Though she was often weak and ill, she worked inthis way for four years.
She had chosen her course and nothing could turn her fron it.
3. Among the many scientists Maria met and worked with in Paris
was Pierre Curie. Pierre Curie, bom in 1859 in Paris, was the son of a
doctor, and from early childhood he had been fascinated by science. At
sixteen he was a Bachelor of Science, and he took his Master's degree in
Physics when he was eighteen. When he met Maria Sklodowska he was
thirty-five years old and was famous throughout Europe for his discoveries
in magnetism. But in spite of the honour he had brought to France by his
discoveries, French Government could only give him a very little salary as
a reward, and the University of Paris refused him a laboratory of his own
for his researches.
4. Pierre Curie an Maria Sklodowska 6 both of whom loved science more
than anything else, very soon became the closest friends. They worked
together constantly and discussed many problems of their researches. After
little more than a year they fell in love with each other, and in 1895 Maria
Sklodowska became Mme. Curie. Theirs was not only to be a very happy
marriage but also one of the greatest scientific partnerships.
Marie had been the greatest woman - scientist of her day but she was a
mother too, a very one. There were their two little girls, Irene and Eve.
5. By this time Mme. Cure had obtained her Master's degree in Physic an
Mathematics, and was busy with researches on steel. She now wished to
abtain a Doctor's degree. For this it was necessary to offer to the examiners
a special study, called a thesis.
6. For some timePierre Curie had been interested in the work of a French
scientist named Becquerel. There is a rare metal called uraniun which, as
Becquerel discovered, emits rays very much like X-rays. These rays made
marks on a photographic plate when it was wrapped in black paper. The
Curies got interested in these rays of uranium. What caused them? How
strong were they? There were many such questions that puzzled Marie
Curie and her husbend. Here, they decided, was the very subject for
Marie's Doctor's thesis.
7. The research was carried out under great difficlty. Mme. Curie had to
use an old store-room at the University as her laboratory - she was refused
a better room. It was cold, there was no proper apparatus and very little
space for research wore. Soon she discovered that the rays of uranium were
like no other known rays.
8. Marie Curie wanted to find out if other
chemical substances might
emit similar rays.So she began to examine every known chemical
substance .Once after repeating her experiments time after time she found
131
that a mineral called pitchbende emitted much mor poverful rays than any
she had already found.
9. Now, an element is a chemical substance which so far as is known
cannot be split up into other substances. As Mme. Curie had examined
every known chemical element and none of them had emitted such
powerful rays as pitchblende she could only decide that this mineral must
contain some new element.
Scientists had declared that every element was already known to them.
Bull all Mme. Curie's experiments pointed that it was not so.
Pitchblende must contain some new адц unkllOwn element. There
was no other explanation Уог the powerful rays which it emitted. At that
moment Pierre Curie stopped his own investigations on the physics of
crystals and joined his wife in her effort
to find tliose more active
unknown chemical elements.
Scientists call the property of giving out such rays "radioactivity”, alld
Mme. Curie decided to call the new element "radium", because it was more
strongly radioactive thah any known metal.
It is known now that Мте. Curie has given the real basis far the
industrial methods of separating radium and other elements from the
pitchblende and from other minerals. ІПІ903 Marie and Pierre together
with Henry Becquerel were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1911
Marie received the Nobel Prize in Chemistrv. But the second prize went to
her alone for in 1906 Pierre ha (1 died tragically in a traffjc
a c cid en i-.М те.
Sklodowska-Curie, the leadillg woman-scielltist, the greatest woman of
her generation, has become the first person to receive a Nobel Prize twice.
UNIT IS
EDUCATION
1.
As long as we .live we continue to learn,
and the education we
receive wheh we are young helps us to continue learning. We are taught to
read and write, and are taught many of the essential facts about the world
and shown how to sort them out so that later in life, we shall be able to find
out things ourselves and not to ask other people.
The first teachers were fathers and mothers, but very early in the
istory о man children began to be taught by people other than their
!ath^
and mothers- 11 is thought that schools first started in Egypt 5,000-
o
,
years ago, and that it was the invention of writing which made
them necessary. Reading and writing were quite different from the skills
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