Marie Curie - the woman with the two Nobel prizes

She was one of the most outstanding researchers of history and still the only woman who has won two Nobel Prizes. The physicist Marie Curie was born 144 years ago and is celebrated not only in her native Poland.

The physicist Marie Curie was born on 7th November 1867 as Maria Sklodowska in Warsaw world. Exactly 100 years ago, her 44th Birthday, it was announced that a second Curie Nobel prize would be awarded. In chemistry, she was awarded for discovering the elements radium and polonium. Eight years earlier (1903) they had already received the Nobel Prize in Physics for their research on radioactivity. The famous Madame Curie as a scientist who had emigrated at the age of 24 years to study in Paris, is still the only woman who has won two Nobel Prizes.

Since the uranium can be known in its pure form, white Marie Curie that shine by itself, weak but visible. The Curies suspect a case of luminescence, an afterglow that also characterizes other substances, if they were previously exposed to strong light sources. Quite accidentally discovered now, in 1896, Becquerel that uranium emits even if it remained in perpetual darkness. On the track he comes to him, as he in the closet on a photographic plate a piece of uranium and its outline sets out clearly recognizes afterwards.
The discovery of radium

The effects are reminiscent of those rays by Wilhelm C. X-ray was produced a year earlier on electromagnetic means - a revolutionary innovation. The X-rays and there are also fantastic options that override the now so-called Becquerel interest from researchers.

Until the 30-year-old student Marie Curie later a topic for her doctoral thesis examined and expires on the Becquerel rays. Together with her husband, she examines uranium, they examined pitchblende.

As the rays will turn the air conductive, Curie can easily measure their strength by an electrical appliance. What they soon electrified: The pitchblende, the raw material emits four times as strong as the extracted uranium. How can this result come about?

There is only one explanation: the pitchblende must contain at least one more, far more radiant contain metal. In handwork Curie first extracted polonium. And, finally: radium, the most radiant matter, which was then known.
Marie Curie suffered from anemia

Radium became the buzzword, restaurants, cinemas and other was named after him. Radiation therapy, whether with radium or other material that drew as expected in conventional medicine. Otto Hahn developed from the bright fabrics of artificial nuclear fission in 1938, Robert Oppenheimer, the atomic bomb in 1945. And the pioneers?

Marie Curie during their work increasingly complained about fatigue, Marie died in 1934 at the age of 67 years from anemia, which some researchers attributed to their treatment with radium. Pierre died in 1906 in a traffic accident. Whether Becquerel's death in 1908 was connected with his work, is considered uncertain.

In 1984 the notebook from Marie Curie for the equivalent of 136 000 Mark was auctioned in the presence of a civil defense officials. The book is still as strong today, exudes that it is often unreadable.