Page 28 - e-Modul Bhs INggris MPK

CURIE[küˊ riˊ], the name of a distinguished French family whose most
prominent members have been scientists.

Marie Sklodowska Curie (1867-1934) was born in Warsaw, Poland, Nov.
7, 1867. She received her early education and scientific training from her father

and for several years taught in a Warsaw high school. In 1891 she moved to

Paris, where she studied physics at the Sorbonne, receiving her degree in 1893.
Two years later she married the French chemist Pierre Curie. After A.H

Becquerel’s investigation of the radioactive properties of uranium, she
commenced her researches in radioactivity, and in 1898 the discovery of

polonium and radium in pitchblende was announced, her husband having joined
in the research. It took them four more years of work to isolate radium in its pure

form; during this time they made numerous discoveries regarding the properties

of the new element. While they were conducting their researches, the Curies
suffered from financial hardship, and Marie Curie was obliged to teach physics in

a school for girls. In 1903 the Curies were awarded, with Henri Becquerel, the

Nobel Prize for physics. The process for obtaining radium they freely gave to the
world without any thought to their own gain.

Marie Curie became chief of the laboratory in her husband’s department
at the Sorbonne in 1903 and upon his death in 1907 succeeded him there as a

professor of physics. She was awarded a second Nobel Prize, for chemistry, in
1911 for her work on radium and its compounds, and in 1914 she was placed in

charge of the radioactivity laboratory of the new Institute of Radium in Paris. Here

she was later joined in her work by her daughter Irene, who married Mme. Curie’s
assistant Joliot. During World War I she organized radiological service for

hospitals. In 1921 she visited the United States, and in 1929 President Herbert
Hoover presented with a check, for $50,000 which had been raised by

subscription and which was intended for the purchase of a gram of radium for a
laboratory in Warsaw that she had helped to establish. In addition to the classic

Traitē de radioactivatē (1910), she published numerous papers on radium. Mme.

Curie died at Saint Celtemoz, Haute- Savoie, July 4, 1934.

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