The story of Marie Curie's discovery of radium may have been known when you were in elementary school.
But how much do you know about Marie Curie's discovery of the story behind radium?
In the history of science, Marie Curie is undoubtedly a glittering female scientist, she shoulders a great reputation, but who knows that she spent her whole life getting rid of the title of "Polish slut"?
One. Origin of Marie Curie's title
Marie Curie is marrying her husband Pierre. Curie later changed his name to Marie. Curie, and then everyone has been calling her Marie Curie.
Madame curie
Her original name was Mary. Skovodowska, Born on November 7, 1867, to a family of secondary school teachers in Warsaw, Poland,
Her father was a secondary school teacher and her mother was the headmaster of a local girls' boarding school, and Mary came from a decent background at that time.
Mary grew up smart and loved to learn. In 1891, Mary was 24 years old. She studied physics at the Faculty of Science of the University of Paris.
Here she met her husband Pierre. curie.
Pierre. Curie was the director of the laboratory at the Paris School of Physics and Chemistry, and the reason Marie and he met was actually to get a better experimental environment.
However, after arriving at Pierre's laboratory, the two men were like-minded, and Marie's intelligence and agility attracted Pierre.
So, after a long relationship, the two married a year later, and after marriage, Marie took Pierre's surname and changed her name to "Marie. Curie".
Pierre and Marie in the lab
In 1896, Marie passed the title examination of the Parisian school and found a position in the school's physics laboratory, after which she worked with her husband Pierre.
It is worth mentioning here that Mary studied in Paris for four years, she worked very hard, she was also very hard, and finally graduated with two master's degrees in physics and mathematics.
In July 1898, when Marie and her husband Pierre discovered the new radioactive element 84, Mary suggested that the newly discovered element 84 be named "polonium" after her native Poland.
Just five months after the Curies discovered the "polonium", they announced that they had found the "radium".
However, it was found that this "radium" was not so smooth.
As soon as the Curies said they had found radium, many scientists jumped out to accuse and attack them, and since you found the so-called "radium", what about the evidence? Show us the radium!
We can't blame the scientists who questioned the Curies, after all, scientific research is realistic and rigorous, and it is not a casual sentence that proves that what you say is true.
Young photo of Marie Curie
Of course, the Curies didn't care about these skeptical voices, because they had intended to extract the "radium".
But the extraction of radium is a difficult and lengthy process. First, to extract radium, there must be a large amount of bitumen uranium slag (radium found by the Curies from the blue uranium mine).
The Curies spent all their savings, sold everything of value in the family, and bought more than a dozen tons of bitumen uranium slag to extract radium from these dozen tons of slag. (It had to be a lot of work, and just a dozen tons of bitumen uranium slag piled up there was enough to suffocate...) ）
The entire purification experiment took 45 months, after tens of thousands of times of refining, purification, Curie and his wife finally extracted 10 grams of radium chloride from more than a dozen tons of bitumen uranium slag.
The Curies also used the 10 grams of radium chloride to block the voices of doubt.
Of course, the 10 grams of radium chloride also brought them the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Two. The pain of widowhood
For Mary, though, the award was the beginning of her bumpy life.
It seems that this Nobel Prize Marie Curie won very well, she proposed the discovery of radium, and then proved that the radium element was really found, and finally won the prize.
But the development of things is not something that can be summed up in just a few words.
Marie Curie is experimenting
First of all, the 1903 Nobel Prize was not won by the Curies alone, someone shared it with them and shared half of their prize money.
This is strange, isn't radium found by the Curies to be purified? How can anyone still share the prize? Who is the winner?
The man who took half of the Curies' bonus was called Anthony. Henry. Becquerel, a French physicist, came from a family of scientists, his parents were scientists, and his grandfather was a member of the Royal Society.
Let's talk about why Becquerel was able to share this prize.
The first was because in 1896 he was the first to discover the natural radioactivity of uranium salts, but Becquerel did not pay much attention to this phenomenon at that time, he used this phenomenon as fluorescence.
Since then, Becquerel has not spent too much effort on this to study, and all the work on the discovery and research of the radioactive element radium was done by the Curies.
Under such circumstances, it is obviously unreasonable for Becquerel and the Curies to share the prize, not to mention that he alone shared half of the prize money.
According to normal circumstances, since three people win the award, shouldn't the three people share the prize money equally?
This brings us to another secret behind the 1903 Nobel Prize.
In fact, in the beginning, Mary was not on the list of award nominations, and the first person on the nomination list was Becquerel.
Old photo of Marie Curie
Even Marie's husband Pierre. Curie, also described as "Becquerel's assistant", while Marie, was known as "Pierre. Curie's assistant".
This is obviously unfair, for The concept and theory of radioactivity is the real founder, and even her husband Pierre participated in her radioactivity experiments as her assistant.
Back in 1895, Marie hadn't yet been with Pierre. When Curie married, the Royal Academy of Sciences in France had already read Marie's paper "The Radioactivity of Compounds of Uranium and Thorium."
Actually, Pierre. Curie joined the experiment two years after Mary had been working on radium, with the original intention of joining mary because she needed his help debugging and improving the experimental apparatus.
But even so, Mary, who really made a leap forward in the discovery of radium, was not nominated.
And then, in Pierre. At Curie's insistence, Marie's name appeared on the list of winners under the name "Pierre's assistant".
Becquerel won the 1903 Nobel Prize in this way, but he was not ashamed, but instead made a public statement that Marie Curie's contribution was to act as Pierre. Curie's good assistant, which makes us believe that God created women to be the best assistants to cooperate with men. ”
Whether this statement is sincere or a joke we don't know, but it's true enough to be shameless.
Mr. and Mrs. Curie
Of course, after Nobel, what awaited Mary was not the happy life of a fairy tale.
In 1906, Pierre. Curie was accidentally hit by a carriage while walking on the road and died on the spot.
This year, at the age of 39, Mary lost her husband, who had been supporting each other, and she was the only one left in the lab.
Three. Fall in love with a married man
Mary was sad, but life went on.
Soon, her life was intruded by another man.
This man was a student of her late husband Pierre, Paul. Lang Zhi wan.
Paul was also a scientist, and he had been studying with Pierre.
After Pierre's death, Paul served as Mary's experimental assistant, and Paul gave Mary great support both at work and in life.
At that time, the French government offered a pension to Marie's mother and daughter (she and Pierre already had a daughter at the time) to express their regret for Pierre's death, but Marie refused.
Mary said she didn't need a pension and that teaching at the Sorbonne could support her and her daughter.
Paul was also very active in helping Mary prepare the textbook for teaching at the university.
As time went on, Mary and Paul spent more and more time together, and their feelings changed, and the two had feelings for each other.
Marie Curie in the laboratory
This is a normal thing, and it does not mean that mary's husband died and she could no longer fall in love with anyone else.
But this Paul, he was not an ordinary man, he was married.
Paul's family was in poor condition, and he married Jenny, the daughter of a grocery store owner, very early. Paul and Jenny also had a sweet period after they got married, but the sweetness was soon overwhelmed by life and reality.
Paul's salary was not high, and he spent all day in the laboratory to conduct experiments, and the burden of supporting the family fell entirely on his wife, Jenny.
Jenny had to raise children and do housework, and her admiration for Paul gradually turned into incomprehension. Jenny hadn't read much, and there was an insurmountable cognitive gap between her and Paul.
For Paul, he is also very miserable, the wife can not understand herself, only hope that he can make more money; for Jenny, she is even more painful, she married Paul all day long, Paul can not see her bitterness, but also openly and secretly dislike her.
Paul's pursuit is something that Jenny will never understand, and as time goes on, the gap between the two deepens.
But in any case, none of this is a reason to rationalize Paul's infidelity.
Paul tells Mary about the misfortunes of his marriage, and at first, Mary's attitude is to comfort Paul, hoping that he can understand Jenny's suffering, and he should be more tolerant and understanding of Jenny.
But over time, Mary discovers that she is deeply in love with Paul, and it is clear that there is no way to ease the conflict between Paul and Jenny, so she begins to persuade Paul to divorce.
Paul and Mary fell in love, and in 1910 Paul rented a house near the Sorbonne University, where Mary taught, and he and Mary lived in this place, which Mary called "Our Place."
At this time, although Paul had filed for divorce from his wife Jenny, he did not succeed. What's even more bloody is that Jenny inadvertently got the letters that Paul and Mary exchanged, and the words of these letters were the hot words of Mary and Paul's love period.
Portrait of Marie Curie
Jenny was like a detonated grenade, which exploded in an instant, and in one breath, she sent all these letters to the French media!
It turns out that people are keen on gossip news no matter what the era.
Compared to radium, where is it interesting that female scientists and married men get together?
For a time, newspapers large and small in France began to report on Mary. Curie and the married man Paul. The "unrequited love" between Lang Zhiwan.
The so-called rumors, three people into a tiger, the more outrageous the newspaper reports are written, the more they are compiled, the more there is no lower limit, and even there are reports describing that the love affair between Marie and Lang Zhiwan may have begun when Pierre was still alive, maybe Pierre's death was not an accident, but a murder carefully planned by a love enemy?
These reports speak of noses and eyes, as if they had seen them with their own eyes.
At first, Mary would argue and fight back, writing to these newspapers not to slander her reputation, and not to speculate and write about nonsense.
But then she discovered that her counterattacks and protests were useless, because in the face of gossip, people were more willing to believe their own speculations than facts.
Some people began to harass Mary's life, some people smashed Mary's window with stones, someone gave her some anonymous letters calling her a bitch...
Marie Curie Memorial in Warsaw
Immediately after that, a so-called "Record of Mary and Lang's Fiery Correspondence" was exposed in the newspaper, in which Mary directly exposed her desire for sex on the page.
This so-called letter became the last straw that crushed Mary.
French women attacked her, calling her a "Polish slut."
Some scientists who had originally supported Mary also stopped supporting her, and many wrote a joint letter hoping that She would leave France.
Among these people even included Marie's best friend in France, Paul. Abel.
Epper's daughter, furious with her father when she learned of her father's behavior, angrily shouted: "If Mary. Curie was a man, she wouldn't have been treated like this!
Four. Small Curie"
Mary did receive a lot of unfair treatment because she was a woman, for example, she came to Paris to study because the university in her hometown of Warsaw did not accept female students.
Then in Paris, although she graduated with excellent grades, she could only become a female secondary school teacher, while men with the same grades as her could stay at the academy to teach.
Even Pierre. After Curie's unexpected death, Marie was no longer allowed to use the lab, because in the eyes of everyone, Mary was a woman, just an unimportant assistant. Later, it was only after Mary's multiple applications that he obtained the qualification to use the laboratory.
Marie Curie's laboratory for refining radium
Her close friend Einstein, whose private life is very chaotic (if you are interested, you can read the article about Einstein that I wrote earlier), but no one has ever scolded him for not having a face or a slut, everyone only pays attention to his scientific achievements, and as for his private life, no one cares.
After that thing was fermented, Paul. What about Lang Zhiwan? Did he stand up and take on all of it with Mary?
The answer is: no.
Paul. As soon as The affair between Lang Zhiwan and Mary was exposed, he returned to his wife's side, regardless of the conditions he made to her that she would allow him to openly have a lover.
Paul's wife, Jenny, agreed to this shameless offer in order to keep him.
Of course this is not Paul. Lang Zhiwan has done the most unlimited thing. Years later, he got involved with a female student, and in order to support this student lover, he even approached Mary, hoping that Mary could help his student lover offer her a position at the institute...
After seeing paul's actions, Mary chose to live in a nun-run hospital to escape everything.
After Mary went into seclusion, the heat of the rumors soon subsided. Of course, there was nothing to lose in this matter except Mary.
Until 1914, when the world war broke out, no one was in the mood to pay attention to Mary's gossip, and in the face of war, everyone was at risk.
What about Mary?
In order to fund the French government's war, she took her Nobel medal to the bank and hoped that she could donate it to the French government in exchange for money. Then she took all the Nobel Prizes out and bought French war bonds.
These Frenchmen had stoned her windows, pointed at her nose and scolded her as a Polish slut...
But Mary didn't seem to remember anymore.
Marie Curie and her Renault car
She shut down the lab where she had been working on radium and began studying X-rays.
The reason Mary studied X-rays was that there were many soldiers on the battlefield who had been shot and used X-rays to help them remove bullets or fragments of guns.
She persuaded the French Red Cross to make her a radiologist, and asked her to persuade her friends who had money to donate money to the car.
In less than a year, Mary taught herself human anatomy, studied X-rays, took a driver's license (I'm ashamed here, my driver's license has not been taken for three years), and even learned simple car maintenance techniques...
She ended up assembling a generator, a hospital bed and an X-ray meter in a Renault truck donated by a friend.
At first, no one believed that the device on her humble Renault truck would help soldiers pick up bullets.
Unable to do so, Mary risked her illness and drove her car to the front line of the battlefield to help the wounded soldiers check. She was 47 years old.
At this time, everyone found that the bullets in the bodies of the soldiers who were shot and could not be seen by the naked eye were undoubtedly revealed under the illumination of X-rays. With this X-ray machine, the success rate of surgeon surgery is greatly improved.
Marie Curie is teaching nurses with X-ray machines
Everyone gradually began to admire the small woman in front of them, affectionately calling the Renault car "Little Man Curie".
However, Mary soon found that relying on her alone and one car was far from enough, and more manpower and vehicles were needed.
So she asked her daughter Irena to go to the battlefield to control X-rays for her, and she went back to open X-ray classes to teach more people to learn X-rays.
At the same time, she retrieved the radium element she had been developing to collect the reflective gas radon (a colorless and odorless inert gas) to make a hollow needle to disinfect infected tissue.
In 1918, the four-year-long World War I finally ended. When Mary heard the news, she excitedly hung the French flag on the window and drove the Renault car into the street to celebrate, looking more excited than any French citizen.
Five. Only she was Marie Curie
Because of her long-term exposure to radioactive material, Mary developed malignant leukemia. In 1934, Mary M. Curie died at the age of 67.
It was not until her death that the French government realized that her X-ray research had saved hundreds of thousands of French soldiers on the battlefields of World War I, and awarded her medals.
It was only then that people stopped paying attention to her private life and instead paid tribute to her great personality devoted to science.
During the radium research period, she could have become a billionaire if she and Pierre applied for a patent.
But she gave up filing for a patent because she believed it was a common asset of science that should benefit more people.
As Albert Einstein said: Of all the world's celebrities, Mary. Curie was the only one who was not spoiled by fame.
Writing this, it occurred to me that in the past I had told marie Curie's story to a friend who was opposed to Marie Curie's abandonment of the patent application, and he asked me: If Marie Curie had applied for a patent, she could have become a billionaire, and with money, wouldn't it be more important for her to do on the battlefield?
I didn't refute him at the time, because what he said seemed to make a lot of sense, if she had money, she could actually buy a lot of cars and do a lot of X-ray machines wouldn't she?
It took me a long time to figure out that it didn't matter what the answer to this question was, what mattered was that the question itself was wrong.
She gave up because she never wanted to make a profit from her invention.
Such a person with a lofty responsibility and sense of mission to the country and all mankind, her pattern is no longer what we can see, how can we judge her behavior with our own narrow views?
Because of this, she is the only Marie Curie.
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Everyone calls her "Madame", but how many people really understand her? 》
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