The Saga of Maria Skłodowska-Curie: Part IV
As I mentioned last time, the year 1903 was especially eventful for Curies. Maria Skłodowska-Curie was awarded her doctorate from the University of Paris. Bronisława visited her sister for the celebration and pretty much made her sister pick a new dress for the occasion. Likewise with her wedding outfit, the new, black dress could also serve as a laboratory uniform.
Our beloved couple was gaining popularity in scientific circles around the world. They were invited to speak at the Royal Institution in London on the subject of radioactivity. That is, only Pierre was allowed to speak. Despite being the pioneer and the author of the term itself, Maria was denied a supposedly obvious privilege of giving a lecture. Fortunately, her loving husband made sure it was clear and undisputed who was leading the research.
Even bigger acknowledgment of their work happened in December of the same year. Curies, along with Henri Becquerel, were awarded a Nobel Prize for Physics for the discovery and joint research on the radiation phenomena. Discovery of radium and polonium was carefully omitted from the description as parts of the nominating committee had already been discussing possibility of awarding Curies a Nobel Prize for Chemistry in the foreseeable future.
Sadly, once again, parts of the scientific community were trying to ignore Maria and disregard her accomplishments. Had it not been for the intervention of Swedish mathematician Magnus Goesta Mittag-Leffler, only Henri and Pierre would be receiving the prize, since only the two men were actually nominated by the French Academy of Sciences. Aforementioned Swede warned Pierre of this atrocious decision, and both objected to committees’ actions, making sure Maria would be awarded as an undeniable contributor to the discovery and research of radiation.
It took Curies over year and a half to make a trip to Stokholm for the mandatory lecture expected from the laureates. Their fame brought unwelcome attention to their previously quiet and secluded lifestyle. The stress from being followed by the pesky journalists and an additional burden in form of mountains of written correspondence, that needed to be send, exhausted and disturbed the couple, who wanted nothing more than ability to return to their quaint life and to work in peace. Pierre would often express his grievances in letters he had been sending to his friend:
“We continue to lead the same life of people who are extremely occupied, without being able to accomplish anything interesting. It is now more than a year since I have been able to engage in any research, and I have no moment to myself. Clearly I have not yet discovered a means to defend ourselves against this frittering away of our time which is nevertheless extremely necessary. Intellectually, it is a question of life or death.”
Years of working with radioactive materials with virtually no protection whatsoever had already been taking an enormous toll on their health. They had been continuously losing weight, and both had severely damaged fingertips. Fatigue and chronic pains were constantly plaguing them. Pierre was in even worse shape, as he would often wake up in the middle of the night from debilitating pain. Unbeknownst to them, Curies were suffering from what we would call today chronic radiation syndrome.
Despite those hardships, the Noble Prize led to a noticeable improvement in our scientists’ situation. The money they’ve received allowed them to hire their first assistant. Sorbonne, recognizing the achievement awarded Pierre with a professorship and the chair of physics. And yet, even then, University of Paris initially refused to grant him a proper laboratory. Pierre was appointed to his new position in 1904, but it took Sorbonne two more years to complete furnishing the space for Curies.
Tragically, Pierre never saw his laboratory in its full glory. On the 19th of April 1906, he was run over be a horse-drawn vehicle, with the blow killing him instantly. Somber news reached Curies’ household in the evening and Maria, trying to cope with the sudden loss of her love wasted no time making necessary arrangements and preparations for the funeral.
“Your coffin was closed and I could see you no more. I didn’t allow them to cover it with the horrible black cloth. I covered it with flowers and I sat beside it....
They filled the grave and put sheaves of flowers on it. Everything is over, Pierre is sleeping his last sleep beneath the earth; it is the end of everything, everything, everything.
I am working in the laboratory all day long, it is all I can do; I am better off there than anywhere else. I conceive of nothing any more that could give me personal joy, except perhaps scientific work–and even there, no, because if I succeeded with it, I would not endure you not to know it.”
The French government offered a state pension to the widow and her children, but Maria was firm in her refusal. She did, however, accept invitation from the Sorbonne to take up her late husband’s post. On November 1906 Maria Skłodowska-Curie, the first female professor of Sorbonne, gave her inaugural lecture.
With the title, she has inherited the laboratory, and, to honor Pierre’s legacy, she vowed to transform it into a bona-fide scientific institution. Of course, doing so on your own is next to impossible. And once again the effort of our heroine (and a lack of thereof from the scientific community) was noticed. In 1907, American steel manufacturer Andrew Carnegie established scholarship to fund a research staff consisting of promising, young scientists. Disappointed by the University of Paris and its unwillingness to grant Maria a proper research facility, bacteriologist Pierre Paul Émile Roux suggested she could move from Sorbonne to the private Pasteur Institute, where Roux was the director. Once again, upon the threat of losing important faculty member, University relented and joined efforts with the private foundation in creating The Radium Institute, nowadays known as The Curie Institute.
The institution was split into two divisions: medical research laboratory was directed by a physician called Claudius Regaud. Meanwhile, the physics and chemical research laboratory was given to Maria.
At last, a worthy research facility!
Then, an even greater achievement came. In 1910, our heroine finally isolated pure radium metal. Moreover, she has been granted the honor of defining an international standard for radium emissions:
“Curie. A unit of radioactivity. One Curie is the quantity of a radioactive substance that decays at the rate of 3.7 x 1010 disintegrations per second.”
Sadly, she has never managed to isolate polonium. This elusive element has a half-life of only 138 days, a fact Skłodowska-Curie was unaware of. Nevertheless, isolating radium was a tremendous achievement on its own. And even without it she has already proven the existence of both elements. Her discoveries expanded our knowledge about the atom and led to progress in many various scientific fields. For those accomplishments, in 1911, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences presented her a second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry. She was the first person in history who was awarded by the committee twice, and one of only five people who currently hold this achievement.
In 1914, construction of the Radium Institute was finally completed, however it wasn’t until 1919, after the end of the Great War, that the research in the facility would properly begin. Maria Skłodowska-Curie spent the remaining years of her life working there and tutoring the next generation of scientists. All the researchers working under her she considered her children. Together, between its opening in 1919 and Maria’s death in 1934, the Radium Institute published four hundred and eighty-three works in total.
She worked almost to the very end of her life. When she was too weak to visit the lab, she would stay at home write her book Radioactivity. She made her last visit to the institute in May 1934. She has died on 4th of July the same year from leukemia caused by the chronic radiation syndrome.
And thus, story of her life is finished, but her legacy lives on. She continues to inspire scientists all over the world to this very day. And it is hardly the last time I should speak of this saint woman. There are many anecdotes I omitted for the sake of coherency and I shall return to them one day. Her students’ chronicles are too, stories worth telling and one day they will be presented here as well.
But for now, this is the end.
Signed, a faithful devotee to the benevolent Maria Skłodowska-Curie,
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