MARIE CURIE (1867-1934)

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by Susan Marie Frontczak

If asked, “What does an atom look like?” quite possibly you have a mental image of paths orbiting a central core. You might or might not be familiar with the terms electron or nucleus.  But you likely have come across such a picture, to represent a thing too small to be seen by the naked eye. That model of an atom did not exist before Marie Curie had studied radioactivity and, with others, had begun to unravel the structure of the atom – thereby refuting the ancient Greek concept that atom means “something that cannot be divided.”  Because of the Curies’ discoveries, we see matter differently. Ensuing from the discovery of radioactivity, we also have radiation treatment for cancer (first studied by the Curies), radiocarbon dating, nuclear energy, and smoke detectors in our homes, to name a few benefits.

There is nothing magic in Marie Curie’s revolutionary insight. Both her recognition that radioactivity is an atomic property and her discovery of two new elements, polonium and radium, derived from her insistence on measurement over mere observation, exhaustive (and exhausting) experimentation, and logical deduction.

Marie and her husband Pierre envisioned scientific discoveries as belonging to all humanity. They declined to patent the process for isolating radium from the raw mineral pitchblende, on the grounds that this would be “contrary to the scientific spirit.” One can debate the wisdom of their choice, in that they sacrificed a fortune in doing so, and the companies who did take up the process profited handsomely. Meanwhile, they worked in very crude and difficult conditions. Later in life Marie lobbied for scientists to retain rights to their discoveries, and receive financial benefit from them, for the sake of continuing their research. But she stuck to her assessment that “Humanity certainly needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit.”

In running her own laboratory, Marie Curie’s vision embraced creating opportunities for women to enter scientific fields. Her legacy includes her daughter Irene Curie-Joliot, who earned a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1935, and her granddaughter Helene Langevin, an eminent nuclear physicist today at the age of 84. But her influence reaches far beyond family connections – Marie Curie opened the doors of science to women worldwide. In her laboratory in 1931, an astonishing one-third of the nearly 40 students and assistants were women. Her legacy persists: Today the two countries with the highest percentage of women with degrees in physics are her adopted home of France and her homeland Poland. Women have contacted me through my web site from places as far-flung as Cyprus, Puerto Rico, the Netherlands, and Pakistan to tell me they credit Marie Curie’s story with their entry into chemistry or physics.

Scientifically, philosophically, and practically, Marie Curie’s vision has reshaped our world.

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SUSAN MARIE FRONTCZAK

Susan Marie Frontczak has portrayed Marie Curie for a dozen years, in 22 states, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Europe. For 18 years, she has worked as a full-time storyteller and living history presenter, bringing history and literature to life, creating stories from thin air, or honing personal experience into tales worth telling again and again. Other personae include Eleanor Roosevelt, Irene Castle, and Mary Shelley. Susan Marie has also been instrumental in developing Colorado Humanities’ Young Chautauqua program. Her motto is, “Give me a place to stand, and I will take you somewhere else.” To learn more about Susan Marie Frontczak, go to www.storysmith.org.

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MARIE CURIE

• Discovered radioactivity, which led to a fundamental revision in the theory of matter

• First European woman to earn a doctorate in the sciences

• First woman to receive a Nobel Prize. First person (and one of only four persons) to receive a second Nobel Prize

• First woman to teach at the University of Paris (known as the Sorbonne) in its 600+ year history. For the first time in France, men at university level learned from a woman.

• Opened the doors of science to women worldwide 

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QUOTES ABOUT MARIE CURIE

“Marie Curie is, of all celebrated beings, the one person uncorrupted by fame.” - Albert Einstein           

“Marie Curie believed that the measure of a nation’s civilization could be based on the percentage of its budget it spent on education.”   - Marie Curie’s son-in-law, Frédéric Joliot-Curie

“At my urgent request the Curie laboratory, in which radium was discovered a short time ago, was shown to me. … It was a cross between a stable and a potato-cellar, and, if I had not seen the worktable with the chemical apparatus, I would have thought it a practical joke.” - W. Ostwald (circa 1904)

“The world has run raving mad on the subject of radium. . . .”  - George Bernard Shaw

“It was my good fortune to be linked with Mme. Curie through twenty years of sublime and unclouded friendship. I came to admire her human grandeur to an ever growing degree. Her strength, her purity of will, her austerity toward herself, her objectivity, her incorruptible judgment – all these were of a kind seldom found joined in a single individual. . . . The greatest scientific deed of her life – proving the existence of radioactive elements and isolating them – owes its accomplishment not merely to bold intuition but to a devotion and tenacity in execution under the most extreme hardships imaginable, such as the history of experimental science has not often witnessed.” - Albert Einstein

“I have to keep going, as there are always people on my track. I have to publish my present work as rapidly as possible in order to keep in the race. The best sprinters in this road of investigation are Becquerel and the Curies.”  - Ernest Rutherford

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QUOTES BY MARIE CURIE

“Life is not easy for any of us, but what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted in something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.”  

“We cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individual. Toward this end, each of us must work for his own highest development, accepting at the same time his share of responsibility in the general life of humanity – our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.”

 “Humanity certainly needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit.

“Without the slightest doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organised society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research.”

"Our life has been altogether spoiled by honors and fame.”                             

“[T]he invasion of publicity . . . was a cause of real suffering for us and had all the effect of disaster.”       

 “I don’t know . . . whether . . . I could live without the laboratory.”                     

TIMELINE
November 7, 1867	Birth of Maria Sk?odowska in Warsaw
November 3, 1891	Registers as student at University of Paris (“The Sorbonne”), earning degrees in physics (1893) and mathematics (1894)
July 26, 1895	Marriage to Pierre Curie
September 12, 1897	Birth of daughter Irene Curie
1898	Discovery of the elements polonium and radium
1903	Earns doctorate in physics from University of Paris
December 1903	Receives Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Pierre Curie and Henri Bequerel, for the discovery of radioactivity
December 6, 1904	Birth of daughter Eve Curie
April 19, 1906	Death of Pierre Curie
November 5, 1906	Assumes Pierre’s teaching position at University of Paris, becoming the first woman to teach there in its 600+ year history
December 1911	Receives Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of the elements radium and polonium
1914-1918	Develops 20 mobile and 200 stationary X-ray units to serve the wounded via the Red Cross during World War I
1921 & 1928	Visits to the United States; receives a gift of 1 gram of radium from the women of the United States, presented by President Harding
July 4, 1934	Death of Marie Curie due to radiation exposure
December 1935	Daughter Irene Joliot-Curie and her husband Frederic Joliot-Curie receive Nobel Prize in Chemistry

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