Term Papers on MARIE CURIE

Term Paper Title	MARIE CURIE
# of Words	903
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	3.61

MARIE CURIE

            Marie Curie was born November 7, 1867 in Warsaw, Poland. She would become famous for her research into radioactivity, and was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.  Marie grew up in a family that valued education. As a young woman she went to Paris to study mathematics, chemistry and physics. She began studying at the Sorbonne in 1891, and was the first woman to teach there. While there, she met Pierre Curie, who taught physics at University of Paris.  They married and became lab partners.

            Marie Curie decided, in 1897, to try and understand the effects that these uranic rays possessed.  She came up with this due to Henri Becquerel‘s recent findings.  He had recently observed that uranium salt left an impression on a photographic plate in spite of its protective envelope.  However frail she was, she set about her work, handling tons of minerals. She noted that another substance, thorium, was "radioactive", a term she herself had coined. Together with Pierre, they demonstrated a major discovery that radioactivity was a property of the element or, of the atom. Marie then studied pitchblende, a uranic mineral in which she measured a much more intense activity than is present in uranium alone. She reasoned that there were other substances besides uranium that were radioactive, such as polonium and radium, which she discovered in 1898.

            In their experiments, Pierre observed the properties of the radiation while Marie, for her part, purified the radioactive elements. Their laboratory was nothing more than a miserable hangar, where in winter the temperature dropped to around six degrees. Despite their difficulty at obtaining any advances or loans, Marie and Pierre Curie refused to file a patent application that would have secured them financially. In their eyes, finding applications for radioactivity took priority over all.

            The Curie’s tested radium on skin and it caused a burn, then created a wound: its effect on man was proven. Soon radium was being used to treat malign tumors: Curietherapy was born. In 1903, Marie defended her thesis. Together with Becquerel, the Curies were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery of natural radioactivity. Their happiness was short lived. Pierre, weakened by radiation and overworked, was run over by a carriage. Marie was forced to continue alone. She took charge of educating her two children and she took up the position which her husband had finally obtained at the Sorbonne, and thus became the first woman to be appointed professor .

            Soon after the trajedy, she was honored with a Nobel Prize for Chemistry, for determining the atomic weight of radium. But her real joy was "easing human suffering". T...

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