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1 gram radium marie curie9/14/2023 In other words, she said the rays emanating from substances she studied were created by changes within individual atoms and not by chemical reactions between atoms. She suggested that radioactivity was atomic, not chemical. She also made a brilliant and revolutionary hypothesis that other researchers proved true. She showed, for example, that radioactivity could signal the presence of previously unknown kinds of atoms. "The greatest scientific deed of her life - proving the existence of radioactive elements and isolating them," Curie's friend Albert Einstein said, "owes its accomplishment not merely to bold intuition but to a devotion and tenacity in execution under the most extreme hardships imaginable, such as the history of science has not often witnessed." In an age when the male-dominated scientific establishment made it clear that women were not welcome, Marie Curie entered the vanguard of physicists and chemists who were changing the world's ideas about the nature of atoms. The new understanding of radioactivity also set the stage for the Curies' daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie, and her husband, Frederic Joliot-Curie, to share the 1935 Nobel prize in chemistry. The first Nobel was for the couple's work on the nature of radioactivity the second was for Marie's isolation of two radioactive elements: radium, which quickly came into use as a cancer treatment, and polonium. Curie decided to search for other substances that emitted these rays, a phenomenon she soon would dub "radioactivity." Within six years, Curie's findings had wowed her dissertation committee, won her and husband Pierre the 1903 Nobel prize in physics (shared with Becquerel) and put Marie on course for a solo Nobel prize in chemistry in 1911. While looking for X-ray sources, the French physicist Henri Becquerel had found that uranium compounds emitted only a weaker ray. Instead, Curie boldly chose Becquerel rays, which most scientists ignored. They had been discovered just two years earlier and were wildly popular with researchers. As a neophyte, Curie could have played it safe and studied X-rays. She needed to choose a research project for her dissertation. At the time, Marie Curie was working toward a doctorate in physics at the Sorbonne, France's most prestigious university. All of that success turned on a risky decision that she made in 1897, two years after marrying Pierre Curie, a French physicist, and just two months after giving birth to their first daughter. Along the way, Curie would become one of the most celebrated scientists in the world, within her field and among ordinary people. And she would raise two daughters, one of whom would go on to win a Nobel of her own. In eight more years, her scientific research would earn her a second Nobel, making her the first of only four people to win the award twice. Twelve years later, she would be known as Marie Curie and would win a Nobel prize for proving that some kinds of atoms are radioactive, emitting mysterious rays. She traveled fourth class, which meant that she had to bring her own food and a stool to sit on. In November 1891, Maria Sklodowska, 23, rode 40 hours on a train from her native Warsaw to Paris, seeking a college education.
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