Pierre And Marie Curie

Pierre and Marie Curie

and the Discovery of Polonium and Radium

Marie and Pierre Curie's pioneer research was again brought to mind when on 20 April last year, their bodies were taken from their place of burial at Sceaux, just outside Paris, and in a solemn ceremony were laid to rest under the mighty dome of the Panthéon. Marie Curie thus became the first woman to be accorded this mark of honor on her own merit. One woman, Sophie Berthelot, admittedly already rested there but in the capacity of wife of the chemist Marcelin Berthelot (1827-1907).

It was François Mitterrand who, before ending his fourteen-year-long presidency, took this initiative, as he said 'in order to respect the equality of women and men before the law and in reality' ('pour respecter enfin....l'égalité des femmes et des hommes dans le droit comme dans les faits'). In point of fact - as the press pointed out - this initiative was symbolic three times over. Marie Curie was a woman, she was an immigrant and she had to a high degree helped increase the prestige of France in the scientific world.

At the end of the 19th century, a number of discoveries were made in physics which paved the way for the breakthrough of modern physics and led to the revolutionary technical development that is continually changing our daily lives.

Around 1886, Heinrich Hertz demonstrated experimentally the existence of radio waves. It is said that Hertz only smiled incredulously when anyone predicted that his waves would one day be sent round the earth. Hertz died in 18...

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...sp; Becquerel's discovery had not aroused very much attention. When, just a day or so after his discovery, he informed the Monday meeting of l'Académie des Sciences, his colleagues listened politely, then went on to the next item on the agenda. It was Röntgen´s discovery and the possibilities it provided that were the focus of the interest and enthusiasm of researchers. Becquerel himself made certain important observations, for instance that gases through which the rays passed become able to conduct electricity, but he was soon to leave this field. Marie decided to make a systematic investigation of the mysterious 'uranium rays'. She had an excellent aid at her isposal - an electrometer for the measurement of weak electrical currents, which was constructed by Pierre and his brother, and was based on the piezoelectric effect.