Video: First female Nobel laureate Marie Curie: a life full of hardships and personal dramas
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
The woman who revolutionized science, became twice Nobel laureate, could hardly call herself happy. Marie Curie spent half of her life in poverty and experienced several love dramas. There was so much self-denial and sacrifice in her ministry to science that it not only brought her glory, but as a result caused her death. Her brainchild - radium discovered by Curie - also killed her, because scientists then did not yet suspect about the mortal danger of this element. Marie Curie was the first in everything - even in the fact that she became the first person on earth to die from radiation.
Marie Curie has been a member of 106 scientific institutions and communities and holds 20 honorary scientific degrees. Science was for her the main business of life, and she realized this at an early age. The family of Poles Skłodowski had 5 children, mother suffered from tuberculosis, father worked as a teacher. They lived in very cramped conditions. However, Marie graduated from high school with a gold medal.
For 4 years she worked as a governess in a wealthy family so that her sister had the opportunity to get an education in France. In Poland, she had to go through the first personal drama: she fell in love with the owners' son, they wanted to get married, but his parents were categorically against the poor and nondescript girl. She went to Paris to her sister Marie disappointed in love and desperate to find personal happiness.
At 24, Marie entered the Sorbonne, went headlong into her studies, lived in a tiny apartment without heating and water. At the age of 27, she met Pierre Curie, and this meeting became fateful for her. Pierre was for her not only a husband and father of children, but also a scientific companion. Together they discovered two new chemical elements - radium and polonium.
Marie Curie revolutionized more than just science. She became the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize, the first woman to receive a doctorate from a French university, and the first female professor to teach at the Sorbonne. In addition, she became the first among both men and women twice to receive the Nobel Prize for achievements in two fields of science - physics (1903) and chemistry (1911).
Pierre and Marie Curie lived very modestly. After the discovery of radium, they refused to file a patent and use the research results for commercial purposes, although they barely had enough money to conduct experiments.
The Curies were unaware of the mortal danger of their experiments. Pierre carried samples of the substance in his pockets to demonstrate to the curious its ability to glow in the dark. Marie wore an amulet on her chest - an ampoule of radium, and also kept it on the bedside table as a night light. Both suffered burns, pain and constant fatigue, but did not associate these symptoms with radium. Pierre never found out the truth - he died under the wheels of a horse-drawn carriage in 1906.
Before receiving the second Nobel Prize, Marie experienced a terrible scandal that erupted in the press due to the fact that she had an affair with a married man. One of the newspapers even published her love letters. Then everyone turned against her, and the only one who supported her was Albert Einstein. Thanks to him, she returned to work.
At 66, Marie died of leukemia, which developed as a result of prolonged exposure to radioactive substances. Her eldest daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie, continued her work and also won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Nowadays women in science are not uncommon, and they often achieve outstanding results. The most famous of them are in bizarre illustrations about women in science Rachel Ignotofsky.
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