lives. There they could devote themselves to work the livelong day. Sometimes they could not do their processing outdoors, so the noxious gases had to be let out through the open windows. The only furniture were old, worn pine tables where Marie worked with her costly radium fractions. Since they did not have any shelter in which to store their precious products the latter were arranged on tables and boards. Marie could remember 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 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 chemist, who was one of the first to realize the importance of the Curies’ research, traveled from Berlin to Paris to see how they worked. Neither Pierre nor Marie was at home. He wrote: “At my earnest request, I was shown the laboratory where radium had been discovered shortly before … It was a cross between a stable and a potato shed, and if I had not 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

Marie married another scientist, Pierre. They worked together to find out about the tiny parts, called elements, that make up everything in our Universe. A child’s grief: supporting a child when someone in their family has died (2009) by Di Stubbs (Winston’s Wish) In July 1898, Curie and her husband published a joint paper announcing the existence of an element they named " polonium", in honour of her native Poland, which would for another twenty years remain partitioned among three empires ( Russian, Austrian, and Prussian). [14] On 26 December 1898, the Curies announced the existence of a second element, which they named " radium", from the Latin word for "ray". [25] [32] [38] In the course of their research, they also coined the word " radioactivity". [14] Pierre and Marie Curie, c. 1903Many families have found this book useful when helping children to come to terms with the death of someone close. It tells the story of Badger’s peaceful death and his friends remembering what Badger taught them while he was alive.

a b c d e f g h i j k "Marie Curie – Research Breakthroughs (1807–1904)Part 2". American Institute of Physics. Archived from the original on 18 November 2011 . Retrieved 7 November 2011. 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. a b Robert William Reid (1974). Marie Curie. New American Library. p.6. ISBN 978-0-00-211539-1. Archived from the original on 11 June 2016 . Retrieved 15 March 2016. Unusually at such an early age, she became what T.H. Huxley had just invented a word for: agnostic.Marie and Pierre Curie‘s pioneering research was again brought to mind when on April 20 1995, their bodies were taken from their place of burial at Sceaux, just outside Paris, and in a solemn ceremony were laid to rest under the mighty dome of the Panthéon. Marie Curie thus became the first woman to be accorded this mark of honour on her own merit. One woman, Sophie Berthelot, admittedly already rested there but in the capacity of wife of the chemist Marcelin Berthelot (1827-1907). Marie Sklodowska, as she was called before marriage, 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 father. She had a brilliant aptitude for study and a great thirst for knowledge; however, advanced study was not possible for women in Poland. Marie dreamed of being able to study at the Sorbonne in Paris, but this was beyond the means of her family. To solve the problem, Marie and her elder sister, Bronya, came to an arrangement: Marie should go to work as a governess and help her sister with the money she managed to save 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.