Maria Sklodowska-Curie, femeia personalitate de excepție a lumii știintifice mondiale

Abstract

The woman who became Marie Curie was named Maria Sklodowska at birth. Her family and friends called her by the nickname Manya. She was born on November 7, 1867, in Warsaw. The young polish woman travelled from her country to Paris, in autumn 1891. She registered at the famous Sorbonne University as Marie, the French form of Maria. In December 1895, a German physicist, Wilhelm Roentgen, had discovered rays that could travel through solid matter. A few months later, a French physicist, Henri Becquerel, discovered that minerals containing uranium also gave off rays. Marie decided to investigate the uranium rays. First, she needed a laboratory. In Paris, where her husband, Pierre Curie, was a professor, she started off by studying a variety of chemical compounds that contained uranium. So she saw that a certain amount of uranium atoms' number, determinate an intensity of radiation. In July 1898, the Curies family published a paper revealing their first discovery. They honoured Marie's native land by naming the element, which they named polonium. After that, in December, they announced the second new element, which they named radium, from the Latin word for ray. The Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Pierre and Marie Curie in 1903. Also, Marie Curie was the first person to win a second Nobel Prize. She traveled to Sweden to accept in 1911 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for her discovery of radium and polonium.