Marie Curie's Research
With Pierre acting as her advisor, Marie spent several years purifying uranium
ore. It was a grueling task to isolate the "radioactive" substances
from tons of ordinary rock. Toiling over a giant vat, she worked out of
doors or in a drafty shed. This was a blessing in disguise because the vat
gave off poisonous radon gas. The Curies were not aware of this.
Marie proposed that the radiation came from inside the atoms. Other scientists
followed her lead and started to investigate the structure of atoms. She
discovered two new elements which the Curies named Radium (after "radiation")
and Polonium (after Poland). In 1903, the Curies and Henri Becquerel received
the Nobel Prize in physics for their combined research and discoveries on
radioactivity.
The Dangerous Beauty of Radium
The Curies had two daughters: Irene was born in 1897 and Eve in 1904. Pierre's
father took over the childcare duties as Marie and Pierre became more and
more involved in their work. Marie became pregnant again, but she suffered
a miscarriage probably due to high levels of radiation in her lab. One rainy
afternoon in April of 1906, Pierre was run over by a horse-drawn wagon and
died. Pierre had been experiencing severe pains in his legs, and this may
have caused the accident. Marie was devastated, and she turned to a close
friend of Pierre's, Paul Langevin, for companionship. Their love affair
was exposed by a tabloid newspaper, and a scandal resulted. Marie's reputation
and career were nearly destroyed. Then the Swedish Nobel committee announced
she had won the prize for chemistry!
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