Marie Curie; The Unesco courier: a window ... - unesdoc - Unesco

Maria Sklodowska in
1892. She was 24. And
she had only been in Paris
for a few months.
At last
her dream of studying
science at the Sorbonne
had come true. Ten years
later she discovered
radium and received world
acclaim as one of the
greatest scientists of
modern times.
we wish to pursue some path which
is against nature, some work which
alienates us from the human beings
nearest and dearest to us."
The second son of a physician,
Dr. Eugène Curie, Pierre had received
no "formal" education. He never went
to school. Instead he was taught first
by his father then by a private tutor.
It was a scheme of education that paid
dividends. At the age of sixteen
Pierre Curie was a Bachelor of
Science.
At the age of eighteen he
had a master's degree. At nineteen
he was appointed laboratory assistant
to Professor Desains in the Faculty of
Science a post he held for five years.
He was engaged on research with his
brother Jacques. The two young
physicists soon announced the disco¬
very of the important phenomenon of
"piezo-electricity."
In 1883, Jacques was appointed pro¬
fessor at Montpellier, while Pierre
became head of the laboratory at the
School of Physics and Chemistry of
the City of Paris. Even though he
devoted much of his time to his pupils,
he
continued his theoretical work on
crystalline physics. This work led to
the formulation of the principle of
symmetry which has become one of
the bases of modern science. He
invented and built an ultra-sensitive
scientific scale: the Curie Scale.
He
took up research on magnetism and
achieved a result of major importance,
the discovery of a fundamental law:
Curie's Law.
This was the man whom Marie Sklo¬
dowska was to meet for the first time
in the beginning of 1894.
"He seemed very young to me," she
noted, "although he was then thirtyfive.
His rather slow, reflective
words, his air of simplicity and his
smile, at once serious and young, all
inspired confidence. A conversation
began between us and we became
friendly; its object was some questions
of science upon which I was only too
happy to ask his opinion."
Pierre Curie later recalled their
meeting in these words: "I described
the phenomenon of crystallography
upon which I was doing research. It
was strange to talk to a woman of the
work one loved, using technical terms,
complicated formulae, and to see that
woman, so young and so charming,
become animated, understand, even
discuss certain details with an
astonishing
clarity.
"I gazed at her hair, at her high
curved forehead and her hands, which
were already stained from the acids
of the laboratory and roughened by
housework. I dug into my memory
for all that had been told me about this
girl. She was Polish. She had worked
for years in Warsaw before being
able to take the train to Paris; she had
no money; she lived alone in a
garret..."
In the July of 1895 Pierre and Marie
Curie were married.
"During these happy days was
formed one of the finest bonds that
ever united man and woman", Eve
Curie wrote. "Two hearts beat toge¬
ther, two bodies were united and two
minds of genius learned to think toge¬
ther. Marie could have married no
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