The curie (symbol Ci) is a non-SI unit of radioactivity, named after Marie and Pierre Curie.^[1][2] It is defined as

1 Ci = 3.7 × 10¹⁰ decays per second.

Its continued use is discouraged.^[3]

One Curie is roughly the activity of 1 gram of the radium isotope ²²⁶Ra, a substance studied by the Curies.

The SI derived unit of radioactivity is the becquerel (Bq), which equates to one decay per second. Therefore:

1 Ci = 3.7 × 10¹⁰ Bq = 37 GBq

and

1 Bq ≅ 2.703 × 10⁻¹¹ Ci

Another commonly used measure of radioactivity is the microcurie:

1 μCi = 3.7 × 10⁴ disintegrations per second = 2.22 × 10⁶ disintegrations per minute

A radiotherapy machine may have roughly 1000 Ci of a radioisotope such as caesium-137 or cobalt-60. This quantity of radioactivity can produce serious health effects with only a few minutes of close-range, un-shielded exposure.

The typical human body contains roughly 0.1 μCi of naturally occurring potassium-40.

Curies as a measure of quantity[link]

Curies are occasionally used to express a quantity of radioactive material rather than a decay rate, such as when one refers to 1 Ci of cesium-137. This may be interpreted as the number of atoms that would produce 1 Ci of radiation. The rules of radioactive decay may be used convert this to an actual number of atoms. They state that 1 Ci of radioactive atoms would follow the expression:

N (atoms) * λ (1/s) = 1 Ci = 3.7 × 10¹⁰ (Bq)

and so,

N = 3.7 × 10¹⁰ / λ

where λ is the decay constant in (1/s).

The use of Curies to measure quantity is unique in that 1 Ci of a nuclide will be fewer Curies at any later time.

See also[link]

• Geiger counter
• Ionizing radiation
• Radiation exposure
• Radiation poisoning
• United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation

References[link]

Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Marie Curie, ca. 1920
Born	(1867-11-07)7 November 1867 Warsaw, Kingdom of Poland, then part of Russian Empire[1]
Died	4 July 1934(1934-07-04) (aged 66) Passy, Haute-Savoie, France
Citizenship	Russian, later French
Nationality	Polish
Fields	Physics, chemistry
Institutions	University of Paris
Alma mater	University of Paris ESPCI
Doctoral advisor	Henri Becquerel
Doctoral students	André-Louis Debierne Óscar Moreno Marguerite Catherine Perey
Known for	Radioactivity, polonium, radium
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Physics (1903) Davy Medal (1903) Matteucci Medal (1904) Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911)
Spouse	Pierre Curie (1859–1906)
Signature
Notes She is the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences. She was the wife of Pierre Curie, and the mother of Irène Joliot-Curie and Ève Curie.

Marie Skłodowska-Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a French-Polish physicist and chemist famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first person honored with two Nobel Prizes^[2]—in physics and chemistry. She was the first female professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris.^[3]

She was born Maria Salomea Skłodowska ([ˈmarja salɔˈmɛa skwɔˈdɔfska]) in Warsaw, in what was then the Kingdom of Poland. She studied at Warsaw's clandestine Floating University and began her practical scientific training in Warsaw. In 1891, aged 24, she followed her older sister Bronisława to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. She shared her 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie and with the physicist Henri Becquerel. Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie and son-in-law, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, would similarly share a Nobel Prize. She was the sole winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Skłodowska-Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the only woman to date to win in two fields, and the only person to win in multiple sciences.

Her achievements included a theory of radioactivity (a term that she coined^[4]), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two elements, polonium and radium. ^[5] Under her direction, the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms, using radioactive isotopes. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and Warsaw, which remain major centres of medical research today.

While an actively loyal French citizen, Skłodowska-Curie (she used both surnames) never lost her sense of Polish identity. She taught her daughters the Polish language and took them on visits to Poland. She named the first chemical element that she discovered – polonium, which she first isolated in 1898 – after her native country.^[6] During World War I she became a member of the Committee for a Free Poland (Komitet Wolnej Polski).^[7] In 1932, she founded a Radium Institute (now the Maria Skłodowska–Curie Institute of Oncology) in her home town, Warsaw, headed by her physician-sister Bronisława. Curie died in 1934 of aplastic anemia brought on by her years of exposure to radiation.^[8]

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Władysław Skłodowski with daughters (from left) Maria, Bronisława, Helena, 1890

Birthplace on ulica Freta in Warsaw's "New Town" – now home to the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Museum

Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw, in the Russian partition of Poland, on 7 November 1867, the fifth and youngest child of well-known teachers Bronisława and Władysław Skłodowski. Maria's older siblings were Zofia (born 1862), Józef (1863), Bronisława (1865) and Helena (1866).

Maria's paternal grandfather Józef Skłodowski had been a respected teacher in Lublin, where he taught the young Bolesław Prus.^[9] Her father Władysław Skłodowski taught mathematics and physics, subjects that Maria was to pursue, and was also director of two Warsaw gymnasia for boys, in addition to lodging boys in the family home. Maria's mother Bronisława operated a prestigious Warsaw boarding school for girls; she suffered from tuberculosis and died when Maria was twelve.

Maria's father was an atheist; her mother—a devout Catholic.^[10] Two years earlier Maria's oldest sibling, Zofia, had died of typhus. The deaths of her mother and sister, according to Robert William Reid, caused Maria to give up Catholicism and become agnostic.^[11]

When she was ten years old, Maria began attending the boarding school that her mother had operated while she was well; next Maria attended a gymnasium for girls, from which she graduated on 12 June 1883. She spent the following year in the countryside with relatives of her father's, and the next with her father in Warsaw, where she did some tutoring.

On both the paternal and maternal sides, the family had lost their property and fortunes through patriotic involvements in Polish national uprisings aiming at the restoration of Poland's independence (most recent of which was the January Uprising). This condemned each subsequent generation, including that of Maria, her elder sisters and her brother, to a difficult struggle to get ahead in life.^[12]

At a Warsaw lab here, in 1890–91, Skłodowska did her first scientific work.

Maria made an agreement with her sister, Bronisława, that she would give her financial assistance during Bronisława's medical studies in Paris, in exchange for similar assistance two years later.^[13] In connection with this, Maria took a position as governess: first with a lawyer's family in Kraków; then for two years in Ciechanów with a landed family, the Żorawskis, who were relatives of her father. While working for the latter family, she fell in love with their son, Kazimierz Żorawski, which was reciprocated by this future eminent mathematician. His parents, however, rejected the idea of his marrying the penniless relative, and Kazimierz was unable to oppose them. Maria lost her position as governess.^[14] She found another with the Fuchs family in Sopot, on the Baltic Sea coast, where she spent the next year, all the while financially assisting her sister.

At the beginning of 1890, Bronisława, a few months after she married Kazimierz Dłuski, invited Maria to join them in Paris. Maria declined because she could not afford the university tuition and was still counting on marrying Kazimierz Żorawski. She returned home to her father in Warsaw, where she remained till the fall of 1891. She tutored, studied at the clandestine Floating University,^[15] and began her practical scientific training (1890–91) in a laboratory at the Museum of Industry and Agriculture at Krakowskie Przedmieście 66, near Warsaw's Old Town.^[16] The laboratory was run by her cousin Józef Boguski, who had been assistant in Saint Petersburg to the great Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev.^[17]

In October 1891, at her sister's insistence and after receiving a letter from Żorawski, in which he definitively broke his relationship with her, she decided to go to France after all.^[10]

Maria's loss of the relationship with Żorawski was tragic for both. He soon earned a doctorate and pursued an academic career as a mathematician, becoming a professor and rector of Kraków University and president of the Warsaw Society of Learning. Still, as an old man and a mathematics professor at the Warsaw Polytechnic, he would sit contemplatively before the statue of Maria Skłodowska which had been erected in 1935 before the Radium Institute that she had founded in 1932.^[18]

In Paris, Maria briefly found shelter with her sister and brother-in-law before renting a primitive garret^[19] and proceeding with her studies of physics, chemistry, and mathematics at the Sorbonne (the University of Paris).

Pierre Curie[link]

Pierre Curie

Skłodowska studied during the day and tutored evenings, barely earning her keep. In 1893, she was awarded a degree in physics and began work in an industrial laboratory at Lippman's. Meanwhile she continued studying at the Sorbonne, and in 1894, earned a degree in mathematics.

That same year, Pierre Curie entered her life. He was an instructor at the School of Physics and Chemistry, the École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris (ESPCI). Skłodowska had begun her scientific career in Paris with an investigation of the magnetic properties of various steels; it was their mutual interest in magnetism that drew Skłodowska and Curie together.^[20]

Her departure for the summer to Warsaw only enhanced their mutual feelings for each other. She still was laboring under the illusion that she would be able to return to Poland and work in her chosen field of study. When she was denied a place at Kraków University merely because she was a woman, she returned to Paris.^[21] Almost a year later, in July 1895, she and Pierre Curie married, and thereafter the two physicists hardly ever left their laboratory. They shared two hobbies, long bicycle trips and journeys abroad, which brought them even closer. Maria had found a new love, a partner, and a scientific collaborator upon whom she could depend.^[21]

New elements[link]

In 1896 Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium salts emitted rays that resembled X-rays in their penetrating power. He demonstrated that this radiation, unlike phosphorescence, did not depend on an external source of energy, but seemed to arise spontaneously from uranium itself. Becquerel had, in fact, discovered radioactivity.

Curie decided to look into uranium rays as a possible field of research for a thesis. She used a clever technique to investigate samples. Fifteen years earlier, her husband and his brother had invented the electrometer, a sensitive device for measuring electrical charge. Using the Curie electrometer, she discovered that uranium rays caused the air around a sample to conduct electricity.^[22] Using this technique, her first result was the finding that the activity of the uranium compounds depended only on the quantity of uranium present. She had shown that the radiation was not the outcome of some interaction of molecules, but must come from the atom itself. In scientific terms, this was the most important single piece of work that she conducted.^[23]

Curie's systematic studies had included two uranium minerals, pitchblende and torbernite (also known as chalcolite). Her electrometer showed that pitchblende was four times as active as uranium itself, and chalcolite twice as active. She concluded that, if her earlier results relating the quantity of uranium to its activity were correct, then these two minerals must contain small quantities of some other substance that was far more active than uranium itself.^[24]

The idea [writes Reid] was her own; no one helped her formulate it, and although she took it to her husband for his opinion she clearly established her ownership of it. She later recorded the fact twice in her biography of her husband to ensure there was no chance whatever of any ambiguity. It [is] likely that already at this early stage of her career [she] realized that... many scientists would find it difficult to believe that a woman could be capable of the original work in which she was involved.^[25]

In her systematic search for other substances beside uranium salts that emitted radiation, Curie had found that the element thorium likewise, was radioactive.

Pierre and Marie Curie in the laboratory

Pierre and Marie Curie in the laboratory

She was acutely aware of the importance of promptly publishing her discoveries and thus establishing her priority. Had not Becquerel, two years earlier, presented his discovery to the Académie des Sciences the day after he made it, credit for the discovery of radioactivity, and even a Nobel Prize, would have gone to Silvanus Thompson instead. Curie chose the same rapid means of publication. Her paper, giving a brief and simple account of her work, was presented for her to the Académie on 12 April 1898 by her former professor, Gabriel Lippmann.^[26]

Even so, just as Thompson had been beaten by Becquerel, so Curie was beaten in the race to tell of her discovery that thorium gives off rays in the same way as uranium. Two months earlier, Gerhard Schmidt had published his own finding in Berlin.^[27]

At that time, however, no one else in the world of physics had noticed what Curie recorded in a sentence of her paper, describing how much greater were the activities of pitchblende and chalcolite than uranium itself: "The fact is very remarkable, and leads to the belief that these minerals may contain an element which is much more active than uranium." She later would recall how she felt "a passionate desire to verify this hypothesis as rapidly as possible."^[28]

Pierre Curie was sure that what she had discovered was not a spurious effect. He was so intrigued that he decided to drop his work on crystals temporarily and to join her. On 14 April 1898, they optimistically weighed out a 100-gram sample of pitchblende and ground it with a pestle and mortar. They did not realize at the time that what they were searching for was present in such minute quantities that they eventually would have to process tons of the ore.^[28]

As they were unaware of the deleterious effects of radiation exposure attendant on their chronic unprotected work with radioactive substances, Curie and her husband had no idea what price they would pay for the effect of their research upon their health.^[21]

Pierre, Irène, Marie Curie

In July 1898, Curie and her husband published a paper together, announcing the existence of an element which they named "polonium", in honor of her native Poland, which would for another twenty years remain partitioned among three empires. On 26 December 1898, the Curies announced the existence of a second element, which they named "radium" for its intense radioactivity — a word that they coined.

Pitchblende is a complex mineral. The chemical separation of its constituents was an arduous task. The discovery of polonium had been relatively easy; chemically it resembles the element bismuth, and polonium was the only bismuth-like substance in the ore. Radium, however, was more elusive. It is closely related, chemically, to barium, and pitchblende contains both elements. By 1898, the Curies had obtained traces of radium, but appreciable quantities, uncontaminated with barium, still were beyond reach.^[29]

The Curies undertook the arduous task of separating out radium salt by differential crystallization. From a ton of pitchblende, one-tenth of a gram of radium chloride was separated in 1902. By 1910, Curie, working on without her husband, who had been killed accidentally by a horse drawn vehicle^[30] in 1906, had isolated the pure radium metal.^[31]

In an unusual decision, Marie Curie intentionally refrained from patenting the radium-isolation process, so that the scientific community could do research unhindered.^[32]

In 1903, under the supervision of Henri Becquerel,^[33] Marie was awarded her DSc from the University of Paris.

Nobel Prizes[link]

1903

1911, awarded second Nobel Prize

In 1903 the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Pierre Curie, Marie Curie and Henri Becquerel the Nobel Prize in Physics, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel."

Curie and her husband were unable to go to Stockholm to receive the prize in person, but they shared its financial proceeds with needy acquaintances, including students.^[21]

On receiving the Nobel Prize, Marie and Pierre Curie suddenly became very famous. The Sorbonne gave Pierre a professorship and permitted him to establish his own laboratory, in which Curie became the director of research.

In 1897 and 1904, respectively, Curie gave birth to their daughters, Irène and Ève Curie. She later hired Polish governesses to teach her daughters her native language, and sent or took them on visits to Poland.^[34]

Curie was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize. Eight years later, in 1911, she received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, "in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element."

1911 Nobel Prize

A month after accepting her 1911 Nobel Prize, she was hospitalized with depression and a kidney ailment.

Curie was the first person to win or share two Nobel Prizes. She is one of only two people who have been awarded a Nobel Prize in two different fields, the other person being Linus Pauling (for chemistry and for peace). Nevertheless, in 1911 the French Academy of Sciences did not elect her to be a member by two votes. Elected instead was Édouard Branly, an inventor who had helped Guglielmo Marconi develop the wireless telegraph.^[35] It would be a doctoral student of Curie, Marguerite Perey, who would become the first woman elected to membership in the Academy – over half a century later, in 1962.

Pierre's death[link]

On 19 April 1906 Pierre was killed in a street accident. Walking across the Rue Dauphine in heavy rain, he was struck by a horse-drawn vehicle and fell under its wheels; his skull was fractured.^[30] While it has been speculated that previously he may have been weakened by prolonged radiation exposure, there are no indications that this contributed to the accident.

Curie was devastated by the death of her husband. She noted that, as of that moment she suddenly had become "an incurably and wretchedly lonely person". On 13 May 1906, the Sorbonne physics department decided to retain the chair that had been created for Pierre Curie and they entrusted it to Marie Curie together with full authority over the laboratory. This allowed her to emerge from Pierre's shadow. She became the first woman to become a professor at the Sorbonne, and in her exhausting work regime she sought a meaning for her life.

At First Solvay Conference (1911), Curie (seated, 2nd from right) confers with Henri Poincaré. Standing, 4th from right, is Rutherford; 2nd from right, Einstein; far right, Paul Langevin

Recognition for her work grew to new heights, and in 1911 the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded her a second Nobel Prize, this time for Chemistry. A delegation of celebrated Polish men of learning, headed by world-famous novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz, encouraged her to return to Poland and continue her research in her native country.^[21]

In 1911 it was revealed that in 1910–11 Curie had conducted an affair of about a year's duration with physicist Paul Langevin, a former student of Pierre Curie's.^[36] He was a married man who was estranged from his wife. This resulted in a press scandal that was exploited by her academic opponents. Despite her fame as a scientist working for France, the public's attitude tended toward xenophobia—the same that had led to the Dreyfus affair–which also fueled false speculation that Curie was Jewish. She was five years older than Langevin and was portrayed in the tabloids as a home-wrecker.^[37] Later, Curie's granddaughter, Hélène Joliot, married Langevin's grandson, Michel Langevin.

Curie's second Nobel Prize, in 1911, enabled her to talk the French government into funding the building of a private Radium Institute (Institut du radium, now the Institut Curie), which was built in 1914 and at which research was conducted in chemistry, physics, and medicine. The Institute became a crucible of Nobel Prize winners, producing four more, including her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie and her son-in-law, Frédéric Joliot-Curie.

World War I[link]

Curie in a World War I mobile x-ray vehicle

During World War I, Marie saw a need for field radiological centers near the front lines to assist battlefield surgeons. After a quick study of radiology, anatomy and automotive mechanics she procured x-ray equipment, vehicles, auxiliary generators and developed mobile radiography units, which came to be popularly known as petites Curies ("Little Curies"). She directed the installation of twenty mobile radiological vehicles and another 200 radiological units at field hospitals in the first year of the war. It is estimated that over one million wounded soldiers were treated with her x-ray units.^[11]

Afterwards, Marie produced hollow needles containing 'radium emanation', a colorless, radioactive gas given off by radium, later identified as radon to be used for sterilizing infected tissue. Curie provided the radium, from her own personal one gram supply.

Also, promptly after the war started, she attempted to donate her gold Nobel Prize medals to the war effort but the official refused to accept them. She was also active member in committees of Polish Polonia in France dedicated to Polish cause.^[38]

Post-war years[link]

In 1921 Curie was welcomed triumphantly when she toured the United States to raise funds for research on radium. Mrs. William Brown Meloney, after interviewing Curie, raised money to buy 1 gram of radium and publicized the trip.^[39] President Warren Harding received her at the White House.^[40]

Her second American tour, in 1929, succeeded in equipping the Warsaw Radium Institute, founded in 1925 with her sister Bronisława as director.^[41]

These distractions from her scientific labors and the attendant publicity caused her much discomfort but provided resources needed for her work.

In her later years Curie headed the Curie Pavilion, a radioactivity laboratory created for her by the Pasteur Institute and the University of Paris. It was one of four major radioactivity-research laboratories, the others being the Cavendish Laboratory, with Ernest Rutherford; the Institute for Radium Research, Vienna, with Stefan Meyer; and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, with Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner. ^[42]

In 1933, when Russian physicists George Gamow and his wife — who had together been trying for two years to defect from the Soviet Union — attended the 7th Solvay Conference on physics, in Brussels, Marie Curie and other physicists helped them extend their stay, and Gamow obtained temporary work at the Curie Institute.

Death[link]

1935 statue, facing the Radium Institute, Warsaw

Curie visited Poland for the last time in the spring of 1934.^[21] Only a few months later, on 4 July 1934, Curie died at the Sancellemoz Sanatorium in Passy, in Haute-Savoie, eastern France, from aplastic anemia contracted from her long-term exposure to radiation.^[8] The damaging effects of ionizing radiation were not then known, and much of her work had been carried out in a shed, without the safety measures that would later be developed. She had carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket^{[citation needed]} and stored them in her desk drawer, remarking on the faint light that the substances gave off in the dark.^[43] Marie was also exposed to x-rays from unshielded equipment while serving as a radiologist in field hospitals during the war.

She was interred at the cemetery in Sceaux, alongside her husband Pierre. Sixty years later, in 1995, in honor of their achievements, the remains of both were transferred to the Panthéon, Paris. She became the first – and so far the only – woman to be honored with interment in the Panthéon on her own merits.

Her laboratory is preserved at the Musée Curie.

Because of their levels of radioactivity, her papers from the 1890s are considered too dangerous to handle. Even her cookbook is highly radioactive. They are kept in lead-lined boxes, and those who wish to consult them must wear protective clothing.^[44]

Legacy[link]

Statue, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin, Poland

The physical and societal aspects of the work of the Curies contributed substantially to shaping the world of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Cornell University professor L. Pearce Williams observes:

The result of the Curies' work was epoch-making. Radium's radioactivity was so great that it could not be ignored. It seemed to contradict the principle of the conservation of energy and therefore forced a reconsideration of the foundations of physics. On the experimental level the discovery of radium provided men like Ernest Rutherford with sources of radioactivity with which they could probe the structure of the atom. As a result of Rutherford's experiments with alpha radiation, the nuclear atom was first postulated. In medicine, the radioactivity of radium appeared to offer a means by which cancer could be successfully attacked.^[31]

(See physics, conservation of energy, Ernest Rutherford, atom, alpha decay, atomic nucleus.)

If the work of Marie Curie helped overturn established ideas in physics and chemistry, it has had an equally profound effect in the societal sphere. To attain her scientific achievements, she had to overcome barriers that were placed in her way because she was a woman, in both her native and her adoptive country. This aspect of her life and career is highlighted in Françoise Giroud's Marie Curie: A Life, which emphasizes Curie's role as a feminist precursor. She was ahead of her time, emancipated, independent, and in addition uncorrupted. Albert Einstein is reported to have remarked that she was probably the only person who was not corrupted by the fame that she had won.^[45]

Awards[link]

Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel prize and the first person to win two Nobel Prizes.

• Nobel Prize in Physics (1903)
• Davy Medal (1903)
• Matteucci Medal (1904)
• Elliott Cresson Medal (1909)
• Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911)
• Franklin Medal of the American Philosophical Society (1921)^[46]

The Curies reportedly used part of their award money to replace wallpaper in their Parisian home and install modern plumbing into a bathroom.^[47]

Honors[link]

• Madame Curie was decorated with the French Legion of Honor. In Poland, she had received honorary doctorates from the Lwów Polytechnic (1912), Poznań University (1922), Kraków's Jagiellonian University (1924), and the Warsaw Polytechnic (1926).

• Their elder daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935 for discovering that aluminum could be made radioactive and emit neutrons when bombarded with alpha rays. Their younger daughter, Ève Curie, later wrote a biography of her mother.

• Michalina Mościcka, wife of Polish President Ignacy Mościcki, unveiled a 1935 statue of Marie Curie before Warsaw's Radium Institute, which had been founded by Marie Curie. Within a decade, during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, the monument suffered damage from gunfire. After the war, when maintenance was done, it was decided to leave the bullet-inflicted scars on the statue.^[21]

• In 1967, a museum devoted to Curie was established in Warsaw's "New Town", in her birthplace on ulica Freta (Freta Street).^[21]

• The year 2011 was declared the Year of Marie Curie by France and Poland. "Madame Curie", which fills the Jacobs gallery at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s downtown space, is an artistic installation celebrating the scientist.^[48]

• Rue Madame Curie is a street in Beirut, Lebanon, that was named in her honor.

• On 7 November 2011, Google celebrated her birthday with a special Google Doodle.^[49]

• On 10 December 2011, the New York Academy of Sciences celebrated the centenary of Marie Curie's second Nobel prize in the presence of Princess Madeleine of Sweden.^[50]

Tributes[link]

Panthéon, Paris

Tomb of Pierre and Marie Curie

As one of the most famous female scientists to date, Marie Curie has become an icon in the scientific world and has received tributes from across the globe. In 1995, she became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon, Paris, alongside her husband Pierre Curie. The curie (symbol Ci), a unit of radioactivity, is named in honour of her and Pierre,^[51][52] as is the element with atomic number 96 – curium. Three radioactive minerals are also named after the Curies: curite, sklodowskite, and cuprosklodowskite.

Curie's likeness appeared on the Polish late-1980s inflationary 20,000-złoty banknote. Her likeness also has appeared on stamps and coins, as well as on the last French 500-franc note, before the franc was replaced by the euro. In a 2009 poll carried out by New Scientist, Marie Curie was voted the "most inspirational woman in science". Curie received 25.1 per cent of all votes cast, nearly twice as many as second-place Rosalind Franklin (14.2 per cent).^[53][54]

Soviet postage stamp

Polish institutions named after Marie Curie include:

• Maria Skłodowska–Curie Institute of Oncology, in Warsaw
• Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, in Lublin, founded in 1944;
• a private college in Warsaw (Uczelnia Warszawska im. Marii Skłodowskiej-Curie)
• numerous schools of various levels in Poland
• Polish nuclear research reactor Maria.

French institutions named after Marie Curie include:

• Pierre and Marie Curie University, the largest science, technology and medicine university in France, and successor to the faculty of science at the University of Paris, where Marie Curie taught. The university is home to the laboratory where the couple discovered radium.
• The Curie Institute and Curie Museum, in Paris
• In 2007, the Pierre Curie Paris Métro station was renamed the "Pierre et Marie Curie" station.

American institutions named after Marie Curie include:

• Curie Community at the Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine, in Chicago, a memorial gathering room for students at the university
• In Bayside, Queens, New York, another school named for her, Marie Curie M.S. 158, specializes in science and technology; as does Curie Metropolitan High School – located in Archer Heights, on Chicago's Southwest Side – which has a Technical, Performing Arts and IB program
• The Maria Skłodowska-Curie Medallion, a stained-glass panel created by Jozef Mazur, may be found at the University at Buffalo Polish Room.

Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon starred in the 1943 U.S. Oscar-nominated film, Madame Curie, based on her life. "Marie Curie" also is the name of a character in a 1988 comedy, Young Einstein, by Yahoo Serious.

More recently, in 1997, a French film about Pierre and Marie Curie was released, Les Palmes de M. Schutz. It was adapted from a play of the same name. In the film, Marie Curie was played by Isabelle Huppert. Unlike the 1943 drama, Les Palmes de M. Shutz is a light comedy.

A KLM McDonnell Douglas MD-11 (registration PH-KCC) is named in her honor.^[55]

• KVS is celebrating IYC 2011, and, under this programme, held a nationwide quiz in India, with the topic being "Life and Works of Madam Curie".^[56]

See also[link]

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

Fiction[link]

• Olov Enquist, Per (2006). The Book about Blanche and Marie. New York: Overlook. ISBN 1-58567-668-3.  A 2004 novel by Per Olov Enquist featuring Maria Skłodowska-Curie, neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, and his Salpêtrière patient "Blanche" (Marie Wittman). The English translation was published in 2006.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Marie Curie

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Marie Curie

• Out of the Shadows-A study of women physicists
• Pierre Curie and Marie Sklodowska : The First Century of Their Impact on Human Knowledge
• The official web page of Maria Curie Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland in English.
• Detailed Biography at Science in Poland website; with quotes, photographs, links etc.
• European Marie Curie Fellowships
• Marie Curie Fellowship Association
• Marie Curie Cancer Care, UK
• Marie Sklodowska Curie: Her Life as a Media Compendium
• Marie and Pierre Curie and the Discovery of Polonium and Radium Chronology from nobelprize.org
• Annotated bibliography of Marie Curie from the Alsos Digital Library
• Obituary, New York Times, 5 July 1934 Mme. Curie Is Dead; Martyr to Science
• Some places and memories related to Marie Curie
• Marie Curie on the 500 French Franc and 20000 old Polish zloty banknotes.
• Marie Curie at the Internet Movie Database – Animated biography of Marie Curie on DVD from an animated series of world and American history – Animated Hero Classics distributed by Nest Learning.
• Marie Curie – More than Meets the Eye at the Internet Movie Database – Live Action portrayal of Marie Curie on DVD from the Inventors Series produced by Devine Entertainment.
• Marie Curie at the Internet Movie Database – Portrayal of Marie Curie in a television mini series produced by the BBC
• Works by or about Marie Curie in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics and 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry – Nobel committee page; presentation speech, her award lecture etc.
• "Marie Curie and the Study of Radioactivity" at American Institute of Physics website. (Site also has a short version for kids entitled "Her story in brief!".)
• "Marie Curie Walking Tour of Paris". Hypatia. http://www.hypatiamaze.org/m_curie/curie_walk.html. Retrieved 7 November 2011. 

Walter H.G. Lewin
A 2003 photo of Lewin
Born	(1936-01-29) January 29, 1936 (age 76) Netherlands
Residence	Netherlands, United States
Nationality	Dutch
Fields	Astrophysics
Institutions	MIT
Alma mater	Delft University of Technology
Notable awards	NASA Award for Exceptional Scientific Achievement (1978) Alexander von Humboldt Award (1984 and 1991) Guggenheim Fellowship (1984) MIT Science Council Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (1984), W. Buechner Teaching Prize (1988) Everett Moore Baker Memorial Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (2003)

Walter H. G. Lewin (born January 29, 1936), PhD, is a Dutch American astrophysicist and professor emeritus of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Education and career[link]

He earned his Ph.D. degree in nuclear physics in 1965 at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Walter Lewin went to MIT in January 1966 as a post-doctoral associate, and became an assistant professor later that year.^[1] He joined an X-ray astronomy group at MIT and conducted all-sky balloon surveys with George W. Clark. Through the late seventies, there were about twenty successful balloon flights. These balloon surveys led to the discovery of five new X-ray sources, which doubled the number known at the time. Furthermore, some of these X-ray sources were found to be varying, and some were X-ray flares. The rockets used by other researchers could not have discovered that the X-ray sources varied because they were only in the air for a few minutes, whereas the balloons could be in the air for many hours. The surveys also resulted in the discovery of GX 1+4, which was the first slowly rotating X-ray pulsar found.

Walter Lewin received the "2003 Everett Moore Baker Memorial Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching" award. Some of his lectures are available online in video format.

Lewin is also an art enthusiast and collector. He has given one lecture in art history for MIT World.^[2]

Lectures[link]

Many of the Walter Lewin Lectures on Physics at MIT have been shown for over six years on UWTV in Seattle, reaching an audience of about four million people. Lewin personally responded to hundreds of e-mail requests that he received per year from UWTV viewers. For fifteen years he was on MIT Cable TV, with programs aired 24 hours per day helping freshmen with their weekly homework assignments. Videos of Lewin's lectures on Newtonian Mechanics, Electricity and Magnetism, and Vibrations and Waves, among others, can be viewed from the MIT OpenCourseWare web site, and easily viewed as video podcasts on The Internet Archive.

A video of Lewin drawing dashed lines on chalkboards during lectures has become a viral video.^[3]

Selected publications[link]

• Lewin, Walter H.G.; Jan van Paradijs, Ronald E. Taam (204-10-27). "X-ray Bursts". Space Science Reviews 62 (3-4): 223–389. Bibcode 1993SSRv...62..223L. DOI:10.1007/BF00196124. 

• D. Pooley, W.H.G. Lewin, S.F. Anderson, H. Baumgardt, A.V. Filippenko, B.M. Gaensler, L. Homer, P. Hut, V.M. Kaspi, B. Margon, S. McMillan, S. Portegies Zwart, M. van der Klis, & F. Verbunt (2003). "Dynamical Formation of Close Binary Systems in Globular Clusters". Astrophysical Journal 591 (2): L131–L134. arXiv:astro-ph/0305003. Bibcode 2003ApJ...591L.131P. DOI:10.1086/377074. 

• J. Miller, A. Fabian, R. Wijnands, R. Remillard, P. Wojdowski, N. Schulz, T. Di Matteo, H. Marshall, C. Canizares, & W. Lewin (2002). "Resolving the Composite Fe K-alpha Emission Line in the Galactic Black Hole Cygnus X-1 with Chandra". Astrophysical Journal 578: 348–356. arXiv:astro-ph/0202083. Bibcode 2002ApJ...578..348M. DOI:10.1086/342466. 

• D. Pooley, W. Lewin, L. Homer, S. Anderson, B. Gaensler, B. Margon, F. Verbunt, J. Miller, D. Fox, V. Kaspi & M. v.d. Klis (2002). "Optical Identifications of Multiple Faint X-ray Sources in the Globular Cluster NGC~6752: Evidence for Numerous Cataclysmic Variables". Astrophysical Journal 569: 405. arXiv:astro-ph/0110192. Bibcode 2002ApJ...569..405P. DOI:10.1086/339210. 

• C. Kouveliotou, J. van Paradijs, G. J. Fishman, M. S. Briggs, J. Kommers, B. A. Harmon, C. A. Meegan, W. H. G. Lewin (1996). "Discovery of a New Type of Burster from the Galactic Center Region". Nature 379 (6568): 799. Bibcode 1996Natur.379..799K. DOI:10.1038/379799a0. 

• M. v.d. Klis, J. Swank, W. Zhang, K. Jahoda, E. Morgan, W. Lewin, B. Vaughan, & J. van Paradijs (1996). "Discovery of Sub millisecond Quasi-periodic Oscillations in the X-ray Flux of Scorpius X-1". Astrophysical Journal 469: L1. arXiv:astro-ph/9607047. Bibcode 1996ApJ...469L...1V. DOI:10.1086/310251. 

• W.H.G. Lewin, G.W. Clark and W.B. Smith (1968). "Observation of an X-Ray Flare from Sco X-1". Astrophysical Journal (Letters) 152: L55. Bibcode 1968ApJ...152L..55L. DOI:10.1086/180177. 

Selected books[link]

• Lewin, Walter; Goldstein, Warren, For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics, Simon and Schuster, 2011. ISBN 978-1-4391-0827-7
• Lewin, Walter; van der Klis, Michiel (editors), Compact stellar X-ray sources, Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0-521-82659-4
• Lewin, Walter H.G.; van Paradijs, Jan; van den Heuvel, Edward P.J., (editors), X-ray binaries, Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-521-41684-1
• Truemper, J.; Lewin, W.H.G.; Brinkmann, W., (editors), The evolution of galactic X-ray binaries, Dordrecht, Holland ; Boston : D. Reidel Pub. Co.; Hingham, MA : Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada by Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1986. ISBN 90-277-2184-X

See also[link]

• Walter Lewin Lectures on Physics
• MIT Physics Department

References[link]

1. ^ Instructor Profile: Walter Lewin at MIT OpenCourseWare (archived 2009)
2. ^ "Looking at 20th Century Art through the Eyes of a Physicist - Walter Lewin (video)", MIT World, January 14, 2004
3. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l789l6np-qA&feature=related

Further reading[link]

• Clark, Kim (2008-01-10). "A New Physics Superstar". US News and World Report. http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/e-learning/2008/01/10/a-new-physics-superstar.html. Retrieved 2009-01-08. 
• Rimer, Sara (2007-12-19). "At 71, Physics Professor Is a Web Star". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/education/19physics.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin. Retrieved 2007-12-19. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Walter Lewin

• Walter Lewin's page at MIT
• MIT Physics Department website
• Walter Lewin's Physics I Course Page with Video Lectures
• Walter Lewin's Physics II Course Page with Video Lectures
• Walter Lewin's Physics III Course Page with Video Lectures
• WalterLewin's Physics I Course on iTunes U (needs iTunes)
• WalterLewin's Physics II Course on iTunesU (needs iTunes)
• WalterLewin's Physics III Course on iTunesU (needs iTunes)
• The Elegant Universe PBS Video featuring Walter Lewin
• Walter Lewin Playlist Appearance on WMBR's Dinnertime Sampler radio show February 4, 2004