By: In Jae Chung

 Marie Curie was born on November 7, 1867 in Warsaw.  Both of her parents strongly believed in the importance of education.  Marie first began to learn chemistry and physics from her father and he saw that Marie had a thirst for knowledge but education for women was denied in Poland.  In 1891, Marie left to study in Paris. On July she married Pierre.  She is known for discovering radioactive metals Polonium and Radium.

 Born in Paris on May , Pierre was the son of Dr. Eugene Curie who was a general medical practitioner.  His father educated him and in his early teens he showed a strong suit in geometry.  He gained his Licentiateship in 1878 in Physics and continued as a demonstrator in the physics laboratory until 1882 where he was in charge of all practical work in Physics and Industrial Chemistry Schools.  In 1895 he obtained his Doctor of Science degree. He was promoted to Professor in Faculty of sciences in 1900 and became Titular professor in 1904.

 Marie decided to look in to uranium rays as a possible field of research for a thesis. Using an electrometer created by Pierre, she discovered uranium rays caused the air to conduct electricity. Also, the activity of uranium depended on the amount of uranium present. She hypothesized that radiation was not the outcome of some interaction of molecules, but must come from the atoms. Marie concluded that the 2 minerals must contain small quantities far more active than uranium. In 1898, Marie and Pierre published a paper announcing the existence of 2 new elements polonium and radium. To prove their discoveries, they had to isolate polonium and radium into its pure components. The Curies undertook task of separating radium salt by differential crystallization. From a ton of pitchblende, one tenth of a gram of radium chloride was separated in In 1910, Curies isolated pure radium metal. The Curies never succeeded in isolating polonium.

 In December 1903, Pierre and Marie was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.  In 1911, Marie was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering radium and polonium.

 During World War I, Marie saw a need for radiological centers near the front lines to assist battlefield surgeons. Marie produced x-ray equipment, vehicles, auxiliary generators and developed mobile radiography units, which came to be popularly known as petites Curies. She became the Director of Red Cross and installed more than twenty radiological vehicles and another 200 radiological units at field hospitals. She was at first assisted by a military doctor and her daughter but later began training other women. In 1915, Curie produced radon, a colorless radioactive gas given off by radium to be used for treating infected tissues. Marie drove herself the medical vans and took an active job of locating metal splinters. In the war, the French did not do much in supporting her.

 Marie was married to Pierre Curie and had 2 kids. Irene in 1897 and Eve in 1904.

 Marie Curie died on 1934 of aplastic anemia which is from too much exposure of radiation. Pierre was run over by a horse wagon fracturing his skull and died in 1906.

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 Antoine Henri Becquerel was born in Paris on December 15, 1852, a member of a distinguished family of scholars and scientists. His father, Alexander Edmond Becquerel, was a Professor of Applied Physics and had done research on solar radiation and on phosphorescence, while his grandfather, Antoine César, had been a Fellow of the Royal Society and the inventor of an electrolytic method for extracting metals from their ores.

 Becquerel's earliest work was concerned with the plane polarization of light, with the phenomenon of phosphorescence and with the absorption of light by crystals (his doctorate thesis). He also worked on the subject of terrestrial magnetism. In 1896, his previous work was overshadowed by his discovery of the phenomenon of natural radioactivity.

 Following a discussion with Henri Poincaré on the radiation which had recently been discovered by Röntgen (X-rays) and which was accompanied by a type of phosphorescence in the vacuum tube, Becquerel decided to investigate whether there was any connection between X-rays and naturally occurring phosphorescence. He had inherited from his father a supply of uranium salts, which phosphoresce on exposure to light. When the salts were placed near to a photographic plate covered with opaque paper, the plate was discovered to be fogged. The phenomenon was found to be common to all the uranium salts studied and was concluded to be a property of the uranium atom. Later, Becquerel showed that the rays emitted by uranium, which for a long time were named after their discoverer, caused gases to ionize and that they differed from X-rays in that they could be deflected by electric or magnetic fields. For his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity Becquerel was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903, the other half being given to Pierre and Marie Curie for their study of the Becquerel radiation. 

He was married to Mlle. Janin, the daughter of a civil engineer. They had a son Jean, b. 1878, who was also a physicist: the fourth generation of scientists in the Becquerel family.

He was elected a member of the Academie des Sciences de France in 1889 and succeeded Berthelot as Life Secretary of that body. He was a member also of the Accademia dei Lincei and of the Royal Academy of Berlin, amongst others. He was made an Officer of the Legion of Honour in 1900.

 He died on August 25, 1908.

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