Marie Curie

Want to read the rest of this paper? Join Essayworld today to view this entire essay and over 50,000 other term papers

and won 2 Nobel prizes, one for
physics in 1903 and one for chemistry in 1911 for isolating radium and
studying its chemical properties. Even Einstein once said of her, “Marie
Curie is, of all celebrated beings, the one whom fame has not corrupted.”
As a child she always wanted to be left alone to finish her work.
But after she won the Nobel prize she could not concentrate on her work as
much, as she was famous. Her laboratory was a leaky shed with a dirt floor,
but it was in this shed that she discovered radium. She performed
pioneering studies with radium and contributed to understanding of
radioactivity.
During first five years after the discovery of radioactivity, many
chemists and physicists were busy studying the new phenomenon. Marie
carried out an extensive test of all chemical elements and their compounds
for radioactivity and found that thorium emits radiation similar to that of
uranium. Comparing the radioactivity of uranium ores with that of metallic
uranium, she ...

Get instant access to over 50,000 essays. Write better papers. Get better grades. Already a member? Login

CITE THIS PAGE: