THE MOTHER OF RADIOACTIVITY

 MARIE CURIE

THE MOTHER OF RADIOACTIVITY

Early Life

Marie Salomea Skłodowska Curie was born on 7 November 1867 at Warshaw, Poland as the fifth and youngest child of Wladislaw and Bronislava Skłodowska. Her parents ensured that their daughters were as well educated as their son. When she was ten years old, Maria began attending the boarding school of J. Sikorska; next, she attended a secondary school for girls, from which she graduated on 12 June 1883 with a gold medal. After a collapse, possibly due to depression, she spent the following year in the countryside with relatives of her father, and the next year with her father in Warsaw, where she did some tutoring. Unable to enroll in a regular institution of higher education because she was a woman, she and her sister Bronisława became involved with the clandestine Flying University, a Polish patriotic institution of higher learning that admitted women students. In 1891, at the age of 24 years, she went to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. In 1895 she married the French physicist Pierre Curie. 

Discoveries

Marie was curious about why uranium compounds had been found to give off rays. Her husband was intrigued on this matter and decided to help her. They had very little money so they could not afford to pursue research in a laboratory. The school agreed to let them use an old shed where the roof leaked. The shed was full of machinery and lumber. But there was enough room for equipment she needed. Pierre invented a machine that could measure the rays. Patiently Marie tested every element known, either itself or as a compound. Only thorium compounds give off rays the way uranium compounds did. Marie made up a new word for this- radioactive- to describe the chemicals that give off rays all the time. And she called the rays radioactivity.