Wednesday 9 September 2015

Marie Curie by guest blogger John Faulkner

Born in 1864 Marie Curie, one of the great pioneering scientists, remains the only person to win Nobel prizes in both Physics and Chemistry. She initiated the theory of radioactivity and discovered two new elements. With her husband Pierre, also a Nobel Prize laureate, they designed techniques to analyse radioactive uranium minerals that she suspected contained new elements, discovering Radium and Polonium. Their equipment included an ionisation chamber to convert the mineral's radiation to electric charge and an electrometer to measure the tiny currents generated. Isolation of the first element, Radium, took many years of chemical processing. Following their discoveries Marie went on to demonstrate the benefits of radiotherapy to treat cancer. During WW1 she personally deployed field X-Ray machines and later founded the Curie Institutes for medical research in Paris and Warsaw. However, the dangers of radiation exposure were not known, she kept a jar of luminous Radium by her bedside as a nightlight and radioactive samples in her pocket. She died at the age of 66 from a rare form of anaemia it is believed resulted from overexposure to X-Rays from her life saving war work. It took until the 1980's to decontaminate her laboratory sufficiently to open it as a museum!

Did you know that you may have a device based on Marie Curie's research equipment in your house? It is the ionising Smoke Detector. Smoke particles, which are electrically charged, entering the detectors' ionisation chamber will trigger the alarm.


The pioneering work of Marie Curie and her husband Pierre continue to have a profound affect on our world today, particularly in medical research and treatment of cancer. You may also recognise the daffodil emblem for the Marie Curie appeal for cancer care.

- John Faulkner

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