NUCLEAR  MEDICINE

 

 

Marie Curie 1867 – 1934     &   Pierre Curie 1859 – 1906

French physicists and Nobel Prize winners, who were wife and husband; together, they discovered the chemical elements radium and polonium. The Curies' study of radioactive elements contributed to the understanding of atoms on which modern nuclear physics is based.

 

Pierre Curie was born in Paris on May 15, 1859, and studied science at the Sorbonne. In 1880 he and his brother Jacques observed that an electric potential is produced when pressure is exerted on a quartz crystal. The brothers named the phenomenon piezoelectricity (See Piezoelectric Effect). In the course of later studies of magnetism, Pierre Curie discovered a certain temperature (the Curie point) at which magnetic substances lose their magnetism. In 1895 he became professor at the School of Physics and Chemistry in Paris.

Originally named Maria Sklodowska, Marie Curie was born in Warsaw, Poland on November 7, 1867. Her father was a teacher of physics. In 1891 she went to Paris (where she changed her name to Marie) and enrolled in the Sorbonne. Two years later she passed the examination for her degree in physics, taking first place. She met Pierre Curie in 1894, and they married in 1895.

Marie Curie was interested in the recent discoveries of new kinds of radiation. Wilhelm Roentgen had discovered X-rays in 1895, and in 1896 Antoine Henri Becquerel had discovered that the element uranium gives off similar invisible radiations. Curie began studying uranium radiations, and, using the piezoelectric techniques devised by her husband, carefully measured the radiations in pitchblende, an ore containing uranium. When she found that the radiations from the ore were more intense than those from uranium itself, she realized that unknown elements, even more radioactive than uranium, must be present. Marie Curie was the first to use the term radioactive to describe elements that give off radiations as their nuclei break down.

Pierre Curie ended his own work on magnetism to join his wife's research, and in 1898 the Curies announced their discovery of two new elements: polonium (named by Marie in honor of Poland) and radium. During the next four years the Curies, working in a leaky wooden shed, processed a tone of pitchblende, laboriously isolating from it a fraction of a gram of radium. They shared the 1903 Nobel Prize for physics with Becquerel for the discovery of radioactive elements. Marie Curie was the first female recipient of a Nobel Prize.

 

In 1904 Pierre Curie was appointed Professor of Physics at the University of Paris, and in 1905 he was named a member of the French Academy. Such positions were not then commonly held by women, and Marie was not similarly recognized. Pierre's life ended on April 19, 1906, when he was run over by a horse-drawn cart. His wife took over his classes and continued her own research. In 1911 she received an unprecedented second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry, for her work on radium and radium compounds. She became head of the Paris Institute of Radium in 1914 and helped found the Curie Institute. Marie Curie's final illness was diagnosed as pernicious anemia, caused by overexposure to radiation. She died in Haute Savoie on July 4, 1934.

 

The Curies had two daughters, one of whom was also a Nobel Prize winner: Irčne Joliot-Curie and her husband, Frédéric, received the 1935 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the synthesis of new radioactive elements.

 

Special cancellation of Radium from Germany

Radium (Lat., radius, “ray”), symbol Ra, chemically reactive, silvery white, radioactive metallic element. In group 2 (or IIa) of the periodic table, radium is one of the alkaline earth metals. The atomic number of radium is 88.

 

Radium was discovered in the ore pitchblende by the French chemists Marie Curie and Pierre Curie in 1898. They discovered that the ore was more radioactive than its principal component, uranium, and they separated the ore into many chemical fractions in order to isolate the unknown sources of radioactivity. One fraction, isolated by use of bismuth sulphide, contained a strongly radioactive substance that the Curies showed was a new element, polonium. A highly radioactive barium chloride fraction was treated to remove the radioactive substance, which was discovered to be a new element, radium.

 

Radiation from radium has a harmful effect upon living cells, and radium burns are caused by overexposure to the rays. Cancerous cells, however, are often more sensitive to radiation than normal cells, and such cells may be killed without seriously injuring healthy tissue by controlling the intensity and direction of the radiation. Radium is now used in the treatment of only a few kinds of cancer; radium chloride or radium bromide is enclosed in a sealed tube and inserted in the diseased tissue. When a radium salt is mixed with a substance such as zinc sulphide, the substance is caused to luminescence by the bombardment of the alpha rays emitted by the radium. Small amounts of radium were once used in the production of luminous paint, which was applied to clock dials, doorknobs, and other objects, to make them glow in the dark.