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Home , Curie (unit), Curie family, Curie temperature, Henri Becquerel, Marguerite Perey, Marie Curie

Historical profile Elements of inspiration Unerring in her scientific enquiry and not afraid of hard work, Marie set a shining example for generations of . Bill Griffiths explores the life of a chemical heroine SOURCE / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY LIBRARY PHOTO SCIENCE / SOURCE SCIENCE

42 | World | January 2011 www.chemistryworld.org On 10 December 1911, only elements then known to or ammonia, having a water- In short was awarded the exhibit radioactivity. Her samples insoluble carbonate akin to BaCO3 in chemistry for ‘services to the were placed on a condenser plate  It is 100 years since and a chloride slightly less soluble advancement of chemistry by the charged to 100 and attached Marie Curie became the than BaCl2 which acted as a carrier discovery of the elements to one of Pierre’s electrometers, and first person ever to win for it. This they named radium, and ’. She was the first thereby she measured quantitatively two Nobel prizes publishing their results on Boxing female recipient of any Nobel prize their radioactivity. She found the  Marie and her husband day 1898;2 French spectroscopist and the first person ever to be minerals pitchblende (UO2) and Pierre pioneered the Eugène-Anatole Demarçay found awarded two (she, and chalcolite (Cu(UO2)2(PO4)2.12H2O) study of radiactivity a new atomic spectral line from Henri had shared the to be more radioactive than pure and discovered two new the element, helping to confirm 1903 prize for their work on , so reasoned that they must elements, radium and its status. Since it was much more ). Such was Marie’s impact contain other, stronger radioactive polonium radioactive than polonium the on the scientific world – and the constituents. On 12 April 1898 she  The pair had to process Curies concentrated their efforts role of women within it – that one presented her findings, writing tonnes of minerals under on it. It was clear that much more of the four stated goals of the 2011 that ‘these minerals may contain an horrific conditions to pitchblende was needed to obtain international year of chemistry is to element which is much more active extract tiny amounts of significant quantities of radium, celebrate the centenary of her prize. than uranium’.1 She and Pierre radium and they eventually obtained some decided that she would concentrate  Their daughter, Irène, 8000kg of waste ore from Austria. Early years on the chemical aspects of element also won a Nobel prize They worked for the next four years She was born Maria Salomea separation, while he would study in chemistry, and Marie under appalling conditions in a Sklodowska on 7 November 1867 in their radiation properties. is remembered in the leaking unventilated shed, freezing central , . Both her names of universities, in the winter and dreadfully hot by parents were teachers (her mother Polonium and radium institutes, charities and summer. Marie wrote: ‘I had to spend died when Maria was 10) and she was In April 1898, Marie dissolved the element a whole day mixing a boiling mass highly motivated and well educated. pitchblende in HCl and treated the with a heavy rod nearly as large Poland was then a subject state of solution with H2S; uranium and as myself. I would be broken with Russia and women were excluded remained in solution, but fatigue at the day’s end’. Nevertheless from advanced study, so in 1891 she the precipitated sulfides remained she described life in ‘this miserable joined her sister Bronia in , highly radioactive. After further shed’ as ‘the best and happiest years enrolling at the Paris Sorbonne manipulation this radioactive of our life’, and was much honoured University and taking her physics material was found to co-precipitate when Lord and other famous and degrees with with . In July she and Pierre scientists visited her there. outstanding grades in 1893–4. She published a paper (coining the word They worked with 20kg batches of met Pierre Curie in the spring of 1894, ‘radio-active’ in its title), presented by pitchblende: grinding, dissolving and and they married in 1895 at a civil Becquerel to the of refining them to small quantities of ceremony in Sceaux in the Parisian – founded in 1666, this institution was solutions. In 1902 they isolated 0.1g. suburbs. They were both rather as prestigious in as the Royal of anhydrous RaCl2 after thousands shy and unworldly, caring little for Society in Britain. They suggested, of recrystallisations from the more- material things; their chief recreation for the first time, that radioactivity soluble BaCl2 in HCl, measuring the was cycling, but they shared too a was a phenomenon associated with atomic weight of radium as 225. deep appreciation of science and an the , and proposed that the In 1901 Pierre and Becquerel obsessive dedication to it. Their first new element, once its existence published a paper on the daughter Irène was born in 1897. was confirmed, should be called physiological effects of radioactivity, Pierre’s work on , polonium.2 and Pierre showed, with medical crystal symmetry and at They realised that pitchblende The Curies isolated collaborators, that radiation from the Municipal School of Industrial must contain yet another highly traces of radium and radium (and subsequently from Physics and Chemistry (EPCI) in radioactive material, not precipitated polonium from tonnes of gas which it and other Paris is still fundamentally important, from its solutions by H2S, (NH4)2S pitchblende radioactive elements emit) could especially the concepts of the destroy cancerous cells. (above which lose their magnetism) and The physics Nobel prize the Curie law relating magnetism In June 1903 Pierre came to the UK and temperature. Marie published to give a discourse at London’s Royal her first paper in 1897 on the Institution. Many eminent scientists magnetisation of steels but looked were present including Sir William for a new research topic, which she Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, Lord found in radioactivity. A year after Kelvin and the William Wilhelm Röntgen’s observation Ayrton. Ayrton’s wife Hilda, a of x-rays in 1895, remarkable in her own right, discovered radioactivity of uranium and Marie became firm friends. from photographic plates which, Marie completed her doctoral when wrapped in black paper close to in June 1903. Later the same uranium or its salts, showed images day Ernest (himself to when developed. become a chemistry Nobel laureate Marie was allocated a damp in 1908) met the Curies for dinner; room of the EPCI for her doctoral Marie trusted him and they formed research, and showed that among a a lasting friendship. That evening, wide variety of inorganic materials, when Pierre showed him some

uranium and thorium were the radium glowing blue in the dark, THEODORE www.chemistryworld.org Chemistry World | January 2011 | 43 Historical profile SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY PHOTO SCIENCE

Rutherford noted that Pierre’s Academy of Sciences and in June he Outside of the laboratory, the cobbled Rue Dauphine he was fingertips were raw and inflamed, gave his Nobel lecture in . Pierre and Marie were run over by a horse dray and instantly as indeed were Marie’s. Others In December 1905 their keen cyclists killed. Marie was devastated. He was had observed that both Curies had daughter, Eve Denise, was born. buried in Sceaux and later Marie and burns, which must have arisen her children moved there. from their handling of radium. This Troubled times Marie was given Pierre’s Sorbonne and inhaling radon formed from On 19 April 1906, Marie left the Marie’s mobile x-ray vans chair, thereby becoming the first radium’s decay almost certainly Sorbonne to give the children their brought radiology to the female professor in France. That adversely affected their general lunch; Pierre walked in the rain to front lines in the first year Lord Kelvin wrote to The Times health. After the first world war in meet his publishers. When crossing world war newspaper suggesting that radium particular there were increasing was a compound of containing reports of illness and sometimes five helium , but Rutherford deaths amongst those who had robustly disagreed, saying that worked with radium salts for cancer radium fulfilled every test required of therapy, as paints for luminous an element. Marie resolved to prove watches, and in quack ‘cures’ for a that this was so. In 1907 she made host of ailments. 0.4g of RaCl2 and re-determined In November 1903 the Curies and the atomic weight as 226.45. In 1910 Becquerel were awarded the physics she isolated radium as a shiny-white Nobel prize for their work on metal by electrolysing RaCl2 in radioactivity. Becquerel attended the mercury and distilling off the latter Stockholm ceremony, but neither of from the amalgam.3 the Curies went: Pierre was ill and , a pioneer in overwhelmed with teaching duties , one-time student and Marie was recovering from a of Pierre and long a friend of the miscarriage. It was a mixed blessing Curies, succeeded Pierre as professor – financially helpful (70 000 francs), of physics and chemistry at the EPCI. but it exposed them to international Although married with four children acclaim and scrutiny. Marie later he was separated and had a small wrote that ‘the overturn of our apartment near Marie’s laboratory voluntary isolation was a cause of where they sometimes met. In 1911 real suffering for us’. his study was burgled, letters from A professorship was created Marie stolen and published. They for Pierre at the Sorbonne with were mainly domestic in nature, an accompanying post for Marie; Marie advising him about how to

ALAMY that year Pierre was elected to the deal with his marital problems, 44 | Chemistry World | January 2011 www.chemistryworld.org but the press made much of them. equal opportunities in education and Opinions differ as to whether they work. , who knew her were lovers in this brief affair, but well, wrote: ‘Marie Curie is the only there is no evidence whatsoever that one whom fame has not corrupted’. she had enticed him from his wife. Langevin challenged the publisher The Curie legacy of the letters to a duel; pistols were The extended won drawn but neither duellist fired, no less than six Nobel prizes – in and with this farce public interest addition to Marie and Pierre’s three, waned and the affair ended. Much Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie later Marie’s granddaughter Hélène won the chemistry prize in 1935 ‘in married Langevin’s grandson. recognition of their synthesis of new radioactive elements’, and Eve Curie’s The chemistry Nobel prize husband, Labouisse, received In 1910 Marie was proposed for the 1965 peace prize on behalf of election to the Academy of Sciences. Unicef. The Joliot-Curies worked Had she been elected she would at Marie’s Radium Institute from have been its first female member, 1934 on α-particle bombardment

BILL CLARKE / LEWES THEATRE CLUB PRODUCTION ‘ACTIVE ELEMENTS’ BY JOHN FISHER JOHN BY ELEMENTS’ ‘ACTIVE PRODUCTION CLUB THEATRE LEWES / CLARKE BILL but in 1911 she lost by one vote to the of elements, transmuting these inventor Edouard Branly. She was to radioactive products (for deeply upset and never applied again; example converting aluminium to for years she stopped publishing in radioactive phosphorus). Although the society’s journals. Rutherford and others had earlier On 8 she was transmuted stable elements, awarded the Nobel prize in these were the first transformations chemistry for discovering polonium to produce radioactive . In and radium. This time she went to 1939, , a student Stockholm to receive it, taking her of Marie’s at the Radium Institute, sister Bronia and elder daughter discovered as a radioactive Irène, and in her acceptance speech of , and in mentioned that she alone had coined 1962 she was elected as the first the term radioactivity but that female member of the Academy of polonium and radium were joint Sciences, the honour so shamefully discoveries with Pierre. later re-interred in the Panthéon in Marie toiling to extract denied to Marie in 1911. In 1912 the Paris, France’s national burial place radium from pitchblende The Curie name lives on in many and the Sorbonne decided that an for the famous, as was Langevin. in her ‘hut’ – as portrayed ways, including the Pierre and Marie ‘Institut du Radium’ be established in Marie Curie was a truly remarkable in a modern theatre Curie University in Paris; the Maria the newly-named Rue Pierre Curie, woman. Despite the exhausting production Curie-Sklodowska University in and Marie became director of its labour of her early work with , Poland; the Curie Institute Curie laboratory. At the outbreak pitchblende and bringing up two (from the earlier Radium Institute) in of the first world war, using her children, she was physically quite Paris, and the Marie Curie charities. knowledge of x-rays, she set up a Red frail and became more so, probably Also named after the Curies were Cross radiology unit. Her daughter due to . In Pierre the element curium, the Curie Irène, now aged 17, helped her and she found a partner who shared Marie has been (Ci) unit of radioactivity and the nursed on the front lines. In 1920 her obsessive love for science and commemorated in stamps, minerals curite, sklodowskite, and she met the influential American aversion to publicity. She was never a banknotes and in this cuprosklodowskite. But perhaps journalist Marie Meloney who feminist, though she believed strongly stained glass medallion by Marie’s most lasting legacy is persuaded her to visit the USA in 1921 that men and women should have Polish artist Jozef Mazur the inspirational example set to to raise money for radium research. generations of scientists – both There she met the president Warren male and female – that rigorous and Harding, and returned to France determined investigation can lead to with a gram of radium and a generous remarkable discoveries. research grant. Her eyesight now deteriorated Bill Griffith is professor of inorganic badly from cataracts, and her general chemistry at Imperial College London, health, never very good, worsened. UK In March 1925 Irène presented her doctoral thesis on α-radiation at References and Further reading 1 M Sklodowska-Curie, Compt. Rend. Acad. Sci., the Sorbonne, and in 1926 married 1898, 126, 1101 Frédéric Joliot, a physicist at the 2 P Curie and M Sklodowska-Curie, Compt. Rend. Radium Institute. From 1932 Marie’s Acad. Sci., 1898, 127, 175 (Po); P Curie, health declined further – though M Sklodowska-Curie and G Bémont, Compt. Rend. Acad. Sci., 1898, 127, 1215 (Ra) she continued working – and she 3 M Curie and A Debierne, Compt. Rend. Acad. died on 4 July 1934 from leukaemia Sci., 1910, 151, 523 (Irène was to die later from the same A Romer, Radiochemistry and the Discovery of Iso- disease, aged 59). Marie was buried topes. Dover, New York 1970 – contains transla- tions of (1) and (2) and some other papers at Sceaux with Pierre, and Polish soil R Reid, Marie Curie. Heinemann, Collins, London was scattered over her coffin. Her 1974

remains and those of Pierre were US BUFFALO, OF UNIVERSITY ROOM, POLISH

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