Madame Curie

There is only one person to win two Nobel Prizes in science. That was Madame Marie Curie. She won the Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre and Henri Becquerel for the discovery of radioactivity. That was in 1903. Then in 1911 she won the Nobel Prize again. This time it was unshared and in Chemistry for the discovery of radium.

Maria Skłodowska - called Manya by her friends - had been an excellent student in her Native Poland and won a gold medal at her high school graduation. But the family had neither the funds for her to study at the university level and so Manya worked as a governess for a wealthy family north of Warsaw. She gave part of her money to help her sister, Bronya, though medical school but she found out she wasn't welcome after she and the adult son of the family got somewhat involved. Fortunately, Manya's dad had gotten a fairly well paid job as head of a reform school and he was able to take over the burden of both Bronya's costs and to put aside money for Manya who also got another job as a governess. Manya also got some training in chemistry from her cousin, Joseph Bogusk, who had actually been an assistant to Dmitri Mendelev, the Russian chemist who had crafted the periodic table. However, she, as all chemists, found that repeating experiments wasn't always so easy and when she had enough money, she headed for Paris which even then was a rather daring place where women could enroll at the Sorbonne. Manya was 24 years old and soon adopted the French name, Marie.

Marie completed her master's degree in physics in 1893 and mathematics in 1894. Her teachers had been impressed with her ability but also with her hard work. They had managed to get her a scholarship which helped ease her financial burden a bit.

Marie's diligence impressed not only her teacher but a group of industrial fat cats who - unusual by today's standards - had an interest in promoting fundamental research. Calling themselves the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry, they asked Marie to do a study relating magnetic properties of steel to their composition. But she didn't have a lab, and so one of her colleagues said he knew a man named Pierre Curie who was head of the labs at the Paris Municipal School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry. He might be able to help.

Pierre had gained a reputation as a specialist in magnetism, but had not yet completed his doctorate. But he said Marie could use one of his labs. These were the times before big science required big money, but even by those more lax standards, the labs Marie had were far from state of the art. But they were good enough and Marie worked to the satisfaction of everyone.

Pierre and Marie hit it off, both professionally and personally. Pierre had not met many women who loved science like he did and after he got to know Marie better, he suggested she should stay in France. She in turn suggested he should complete his doctorate, which he did. Then with his advanced degree, he was made a professor and in 1895, Marie and Pierre got married. Marie, though, wanted to keep working in science and Pierre was most agreable. Her father-in-law moved in to help take care of their daughter, Irène, who was born in 1897. A second daughter was born eight year later.

Marie also decided to study for her doctorate although she realized that a husband and wife team would be something of a paradox (Geddit? Paradox? Pair o' docs? Geddit?). Marie had learned about what was then a mysterious phenomenon. Some substances could be placed on wrapped photographic film and after the film was developed the film showed streaks of light. One of the substances that marked the film were compounds of uranium. What Marie found was that the film was always marked no matter what the uranium compound was. How much the film was marked was didn't depend on which uranium compound it was, but simply the amount of uranium that was on the film. At the time properties were expected to change depending on the actual compound of the element. She coined the term radioactivity to describe the mysterious rays that evidently came from the compounds.

Soon Marie found that a mineral called pitchblende gave off more radioactivity than expected from the uranium content. The obvious explanation was there was a another more radioactive material present. Pierre thought this was important enough that he dropped his current project to work with Marie. After two years they found there were actually two elements present. One was named radium and the other polonium. The radium was a decay product of thorium which was itself a product of uranium. Polonium formed from the decay of radium. Radium breaks down to radon which then falls apart to polonium.

What was unusual about Marie and Pierre's work was when they published their findings they didn't have enough of either element to physically weigh the material. Instead, they deduced the presence of the elements by the radioactivity. To bolster their claims they set to work isolating more of the substance. The French government was interested enough to give them some funding, again something relatively new.

Now one thing that Pierre found was that the radioactivity - particularly that of radium - could actually effect tissue. They immediately realized that there was a possibility that this could be turned to benefit in treating tumors. But somewhat paradoxically they didn't see the possibility that working with the substances in an old shed with no protection might also be hazardous. There were though warning signs. Marie, during the course of her experiments, had lost twenty pounds, which at the time was brushed off as due to the amount of work she had been doing.

Marie completed her doctorate with high praise from the examining board. That was in 1903 and that year she and Pierre were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics along with Henri Becquerel. Pierre was appointed professor at the Sorbonne and Marie was his "laboratory chief". Then three years later, on April 19, 1906, Pierre was heading toward the library after working that morning in the lab. The day was rainy and as he was crossing a street he slipped on the pavement in front of a horse and cart. The wheel passed over his head and he died on the spot. A month later, Marie was appointed to replace her husband as professor.

Marie was determined to keep up the research she and Pierre had begun and with the help of the Pasteur Institute and the French government she set up the Radium Institute. In 1911, she was awarded the Nobel Prize again, this time in Chemistry for her discovery of radium.

Things, though, were not always running smoothly chez Curie. Not only was she still raising her daughter while being a full time working mother and an internationally famous scientist, but after Pierre's death, she had also become, well, shall we say "involved" with a gentleman named Paul Langevin. Normally that was no problem except that Paul was currently married to someone else, a lady he didn't particularly like. Neither the fact that Marie was not from France nor that a muckraking newspaper published some of their letters helped calm things down. Marie had been abroad when the scandal hit, and when she returned she found herself encountering a mob of indignant French citizens who were outraged at her flouting of French family values. And this was France for crying out loud! Eventually things calmed down, and Marie continued to work at the Radium Institute.

By 1914, though, the War to End All Wars put an end to fundamental research. But Marie organized the efforts to create of fleet of X-ray machines that could be moved in trucks to the front. Even today mobile X-ray equipment can be touchy, but Marie's equipment was successfully used by doctors to help locate bullets, shrapnel, and broken bones of the wounded. Irène, then a teenager, helped her mom as an assistant. After the war the ladies returned to Paris and continued their studies. Marie, by the way, was the only woman at the first Solvay Congresses where she always sat on the front row with the big guys like Einstein while the younger whippersnappers like Heisenberg and Schrodinger stood in the back.

Marie died on July 4, 1934, at the age of 66. By the standards of the time that was a fairly ripe old age, but she died of aplastic anemia, almost certainly due to her long time exposure to radioactivity.

Sadly Marie missed the next Nobel Prize ceremony in 1935 where her daughter, Irène and her husband, Frédéric received the award in chemistry. Irène and Frédéric had discovered that previously stable isotopes could be made radioactive by bombardment with outside radiation, a phenomenon incorrectly called "artificial" radiation which it isn't or "induced" radiation which it is. Frédéric, by the way, added his wife's name after his own to to honor his famous in-laws. True there have been members of the same family to win Nobel prizes (sometimes shared as in the case of William Henry and William Lawrence Bragg or individually as with Niels and Aage Bohr). But no family has picked up more Nobel Prizes than the Curies.

References

"Marie Curie and the Science of Radioactivity", American Institute of Physics for the History of Physics, http://www.aip.org/history/curie/