MARIE SKLODOWSKA-CURIE (1867-1934) – A PERSON and SCIENTIST R. MIERZECKI MarieR.Mierzecki Sklodowska-Curi Polish Chemical Society ul. Freta 16, 00-227 Warsaw, Poland e-mail: [email protected]. Marie Sklodowska was born in Warsaw on 7-th November 1867. Her mother was a superior of a well known Polish girl’s boarding- school in the building Freta 16. These schoolrooms are to-day the seat of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Museum and of the Polish Chemical Society. The family had a flat in no more existing outbuilding of this building. At that time the name of Poland did not exist on political maps of Europe. Poland was divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria. Warsaw was the capital of the Russian sector called 1815-1864 the Polish Kingdom, but after the second Anti- russian insurrection in 1863 it was renamed to the Vistula Region. The tsarist authorities intensified the Antipolish and Russifying politics. In the only officially recognised Russian schools Polish was strictly forbidden even for the Polish students; private Polish schools severely supervised by the Russian school authorities gave no official laws. In 1869 the Warsaw Polish University was replaced by the Russian Imperial University. In such conditions the activity of the social class called "inteligencia" played an important role in the Polish population. This class was formed mostly of the nobles, who lost their fortunes as a result of tsarist repression, of some aristocrats, industrialists and representatives of learned professions. Their philosophy was a mixture of romanticism and positivism. Their principal aim was to develop the economic and cultural position of the Polish population having often no regard to the personal benefit. Maria Sklodowska was brought up in such tone. Her mother, born Boguska, as it has already been said, was a teacher. Her grand father J´ozef Sklodowski was a teacher and headmaster of a Polish secondary school in Lublin. Her father Wladyslaw was teaching physics and mathematics in a Russian state grammar-school. Maria was an extremely capable child, the youngest of four siblings. In the age of four she could read. She learned very quickly and had a very good memory. She knew to organise her duties and her time. She was aware of her ability. At the age of eight she lost her oldest sister and at the age of eleven her mother. Maria completed her primary education in a Polish private school and the secondary in a Russian school with a gold medal, when she was fifteen. She became so exhausted, that one year she had to spend on recreation. She smarted from the humiliation that hurtled Polish population from the tsarist authorities. In her future she will have many reasons to be humiliated. At first as a woman she could enter neither the Russian University in Warsaw, as his brother did, nor one of a Polish Universities in Lw´ow or in Cracow, as they accepted only men. Being aware of her ability she decided to study, but studying in Switzerland or in Paris was too expensive for her family. She conceived a plan. She decided to work as a governess for some years and save the wages for future studies. Three years she spent at a landlords’ family in the country. She had then time enough to enlarge her own knowledge and also to teach Czech. J. Phys. 49/S1 (1999) 29 R. Mierzecki peasant children to read and write in Polish. It was one of the duties of "inteligencia", but persecuted by Russian authorities. There she fell in love with the son of the family, a student of mathematics. A marriage with a governess was an inadmissible misal- liance for the family. They were constrained to resign their plans; the young man was the professor at Warsaw Technical University in free Poland. When her older sister Bronislawa was going to Paris to study medicine Maria started to work at a Warsaw family and with a part of her earning she enabled the study of her sister. Maria was aware that she had to increase her knowledge for studying at Sorbone. In Warsaw some lectures were given at a clandestine Polish university – having no stable place it was called "the flying university". Maria attended these lectures and learned practical methods of chemical analysis in the laboratory of the Museum of Industry and Agriculture. The laboratory organised by her cousin J´ozef Jerzy Boguski former assistant of Dimitrii Mendeleev, was lead by a Warsaw pharmacist Napoleon Millicer. Bronislawa was graduated in medicine in 1891, and in November this year Maria at the age twenty four began at Sorbone her dreamed and planned study in mathema- tics and physics. She reached her aim, which she endeavoured unswervingly. This consistency will be seen in most of her future activities. Maria’s hard discipline of learning and hard life conditions became a legend. Her brother-in-law, Kazimierz Dluski with prevalence had to bring Maria weakened by hunger to her sister. Maria has considered the meal preparation as a lost of time and had not enough money to go to luncheon bars. In 1893 Maria, a woman and a foreigner, came first (between 1825 students) at graduation as licenc´ee es sciences physiques. In may 1894 she was the second of all graduated as licenc´ee es sciences math´ematiques. One of her professors Gabriel Lippmann , who noticed her as a very good student, proposed her a research grant of the Soci´et´e pour l’Encouragement de l’Industrie Nationale for studying the magnetic properties of different metals. Maria had, however, no place to carry on this study. Just at that moment J´ozef Wierusz Kowalski, a professor of physics at the Swiss Fribourg University whose young wife got to know Maria in Poland, visited Paris. Kowalski was acquaintance of a French physicist Pierre Curie, who was ending his doctor thesis on the magnetic properties of substances at different temperature. Pierre was fascinated with Maria’s personality. Maria spent her summer holiday 1894 in Tatra Mountains where her sister and brother-in-law were building a tuberculosis sanatorium. As a graduated from Sorbona she tried also to get a post at the Polish University in Cracow. However, no women were accepted at this university. With tears in eyes she left this town. By the letters Pierre Curie persuaded her to return to Paris to continue her study and to marry him. It was not easy for Maria to decide to work in France and not for the Polish population, but she realised that in Poland she would have very limited possibilities and with her mental powers she would achieve much better results in Paris. In 1895 Marie and Pierre got married. Pierre’s father was a physician and the rank of his family resem- bled that of her own. Returning to Paris Maria decided to prepare a doctor thesis and to stand the test that would enable her to teach in secondary girl-schools. She passed this examination in 1896 and she was the first among other students. 30 Czech. J. Phys. 49/S1 (1999) Marie Sklodowska-Curi In 1896 Henry Becquerel discovered that uranium compounds themselves emit some rays blackening the photographic plate and ionising the air. This was an unexpected effect and some external conditions enabled its discovery. Becquerel’s observation was only qualitative. Marie Curie decided to study this effect for her doctor theses. The ionisation of the air could be evaluated quantitatively on the base of its electrical conductivity measured with a very sensitive potentiometer. Such a poten- tiometer, a piezoelectric potentiometer had been constructed some years ago by Pierre Curie and Marie used it in her study. First she observed that the ionising power of uranium compounds was dependent on the quantity of the uranium element in the sample. Studying different elements and compounds she found, however, the ionising power of the pitchblende being much greater that the uranium contents should explain it. This was an unexpected phenomenon, but this observation was a result of planned systematic examination of different substances and not an outcome of external events. Marie concluded that pitchblende had to contain an unknown element which radiated the Becquerel’s ray more intensively than uranium itself. With analytical methods learned in Warsaw laboratory she was able to separate step by step fractions from the pitchblende with constantly greater ionising activity. At last she gained a fraction containing mainly bismuth, but its ionising activity was 400 times greater than that of elementary uranium. These results seemed to be so interesting that Pierre decided to leave his own studies and join his efforts with those of his wife. They concluded that in this fraction the unknown element had to be present. They called the new element "polonium" in honour of Maria’s native land and in July 1898 they presented their discovery to the Academie des Sciences in Paris. It was a courageous decision, as they knew no physical or chemical properties of this element and it was only several years later that polonium appeared in the tables of elements. Maria made many efforts to receive pure polonium but all she succeeded was in 1910 the separation of a 2 mg samples that contained 0.1 mg of pure polonium salt. But during these studies already in autumn 1898 Marie and Pierre Curie with the help of Gustav B´emont found in a fraction containing barium an other new element that also ionised the air and in its spectrum a line λ = 3824 was found. In December 1898 the discovery of the element ‘radium’ was announced in the Academy.