, Third Republic) - French physicist, one of the first researchers of radioactivity, member of the French Academy of Sciences, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1903. Husband of Marie Skłodowska-Curie.
Biography
Born into a doctor's family, he was the youngest of two sons.
Received home education. Already at the age of 16, he received a bachelor's degree from the University of Paris, and two years later he became a licentiate in physical sciences. He worked with his older brother Jacques as an assistant in the mineralogical laboratory of the Sorbonne. Together they discovered the piezoelectric effect. Then he moved to the Sorbonne School of Physics and Chemistry, and from 1895 he headed the department.
Study of radioactivity
Family
- Wife - Maria Sklodowska-Curie.
- Children - Irene Joliot-Curie, Eva Curie.
- Brother - Jacques Curie
- Father - Eugene Curie
Scientific activity
Pierre Curie formulated a number of ideas about symmetry. He argued that one cannot consider the symmetry of any body without taking into account the symmetry of the environment.
Scientific achievements
- Discovery of the piezoelectric effect
- Discovery of polonium
- Discovery of radium
Memory
- The artificial chemical element curium is named after Pierre and Marie Curie.
- In 1956, postage stamps were issued in the USSR and Bulgaria dedicated to P. Curie.
- In 1970, the International Astronomical Union named a crater on the far side of the Moon named after Pierre Curie.
Essays
- Oeuvres, P., 1908; in Russian Transl.: Favorites works, M. - L., 1966 (ser. Classics of Science).
Bibliography
- Curie M. Pierre Curie..., trans. from French M., 1968.
- Staroselskaya-Nikitina O. A. The life and work of Pierre Curie // Proceedings of the Institute of History of Natural Science and Technology. 1957, vol. 19.
- Shpolsky E. V.// Advances in physical sciences. 1956, t. 58, v. 4;
- Khramov Yu. A. Curie Pierre // Physicists: Biographical Directory / Ed. A. I. Akhiezer. - Ed. 2nd, rev. and additional - M.: Nauka, 1983. - P. 149. - 400 p. - 200,000 copies.(in translation)
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Notes
Links
| Pierre Curie in Wikiquote |
- // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.
- Curie Pierre- article from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
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Excerpt characterizing Curie, Pierre
He imagined that by his will there was a war with Russia, and the horror of what had happened did not strike his soul. He boldly accepted the full responsibility of the event, and his darkened mind saw justification in the fact that among the hundreds of thousands of people who died there were fewer French than Hessians and Bavarians.Several tens of thousands of people lay dead in different positions and uniforms in the fields and meadows that belonged to the Davydovs and state-owned peasants, in those fields and meadows in which for hundreds of years the peasants of the villages of Borodin, Gorki, Shevardin and Semyonovsky had simultaneously harvested crops and grazed livestock. At the dressing stations, about a tithe of space, the grass and soil were soaked in blood. Crowds of wounded and unwounded different teams of people, with frightened faces, on the one hand wandered back to Mozhaisk, on the other hand, back to Valuev. Other crowds, exhausted and hungry, led by their leaders, moved forward. Still others stood still and continued to shoot.
Over the entire field, previously so cheerfully beautiful, with its sparkles of bayonets and smoke in the morning sun, there now stood a haze of dampness and smoke and smelled of the strange acidity of saltpeter and blood. Clouds gathered and rain began to fall on the dead, on the wounded, on the frightened, and on the exhausted, and on the doubting people. It was as if he was saying: “Enough, enough, people. Stop it... Come to your senses. What are you doing?"
Exhausted, without food and without rest, the people of both sides began to equally doubt whether they should still exterminate each other, and hesitation was noticeable on all faces, and in every soul the question arose equally: “Why, for whom should I kill and be killed? Kill whoever you want, do whatever you want, but I don’t want any more!” By evening this thought had equally matured in everyone’s soul. At any moment all these people could be horrified by what they were doing, drop everything and run anywhere.
But although by the end of the battle people felt the full horror of their action, although they would have been glad to stop, some incomprehensible, mysterious force still continued to guide them, and, sweaty, covered in gunpowder and blood, left one by three, the artillerymen, although and stumbling and gasping from fatigue, they brought charges, loaded, aimed, applied wicks; and the cannonballs flew just as quickly and cruelly from both sides and flattened the human body, and that terrible thing continued to happen, which is done not by the will of people, but by the will of the one who leads people and worlds.
Anyone who looked at the upset behinds of the Russian army would say that the French only have to make one more small effort, and the Russian army will disappear; and anyone who looked at the behinds of the French would say that the Russians only have to make one more small effort, and the French will perish. But neither the French nor the Russians made this effort, and the flames of the battle slowly burned out.
The Russians did not make this effort because they were not the ones who attacked the French. At the beginning of the battle, they only stood on the road to Moscow, blocking it, and in the same way they continued to stand at the end of the battle, as they stood at the beginning of it. But even if the goal of the Russians was to shoot down the French, they could not make this last effort, because all the Russian troops were defeated, there was not a single part of the troops that was not injured in the battle, and the Russians, remaining in their places , lost half of their army.
The French, with the memory of all the previous victories of fifteen years, with the confidence of Napoleon's invincibility, with the consciousness that they had captured part of the battlefield, that they had lost only one-quarter of their men and that they still had twenty thousand intact guards, it was easy to make this effort. The French, who attacked the Russian army in order to knock it out of position, had to make this effort, because as long as the Russians, just like before the battle, blocked the road to Moscow, the French goal was not achieved and all their efforts and the losses were wasted. But the French did not make this effort. Some historians say that Napoleon should have given his old guard intact in order for the battle to be won. Talking about what would have happened if Napoleon had given his guard is the same as talking about what would have happened if spring had turned into autumn. This couldn't happen. Napoleon did not give his guards, because he did not want it, but this could not be done. All the generals, officers, and soldiers of the French army knew that this could not be done, because the fallen spirit of the army did not allow it.
Napoleon was not the only one who experienced that dream-like feeling that the terrible swing of his arm was falling powerlessly, but all the generals, all the soldiers of the French army who participated and did not participate, after all the experiences of previous battles (where, after ten times less effort, the enemy fled), experienced the same feeling of horror before that enemy who, having lost half the army, stood as menacingly at the end as at the beginning of the battle. The moral strength of the French attacking army was exhausted. Not the victory that is determined by the pieces of material picked up on sticks called banners, and by the space on which the troops stood and are standing, but a moral victory, one that convinces the enemy of the moral superiority of his enemy and of his own powerlessness, was won by the Russians under Borodin. The French invasion, like an enraged beast that received a mortal wound in its run, felt its death; but it could not stop, just as the twice weaker Russian army could not help but deviate. After this push, the French army could still reach Moscow; but there, without new efforts on the part of the Russian army, it had to die, bleeding from the fatal wound inflicted at Borodino. The direct consequence of the Battle of Borodino was the causeless flight of Napoleon from Moscow, the return along the old Smolensk road, the death of the five hundred thousandth invasion and the death of Napoleonic France, which for the first time at Borodino was laid down by the hand of the strongest enemy in spirit.
Absolute continuity of movement is incomprehensible to the human mind. The laws of any movement become clear to a person only when he examines arbitrarily taken units of this movement. But at the same time, from this arbitrary division of continuous movement into discontinuous units stems most of human error.
The so-called sophism of the ancients is known, which consists in the fact that Achilles will never catch up with the tortoise in front, despite the fact that Achilles walks ten times faster than the tortoise: as soon as Achilles passes the space separating him from the tortoise, the tortoise will walk ahead of him one tenth of this space; Achilles will walk this tenth, the tortoise will walk one hundredth, etc. ad infinitum. This task seemed insoluble to the ancients. The meaninglessness of the decision (that Achilles would never catch up with the tortoise) stemmed from the fact that discontinuous units of movement were arbitrarily allowed, while the movement of both Achilles and the tortoise was continuous.
By taking smaller and smaller units of movement, we only get closer to the solution of the problem, but never achieve it. Only by admitting an infinitesimal value and an ascending progression from it to one tenth and taking the sum of this geometric progression do we achieve a solution to the question. A new branch of mathematics, having achieved the art of dealing with infinitesimal quantities, and in other more complex questions of motion, now provides answers to questions that seemed insoluble.
This new, unknown to the ancients, branch of mathematics, when considering questions of motion, admits infinitesimal quantities, that is, those at which the main condition of motion is restored (absolute continuity), thereby correcting that inevitable mistake that the human mind cannot help but make when considering instead of continuous movement, individual units of movement.
Pierre Curie was a born Parisian, raised in the family of a doctor and received a good education, first at home, then at the Sorbonne University in Paris. At the age of 18, he was already a licentiate in physical sciences - this academic degree stood between a bachelor and a doctor. In the first years of his scientific career, he and his brother worked in the laboratory of the Sorbonne, where they discovered the piezoelectric effect.
In 1895, Pierre Curie married Maria Sklodowska, and after a few years they began exploring together. This phenomenon, which consists of a change in the composition and structure of atomic nuclei with the emission of particles, was discovered in 1896 by Becquerel. This French physicist knew the Curies and shared his discovery with them. Pierre and Maria began studying the new phenomenon and discovered that thorium, compounds, all uranium compounds and uranium are radioactive.
Becquerel left work on radioactivity and began to explore phosphors that interested him more, but one day he asked Pierre Curie for a test tube with a radioactive substance for a lecture. It was in the pocket of his vest and left a redness on the skin, which Becquerel immediately reported to Curie. After this, Pierre conducted an experiment on himself, carrying a test tube with radium on his forearm for several hours in a row. This caused him to develop a severe ulcer that took several months to resolve. Pierre Curie was the first scientist to discover the biological effects of radiation on humans.
Curie died in an accident, being run over by a carriage at the age of 46.
Maria Skłodowska-Curie
Maria Skłodowska was a Polish student, one of the best students at the Sorbonne. She studied physics, conducted independent research and became the first female teacher at the Sorbonne. Three years after her marriage to Pierre Curie, Maria began working on her doctoral dissertation on radioactivity. She studied this phenomenon no less enthusiastically than her husband. After his death, she continued her work, became a professor in the department, which was Pierre Curie, and even headed the radioactivity research department at the Radium Institute.
Marie Skłodowska-Curie isolated pure metal radium, proving that it was independent. She received the Nobel Prize for this discovery and became the only woman in the world with two Nobel Prizes.
Marie Curie died due to radiation sickness, which developed as a result of constant interaction with radioactive substances.
Discoveries of P. and M. Curie
Let's return to radioactivity. Becquerel continued his research into the phenomenon he had discovered. He considered it a property of uranium similar to phosphorescence. Uranium, according to Becquerel, “represents the first example of a metal exhibiting a property similar to invisible phosphorescence.” He considers the radiation properties of uranium to be similar to the properties of light waves. The nature of the new phenomenon, therefore, was not yet understood, and the word “radioactivity” did not exist.
Becquerel discovered and carefully studied the property of uranium rays to make air electrically conductive. His note on November 23, 1896 appeared almost simultaneously with the note of D. Thomson and E. Rutherford, who showed that X-rays make air electrically conductive due to their ionizing effect. Thus, an important method for studying radioactivity was discovered. Becquerel's messages on March 1 and April 12, 1897, which presented the results of observations of the discharge of electrified bodies under the influence of uranium radiation, contained an important indication that the activity of uranium preparations remained unchanged for more than a year.
Soon other researchers, and above all the spouses Pierre and Marie Curie, became involved in the study of the new mysterious phenomenon. Marie Sklodowska-Curie began researching radioactive phenomena at the end of 1897, choosing the study of these phenomena as the topic of her doctoral dissertation. In April 1898, her first article on radioactivity was published. Later in her doctoral dissertation, she wrote: “I measured the intensity of uranium rays, taking advantage of their property of imparting electrical conductivity to the air... For these measurements, a metal plate coated with a layer of uranium powder was used.”
Already in this first work, M. Sklodowska-Curie investigated whether there were other substances with properties similar to uranium. She found that “thorium and its compounds have the same property.” At the same time, a similar result was published in Germany by Schmidt.
She further writes: “Thus, uranium, thorium and their compounds emit Becquerel rays. I called substances that have this property radioactive. Since then this name has become generally accepted.” So, from July 1898, when a new term in physics was published, the important concept of “radioactivity” began to live. Note that this July article was already signed by the spouses Pierre and Marie Curie.
Pierre abandoned his subject matter and actively became involved in his wife’s work. In an abandoned barn of the School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry, converted by the couple into a laboratory, titanic work began with the waste of uranium ore obtained from Joachimsthal (now Joachimow). In her book “Pierre Curie,” Marie Curie describes the conditions under which this work was carried out: “I had to process up to twenty kilograms of primary material at a time and, as a result, line the barn with large vessels with chemical sediments and liquids.
It was grueling work - transferring bags into vessels, pouring liquids from one vessel to another, stirring boiling material in a cast-iron vessel for several hours in a row.”
It was not only exhausting, but also dangerous work: the researchers did not yet know the harmful effects of radioactive radiation, which ultimately led Marie Skłodowska-Curie to her untimely death.
The hard work brought rich rewards. In the same year, 1898, articles appeared one after another reporting on the production of new radioactive substances. In the July issue of the reports of the Paris Academy of Sciences, an article by P. and M. Curie “On a new radioactive substance contained in resin ore” appeared. Having described the method of chemical isolation of a new substance, which marked the beginning of radiochemistry, they wrote further: “We ... believed that the substance that we extracted from the resin ore contained some kind of metal, hitherto not yet noticed, in its analytical properties close to bismuth. If the existence of this new metal is confirmed, we propose to call it polonium, after the name of the country from which one of us comes."
The activity of polonium turned out to be 400 times higher than the activity of uranium. In December of the same year, an article by the Curie and Bemont spouses, “On a new, highly radioactive substance contained in resin ore,” appeared. Here the discovery of a new, highly radioactive substance, similar in chemical properties to barium, was reported. According to the point of view expressed by M. Sklodowska in her first work, radioactivity is a property of substances that is preserved in all chemical and physical states of matter.” “With this point of view,” the authors wrote, “the radioactivity of our substance, not being caused by barium (barium is not radioactive - Ya.K.), should be attributed to some other element.”
A chloride compound of a new element was obtained, the activity of which is 900 times higher than the activity of uranium. A line was discovered in the spectrum of the compound that did not belong to any of the known elements. “The arguments we have listed,” the authors of the article wrote in conclusion, “make us think that this new radioactive substance contains some new element, which we propose to call radium.”
The discoveries of polonium and radium completed a new stage in the history of radioactivity. In December 1903, A. Becquerel, Pierre and Marie Curie were awarded the Nobel Prize. We provide brief biographical information about the Nobel laureates of 1903.
Henri Becquerel was born on December 15, 1852 in the family of the famous physicist Alexandre Edmond Becquerel, famous for his studies of phosphorescence. Alexander Edmond's father, Henri's grandfather, Antoine Cesar Becquerel, was also a prominent scientist. Becquereli: grandfather, son, grandson - lived in the house of the French naturalist Cuvier, owned by the National Museum of Natural History. It was in this house that Henri made his great discovery, and the plaque on the facade reads: “In the laboratory of applied physics, Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity on March 1, 1896.”
Henri studied at the Lyceum, then at the Polytechnic School, after which he worked as an engineer at the Institute of Transport. But soon grief befell him: his young wife died, and the young widower with his son Jean, the future fourth physicist Becquerel, moved to his father in the Museum of Natural History. At first he worked as a tutor at the Polytechnic School, and in 1878, after the death of his grandfather, he became his father's assistant.
In 1888, Henri defended his doctoral dissertation and, together with his father, conducted diverse scientific work. A year later he was elected to the Academy of Sciences. Since 1892 he became a professor at the National Museum of Natural History. The discovery of radioactivity turned Becquerel's fortunes around. He is a Nobel laureate, holder of all the insignia of the Paris Academy of Sciences, and a member of the Royal Society of London. In the summer of 1908, the Academy elected him permanent secretary of the physics department. Becquerel died on August 25, 1908.
Pierre Curie was born on May 15, 1859 in Paris in the family of a doctor. Eugene Curie, Pierre's father, was at a combat post during the revolution of 1848, during the days of the Paris Commune, providing assistance to wounded revolutionaries and communards. A man of high civic duty and courage, he instilled these qualities in his sons Jacques and Pierre. The boys, sixteen-year-old Jacques and twelve-year-old Pierre, helped their father during the days of the barricade battles of the Commune.
Pierre was educated at home. His extraordinary abilities and diligence helped him pass the bachelor's exam at the age of sixteen. The young bachelor attended lectures at the Sorbonne, worked in the laboratory of Professor Leroux at the Pharmaceutical Institute, and at the age of eighteen became a physics licentiate. From 1878 he worked as an assistant at the University of Paris. Since that time, he and his brother Jacques have been studying crystals. Together with Jacques they discover piezoelectricity. In 1880, an article by Pierre and Jacques Curie “Formation of polar electricity under the influence of pressure in hemihedral crystals with oblique faces” was published. They formulate the main conclusion of the work as follows: “Whatever the reason, whenever a hemihedral crystal with oblique edges is compressed, electrical polarization of a certain direction occurs; whenever this crystal is stretched, electricity is released in the opposite direction.”
Then they discover the opposite effect: the deformation of crystals under the influence of electrical voltage. They first studied the electrical deformation of quartz, created piezoquartz and used it to measure weak electrical charges and currents. Langevin used piezoquartz to generate ultrasound. Piezoquartz is also used to stabilize electrical oscillations.
After five years of fruitful work, the brothers parted ways. Jacques Curie (1855-1941) went to Montpellier and studied mineralogy; Pierre was appointed in 1883 as head of practical work in physics at the School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry, which had just been opened by the Paris municipality. Here Curie carried out his research on crystallography and symmetry, part of which he carried out with Jacques, who came to Paris from time to time.
In 1891, Pierre Curie turned to experiments on magnetism. As a result of these experiments, he clearly separated diamagnetic and paramagnetic phenomena according to their dependence on temperature. Studying the dependence of ferromagnetic properties on temperature, he found the “Curie point”, at which ferromagnetic properties disappear, and discovered the law of dependence of the susceptibility of paramagnetic bodies on temperature (Curie’s law).
In 1895, Pierre Curie married Maria Skłodowska.
Rice. 59. Laboratory of P. and M. Curie
Since the discovery of radioactivity, the new field of research has captivated the young couple, and since 1897 they have been working together to study it. This creative collaboration continued until the day of Pierre's tragic death. On April 19, 1906, having returned from the village where he and his family spent the Easter holidays, Pierre Curie participated in a meeting of the Association of Teachers of Exact Sciences. Returning from a meeting, he, while crossing the street, fell under a dray and was killed by a blow to the head.
“One of those who was the true glory of France has faded,” Marie Curie wrote in her biography of Pierre Curie.
Maria Skłodowska-Curie. Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw on November 7, 1867 in the family of a teacher at a Warsaw gymnasium. Maria received good home training and graduated from high school with a gold medal.
In 1883, after high school, she worked as a teacher in families of wealthy Poles. Then she lived at home for some time and worked in the laboratory of her cousin, A.I. Mendeleev’s employee Joseph Bogussky.
In 1891 she left for Paris and entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Sorbonne. In 1893 she received a licentiate degree in physical sciences, and a year later became a licentiate in mathematical sciences.
At the same time, she carried out the first scientific work on the topic “Magnetic properties of hardened steel”, proposed by the famous inventor of color photography Lippmann. While working on the topic, she moved to the School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry, where she met Pierre Curie.
Together they discovered new radioactive elements, together they were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1903, and after Pierre's death, Marie Curie became his successor at the University of Paris, where Pierre Curie was elected professor in 1900. On May 13, 1906, the first female Nobel Prize laureate became the first female professor at the famous Sorbonne. She was the first in the world to begin giving a course of lectures on radioactivity. Finally, in 1911, she became the first scientist to win the Nobel Prize twice. This year she received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
During the First World War, Marie Curie created x-ray machines for military hospitals. Just before the war, the Radium Institute was opened in Paris, which became the place of work for Curie herself, her daughter Irene and son-in-law Frederic Joliot. In 1926, Maria Sklodowska-Curie was elected an honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
A severe blood disease that developed as a result of prolonged exposure to radioactive radiation led to her death on July 4, 1934. In the year of her death, Irène and Frederic Joliot-Curie discovered artificial radioactivity. The glorious path of the Curie dynasty continued brilliantly.
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Surely, the history of all times and peoples does not know another example of two married couples in two generations making such a significant and invaluable contribution to science as the Curie family. Of course, we will talk about the most famous couple of world science - the Polish Maria Skłodowska and the Frenchman Pierre Curie. They say that the relationship in their marriage was as close to perfection as our earthly life allows. Although, at first glance, they were completely different, they were united by many things: exact sciences, indiscriminate eating, preference for the floor of other furniture, love of flowers. Maria wrote about her husband: “My husband is the limit of my dreams. He is a real heavenly gift, and the longer we live together, the more we love each other,” and their youngest daughter Eva, in her mother’s biography, described their wedding this way: “On these happy days, the most beautiful of the ties that have ever united a man are made.” With a woman. Two hearts beat in unison, two bodies merge into one, two gifted brains get used to thinking together.”
We invite you to remember how it all began: the story of meeting, an ideal relationship, the discovery of a new element, radium, after all, this is also a kind of little love story. I wonder if this famous breakthrough in physical science would have happened if they had not met? Their joint work with radioactivity eventually led to a complete revision of the fundamentals of physics and chemistry.
Maria Sklodowska was born in 1867 into a poor large family with five children, but the study of science was held in high esteem by them. And this is not surprising, because my father taught physics at the gymnasium, and my mother, before she fell ill with tuberculosis, was the director of that same gymnasium. Maria studied hard from an early age and was extremely ambitious. In her youth, she knew the brother of Mendeleev himself, who predicted a great future for her in the exact sciences. However, immediately after finishing school, Maria had to think about making money through tutoring and even worked for some time as a governess in a rich Polish family. It was during this period that she promised herself to never get involved with men - the owners’ son broke her heart when, after their decision to get married, he followed the lead of his father, who planned to marry his son profitably, and abandoned her. And she needed to work in order to support her older sister Bronya, who was receiving a higher medical education in Paris. This was their plan: since they could not study at the same time, they decided that while one was receiving an education, the other would support her. The University of Warsaw did not accept women in those years, so it was decided to go to Paris. And so, Bronya graduated from the university and is getting married, which means she can take her sister with her. Sklodowska enters the Sorbonne and immerses herself in her studies, leading a reclusive lifestyle. She crossed out all kinds of entertainment, parties and similar fun from her life plans and lived quite modestly, depriving herself of all pleasures and comfort. Maria all the time just studied with great diligence and sometimes forgot about everything except books. Even about food. After studying, he continues to work without regard for everything else: friends, love, appearance. I didn’t cook food - so as not to waste extra time, I ate only the simplest foods.
Pierre Curie was born in 1859 into a family of hereditary physicians. He categorically did not accept the school education system and wanted to study on his own schedule, so his parents transferred him to home schooling. This was a wise and correct decision, since it brought results very quickly: at the age of 16, Pierre already became a bachelor of the Sorbonne. Since the age of 18, he and his brother have been working in one of the laboratories, and together they managed to discover the piezoelectric effect. Although Curie's work was not particularly popular in France, it became widely known abroad. Relationships with women also did not work out; he dreamed of meeting someone who would share his scientific interest. “Women of genius are a rarity,” said Pierre, which confirms his frequent mistakes when choosing a lover.
Acquaintance.
The young people met while visiting Józef Kawalski, who invited both of them to his place so that they could conduct an experiment together on the magnetic properties of different types of steel. At first sight, Pierre was captivated by the appearance and grace of the young Polish woman, but most of all he was shocked by her hands - her fingers were eaten away by acid, which made it clear: Sklodowska was capable of any sacrifice for the sake of science. “I was interested in the light of his eyes and the feeling of some kind of restlessness emanating from his high stature. His speech, slightly slow and thoughtful, his simplicity, serious and at the same time youthful smile evoked trust,” Maria wrote about their first meeting. From time to time they met at the Physical Society while discussing the latest scientific achievements, and Pierre's first gift to his beloved was the newly printed report “On symmetry in physical phenomena. Symmetry of electric and magnetic fields”, signed “Mademoiselle Sklodowska - with respect and friendship from the author.” Their inseparable craving for science and pure friendship over time grew into real strong love. But, to Pierre’s first proposal of marriage, Maria refused. She - stubborn, principled, who had isolated herself behind a wall of loneliness after unsuccessful relationships in her youth - did not give in. Skłodowska saw her future in Poland; she wanted to be the master of herself and her time. Pierre was mad and did not understand, because in France there are all the conditions for science. Still, after the persuasion of her family, at the end of her studies she answered her beloved “yes”...
Family life.
The wedding was not like typical weddings of those years - no white dress, no magnificent feast, no honeymoon. Maria was dressed in a blue woolen suit and a blue striped blouse; the newlyweds did not order rings, did not arrange even the most modest reception, and did not get married. Their only wealth was a pair of bicycles, bought with money donated as a wedding gift from relatives, on which they went on a “wedding wandering” through the villages of Ile-de-France. They chose for themselves a difficult life of poverty, filled with difficulties, but the Curies never complained. Maria, having chosen the topic of uranium radiation, decided to write her doctoral dissertation, her husband supported her. Without knowing it, she became a pioneer in this field. During the experiments, a lot of routine work had to be redone; four years passed in attempts to synthesize a new, unknown radioactive substance, during which it was necessary to do the work of a scientist, an engineer, a laborer, and a loader. Carrying bags of raw materials, heavy vessels, pouring liquids, stirring boiling solutions for hours, performing complex experiments. At that time, nothing was known about the dangers of radiation. During all this time, the couple processed 8 tons of uraninite!
And then there is great luck. It would seem that when hope was lost and there was no money to continue the experiments, incredibly Marie Skłodowska-Curie managed to isolate a decigram of radium, a new chemical element. She kept it for the rest of her life. The whole world learns about the discovery of the Curie family, followed by a huge success, the Nobel Prize in Physics, which helped scientists get out of poverty and open new laboratories with modern equipment. Factories for the production of radium were built, it seemed to humanity that the potential of the new element was enormous in many areas, then it was believed that radium could heal. The couple hoped for a new stage in life, when they could devote plenty of time to science and their daughters, and equip their home. But fate decreed otherwise. One day, Pierre, on his way to the laboratory, left the house and was run over by a horse-drawn carriage. The wheel crushed his head and the physicist died instantly at the age of 46. There were no more men in Maria's life. She lived for another 28 years, slightly recovering from a prolonged depression after the death of her beloved husband, received a second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry, headed the Radium Institute, created mobile X-ray machines for military hospitals, wrote a biography of Pierre Curie, and made some other discoveries. In the end, she died from her own invention - constant interaction with radioactive substances led to leukemia. But the couple believed that radiation could become a great medicine.
Disappointed in their first love, people can hide in a “shell” - completely devote themselves to some activity and avoid everything connected with the opposite sex. Maria Sklodowska did exactly the same thing when she came to Paris to study at the university. But her “shell” was destined to crack one day and reveal to the world the miracle of true love.
The Skłodowski family lived hard and poorly in their native Poland. In order for her older sister Bronislava to receive a higher education, Maria, after graduating from high school, had to work as a governess in a rich house. There she met her first love - KazimIr, the owner's son, who could not resist the charm of young Maria. However, Kazimir’s parents considered that the governess was not a match for their son. The young man obeyed his parents’ will and refused to meet with Maria. Having learned that social status was more important to him than love, the girl cried incessantly. It seemed to her that her heart was broken forever and that no man would ever settle in it again.
Now Maria has only one love left - science. As soon as the opportunity presented itself, Maria went to her sister in Paris and entered the Sorbonne. The girl wanted to get two diplomas at once - physics and mathematics, which means she had to study twice as much.
From that moment on, Maria Skłodowska’s life began as a dedicated scientist. She hardly communicated with people, she spent all her time doing experiments, forgetting to eat. Maria was sure that not a single man would pay attention to a woman whose hands were eaten away by acid and whose thoughts were occupied with formulas. But Maria was wrong - it was thanks to science that she met her future husband.
One day, a physicist acquaintance introduced Sklodowska to a man who was working on a similar scientific problem. Maria saw a man with striking appearance and character. His gaze was dreamy, and his slight absent-mindedness spoke of his passion for what he loved. Pierre Curu, like Sklodowska, was a physicist and recently discovered the ability of a substance to produce an electric charge when changing shape. Of course, the couple immediately found something to discuss.
Having parted, they both could not wait to meet again. Leafing through textbooks in her tiny room, Maria thought about what brilliant ideas Pierre had and what an amazing person he was. And Curie, wiping the instruments in his own laboratory, recalled the enterprising girl, her revolutionary theories for science and blond curls. For the first time in his life, Pierre noticed that in front of him was a woman, and not just a physicist...
Their romance, like their entire subsequent life, took place in the laboratory, with test tubes and physical experiments. They wrote love notes to each other in the margins of scientific brochures, and their best dates were lectures by famous scientists. Pierre felt that he had finally found a woman who understood him, and Maria was happy that she was seen as more than just a poor student or a promising scientist.
A year later, Pierre and Maria got married. They didn’t even have money to buy wedding rings, and the bride’s wedding attire was replaced by a simple dark dress, in which it was convenient to carry out experiments. The newlyweds were not sad because of their poverty. They loved each other – and science!
After the wedding, the couple began their famous research into radioactivity. They carried out the experiments in a simple barn, without equipment, they had to take turns sitting with the children so that the experiment would not be interrupted. But all this did not cool their scientific fervor - and especially their love. Science, which at first became a “shell” for Pierre and Maria, with which they isolated themselves from people, helped them unite with each other and open up to the world around them. In their publications, they never separated each other and always wrote “we have discovered”; they unanimously decided not to patent their discoveries so that anyone could benefit from the results, and together they received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903. In their marriage, Pierre and Maria had two daughters, one of whom, Irene, later also became a scientist and also received a Nobel Prize. After many years of a happy marriage, full of scientific work, Marie Curie would write in her diary: “We were created to live together, and our marriage was meant to take place.”