Marie Curie: Pioneer of Radioactivity

Marie Curie

• Marie Curie, born Maria Skłodowska in Warsaw, Poland, in 1867, faced significant obstacles in her pursuit of scientific knowledge.
• Due to societal limitations against women's education, she had to study in secret and save money to attend the Sorbonne in Paris.
• She met and married Pierre Curie, a physicist, and they began a scientific partnership that would revolutionize understanding of radioactivity.
• Curie and her husband, Pierre, were fascinated by Henri Becquerel's discovery of radioactivity and dedicated their research to the study of uranium ore.
• Their research led to the discovery of two new radioactive elements: Polonium (named after Poland) and Radium.
• The pair's groundbreaking discovery earned them, along with Becquerel, the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics.
• Curie and her husband, Pierre, conducted landmark research and published jointly.
• They are credited with coining the term "radioactivity" and establishing the field of atomic physics.
• Curie's work also advanced cancer treatment by collaborating with André-Louis Debierne to isolate radium for therapeutic applications.
• In 1911, Curie became the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, this time for Chemistry.
• During World War I, Curie used money from her Nobel Prize to fund 20 mobile X-ray units, nicknamed "Petites Curies," for battlefield use.
• She drove one of the trucks herself to scan wounded soldiers.
• Curie helped establish the Curie Foundation to research cancer treatment using radium.
• She toured the United States twice to raise money for this research.
• Curie's prolonged exposure to radiation contributed to her death from aplastic anemia at age 66.

Henri Becquerel

• Becquerel (1852-1908) was interested in phosphorescence and wanted to see if there was a connection between phosphorescence and X-rays.
• He took a salt containing uranium, which glowed after exposure to light, and placed it on photographic plates.
• He left these in a dark drawer overnight and the next day found the plates exposed, proving that the uranium had emitted radiation.
• His discovery of natural radioactivity earned him the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with Pierre and Marie Curie.
• In recognition of his work, the unit of radioactivity is named after him: the becquerel.

Ernest Rutherford

• Rutherford's research transformed our understanding of the atom, identifying its components and revealing its inner structure.
• He demonstrated that atoms can disintegrate into smaller constituents, and described two types of radiation: gamma and beta radiation.
• He published his discovery of alpha and beta radiation, and the disintegration of elements in 1899.
• He proposed the Rutherford model of the atom, stating that electrons orbit a tiny nucleus.
• Rutherford discovered the proton and transformed one element into another through nuclear fission.
• He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908.
• He performed the first transmutation of elements by bombarding nitrogen atoms with alpha particles, causing them to transform into oxygen atoms.
• Rutherford was born into a farming family in Brightwater, New Zealand.
• He earned a scholarship to Canterbury College (now the University of Canterbury), and later a scholarship to Cambridge University, where he worked with J.J. Thomson.
• Thomson recommended Rutherford for a professorship in physics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Niels Bohr

• Along with Rutherford, Bohr helped understand atomic structure.
• He explained that electrons could only exist in specific energy levels or "shells" orbiting the nucleus.
• Electrons could change energy levels by absorbing or emitting defined packets of energy (quanta).

António Egas Moniz

• Moniz, a highly regarded Portuguese neurologist, made significant contributions to brain imaging and psychosurgery.
• His work profoundly impacted psychiatry in the 1940s and 1950s.
• In 1927, Moniz invented the angiogram, a type of X-ray used to visualize blood vessels, enabling the identification of brain tumors.
• Moniz was a pioneer in psychosurgery.
• He developed a technique called lobotomy (or leucotomy), involving a needle and a wire loop (leucotome) to cut through the connections of the frontal lobes.
• His groundbreaking work earned him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1949, for the invention of prefrontal lobotomy.

Lise Meitner

• Meitner, an Austrian theoretical nuclear physicist, coined the term "nuclear fission" and developed the theory explaining the splitting of uranium atoms' nuclei.
• She was born in Vienna, Austria, the third of eight children.
• Her father, a lawyer, fostered an intellectually stimulating environment at home.
• She showed an early aptitude for mathematics.
• She became one of the first women to enter the University of Vienna's physics program.
• She earned her doctorate and became the second woman at the university to receive a physics doctorate.
• She moved to Berlin to work as a departmental assistant at Max Planck's physics institute.
• She was awarded the Leibniz Medal and became the head of the physics department at the University of Berlin.
• She escaped Nazi Germany and settled in Sweden.
• She published, along with her nephew Otto Frisch, the theory of nuclear fission in Nature on February 11, 1939.
• She was awarded the Enrico Fermi Award by the US Atomic Energy Commission, along with Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann.
• Meitner helped to create the theoretical basis for nuclear fission, but the 1944 Nobel Prize for the discovery of nuclear fission was awarded to Hahn alone.

Albert Einstein

• Einstein was born in Ulm, southern Germany, to Jewish parents.
• He showed a talent for mathematics from a young age.
• He published four scientific papers in 1905 that garnered significant attention from academics worldwide.
• His work as a professor at the University of Berlin led to the publication of "General Theory of Relativity" in 1915.
• He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 for his contributions to theoretical physics.
• He emigrated to the US in 1933 due to the rise of Nazism and the persecution of Jews in Germany.
• He signed the Russell-Einstein Manifesto in 1955, raising awareness about the dangers of developing nuclear weapons.
• He explained the photoelectric effect, which forms the foundation of quantum theory.
• He proved the existence of atoms and molecules, confirming Brownian motion's usefulness.
• He developed special relativity, explaining motion at constant velocities and proving that the speed of light is constant from all observers.
• He also proved that space and time are related.
• He developed general relativity, expanding upon Newton's theories and explaining gravity as the distortion of space-time due to massive objects.
• He published his formula E=mc², demonstrating the equivalence of mass and energy.
• Astronomers observed the bending of starlight as it passed the Sun during a solar eclipse in 1919, confirming Einstein's general theory of relativity.

Satyendra Nath Bose

• He was born in Kolkata, India, in 1894.
• He wrote about the behavior of light particles (photons) in a 1924 paper that Einstein published.
• His work led to the prediction of a fifth state of matter.

Bose-Einstein Condensate

• BECs occur when matter, specifically bosons (particles named after Bose), have very low energy levels and are close to absolute zero.
• Scientists first produced BECs in 1995, which is a new field of superfluids and superconductors.

Explore the life and achievements of Marie Curie, a groundbreaking physicist who defied societal norms to become a leading scientist. Learn about her partnership with Pierre Curie, their discovery of Polonium and Radium, and their joint Nobel Prize in Physics. This quiz delves into her legacy in atomic physics and the significance of her work in understanding radioactivity.