Women cannot go to college?

On November 7, 1867, a baby named Maria was born on the first floor of an apartment in Warsaw, Poland. This cute little baby lying in the cradle became Madame Curie. Maria's father was a teacher, teaching mathematics and physics in middle school, and her mother was also a teacher and an excellent musician. ?

When Maria was a child, her mother suffered from lung disease, which was an extremely dangerous infectious disease at the time. For fear of infection, the mother had no choice but to refrain from letting her children get too close. Her condition, which comes and goes, has caused her family's savings to be almost exhausted. When Maria was nine years old, her third sister contracted typhoid and died. Within two years, her mother also died. The successive changes in the family made Maya more mature and sensitive. ?

Maria’s family does not mean that Poland was divided into three parts by Prussia, Austria, and the Soviet Union. Warsaw was ruled by Russia. People’s lives were very difficult and there was little freedom. Women had no chance to study in university. Since she was wealthy, it was impossible for her to study abroad after finishing middle school, so she found a way to find a job as a tutor and saved every penny she earned. ?

While working, Maria studied on her own. She read a lot of books on literature and listened to more books on chemistry. It was then that she got an opportunity to work in a laboratory. She was excited to work with so many scientists. Although the equipment in that laboratory was very crude, it was enough for Maria to learn. She could now experiment by herself on things she used to read in chemistry books. The time she spent working in the laboratory after get off work or on weekends had a great influence on Marie Curie's later career in science. She often stayed alone in the laboratory to study, and she had discovered the real joy outside of books. Someone once said: "The first time I worked in a laboratory confirmed my interest in research experiments."?

?Spring in the Attic

In 1891, 24-year-old Maria finally got her wish and went to Paris for further study. For a girl who had lived in Poland under Soviet rule for many years, Paris was like a colorful world with many new things that she had not seen before. She found a loft near the school to live in. That winter was extremely cold. In the morning, she would go down to the first floor to get the washing water, but when she brought it up to the attic, the water would often freeze. When she came home from get out of class every day, she would hold a bag of heating coals and climb up to the attic on the sixth floor. But when the coals burned out, he would always be shivering with cold. What's even more sad is that sometimes she was so poor that she couldn't even afford to buy a pack of coal. After she fainted several times due to anemia, her brother-in-law and sister who lived in France finally had to take her home and give her a good "food supplement" . ?

A portrait of Maria painted by a Polish student who also studied in Paris in 1892 →

Her French was not good, and the education she received in Poland was not enough. Block French university courses, especially basic mathematics required for physics subjects. , Therefore, she spent all her free time in the library. With her precise mind, clear thinking and strong will, her grades slowly improved. In 1893, Maria obtained her Ph.D. in Physics. , and in 1894 she obtained the mathematical mean. Later, Maria even received the "Alexander Scholarship"? That is a scholarship given to outstanding overseas students by the Warsaw Palace in Poland. ?

Lifelong partner

Maria’s spirit of studying knowledge and her shy and elegant temperament attracted many young people to pursue her, but the one who attracted her most was It is a thirty-five-year-old physicist-Pierre. Curie. He once invented an electrometer that could accurately measure trace currents, which was later called the "Curie electrometer". He also invented the "Curie balance". He also discovered a basic law of magnetism: "The magnetic susceptibility of paramagnetic substances is inversely proportional to the absolute temperature." This law can be called "Curie's law". This kind of wisdom in academic research showed that in early 1895, Maria and Curie, two young people with enthusiastic interests in physics and mathematics, finally got married in the church of Curie's hometown. ?

Their wedding was not as extravagant as the common people at that time. The frugal Madame Curie’s wedding dress was a black shirt given by a relative. She thought that this black shirt would be worn in the laboratory in the future. , less likely to be wasted.

The married life of the Curies was also very special. They bought two popular bicycles at the time and traveled around for two years. They often take their bicycles on the train and go to farther countryside for vacation, but when they come back from vacation, they must return to the laboratory to work. ?

Discovering new elements

In the autumn of 1895, Madame Curie gave birth to her eldest daughter Eileen. Although she had a daughter, it did not dissipate her interest in physical and chemical research. Her goal was a doctoral thesis in physics. The topic she led was the most popular topic at the time. She had just discovered that Mr. Curie helped his wife convince the principal, in a small storage room in the school. Here he established a laboratory for the Curies to study radium rays. From then on, the couple lived with a lot of dangerous substances containing radioactive rays all day long. ?

They used acid to decompose the ground pitchblende, and then used chemical analysis methods to isolate the bitumen ore containing a solution higher than uranium oxide. Yes, in matter, it is bismuth. Soon, Marie Curie discovered another new element that was three hundred times more active than uranium from the sediment of the pitchblende experiment. Marie Curie named this new element polonium in memory of her native Poland. ?

Shortly after the discovery of polonium, she recognized a strong repetition of polarity in the mineral (terms such as oscillation and radioactive elements were also named by Madame Curie), which was more Uranium, thorium, and polonium are all known to be strong. The Curies devoted all their efforts to research. They experimented and analyzed many ores. They used various methods to repeatedly measure, analyze and eliminate. At this time, a famous scientist, Bei Meng, also joined the Curies' research ranks.

In 1898, they finally precipitated from the solution a substance doped with a substance nine hundred times larger than uranium. Of course, although scientists have discovered that radium salt is reflective, no one has been able to find it in any material, and no one knows the true properties of this highly radioactive element. The results of the Curies' and Benmont's research on the three of them identified this new element and named it "radium".

After discovering polonium and radium, they faced a bigger problem, which was how to refine pure radium and pure polonium and prove to the world the existence of these two new elements? They had to have a huge amount of money to buy a large amount of pitchblende and they found help from people all over the world. Finally, they got the help of the Austrian Communist Party and the Vienna Academy of Sciences, and bought the uranium at a low price, which was considered useless after refining uranium. Pitchblende residue, during the four years from 1898 to 1902, Maria was a scholar, a coolie, and a technician. She struggled with the pitchblende residue kilogram by kilogram.

Won the Nobel Prize for the first time

In 1902, the Curies finally extracted one gram of radium and measured the atomic weight of 225. This caused an unprecedented stir in the European scientific community. Ray craze. The famous alpha rays, beta rays, and gamma rays were discovered during that period, in the winter of 1903, and three were just established. The leading role of the Curies not only brought an impact to future physical radiation, cancer treatment, and chemical research, but also helped Marie Curie successfully obtain the title of Ph.D. in physics. The Nobel Prize in 2006 announced that the physics prize would be awarded to the Curies and Belmont.

Less than three years later, a tragic tragedy occurred. On a rainy day in April 1906, Mr. Curie, whose health was getting worse due to radiation infection, died on a bridge in Paris. After crashing into the carriage above in a daze, the heartbroken Madame Curie lost her partner and her most capable research partner. However, her strong will overcame everything. She endured the grief and independently took on the responsibility of raising her two daughters. At the same time, he took over Curie's professor's job at the University of Paris and continued to enter the laboratory to continue research in order to reform the extraction method of radium.

Won the Nobel Prize twice

Although Marie Curie began to conduct independent research from then on, her achievements in the theory and practice of "Radiology" are getting higher and higher. In the winter of 1911, she received a telegram from Stockholm, Sweden, informing her that she had won the Nobel Prize in Science. That year, Marie Curie became the first person in history to win the Nobel Prize in Science twice, and she was a woman. ?

"In science, we should pay attention to things, not people." This is Madame Curie's persistent spirit in studying science, but once science is applied to people, she exerts her influence on crowd society. of immense care.

During the First World War, she worked hard and loudly raised funds to purchase an X-ray machine that was extremely expensive at the time and sent it to the battlefield. She also personally went to frontline hospitals to teach medical staff how to use it. She not only dedicated her enthusiasm and health to those injured in the war, but also dedicated her knowledge, experience and all her time to her students, and to the underachieving scholars from all over the world who came to study.

Madame Curie originally had many opportunities to make a fortune, but she rejected them all. She also looked down upon fame. Therefore, before she received various bonuses, she was so poor that she did not even have to pay for her medicine. Later, someone advised her to apply. "Before World War I, the price of radium rose to US$100,000 per gram, but Madame Curie still had no savings. After the war, when she became a world celebrity, she was often attacked by various countries. When I invited her, I didn’t even have a decent dinner dress?

The pride of women, the pride of all mankind

People have no better way to commemorate the greatness of Madame Curie. An element discovered later was named "Saw", and the unit of radiation was called "Curie" to commemorate her. The magnetism of certain metals will change at a certain temperature. This temperature is called the "Curie point". It is named in honor of Mr. Curie.

In fact, both Curies were great scientists.