This article is from the WeChat public account: mantoutalk , author: bread master, the original title:” [12.26] a female scientist’s personal life “from the title figure: vision China

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On December 26, 1898, Mary Curie submitted a report to the French Academy of Sciences.

In this report, she claims that she and her husband, Pierre Curie, have discovered a new radioactive element 88 that is 1 million times more radioactive than uranium. This element is named “Radium” (Radium) .

And just 5 months ago, they just announced the discovery of the new radioactive element 84-Mary Curie suggested to use her home country Poland to name it “钋” (polonium) .

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The above are all stories that everyone knows well and may know from the beginning of elementary school. But in order to make the story today relatively complete, it is necessary to briefly introduce the life of Mary Curie.

On November 7, 1867, Mary Skvodowska was born to the family of a middle school teacher in Warsaw, Poland. In 1891, at the age of 24, she came to Paris to study and entered the Department of Physics at the Faculty of Science at the University of Paris.

Mary Curie Girls’ Day

In 1894, because of her desire for a better experimental environment, Mary met Pierre Curie, the laboratory director of the Paris Physics and Chemistry School at the time. A year later, the two married in Paris, and Mary followed her husband’s last name and became “Mary Curie.”

In August 1896, Mary passed the professional title test at the Physics and Chemistry School in Paris, and obtained a position in the school’s physics laboratory. She has since worked with her husband, Pierre Curie.

Curie and his wife are experimenting

It was then in 1898 that the Curies announced the discovery of “radium”. After the announcement, it caused a stir in the scientific community-you said you found this thing, but where is it? You show us! In order to refine pure radium, the Curie couple sold all valuable things, took all their deposits, bought 10 or more bags of rare asphalt uranium slag, and began a difficult purification test. After 45 months of tens of thousands of refinements, they finally obtained 10 grams of radium chloride.

So—as everyone knows—in 1903, the Curies won the Nobel Prize of the year in recognition of their contributions to radiological research.

And Marie Curie’s fate begins.

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First talk about the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903.

First of all, this award was not won by the Curies alone, but shared with others. share itTaking the half bonus is a scientist named Anthony Henry Becquerel.

Beckler is a well-known French physicist, a family of scientists, his father and grandfather are famous scientists, and his grandfather is a member of the Royal Society. Becquerel was the first to discover natural radioactivity in 1896. (Although he initially mistakenly thought it was fluorescent) .

Beckler

In fact, although Becquerel’s discovery of natural radioactivity is indispensable, he did not make significant research and theory afterwards. The main work was done by the Curies. Of course, it was not unreasonable for Becquerel to win the Nobel Prize, but it was puzzling that in the winning nominations proposed by four famous scientists at the time, he did not have the name of Mary Curie at the beginning, ranking first Yes, Becquerel.

What about the Curie couple who really made a significant contribution? Pierre Curie was described as “Baker’s assistant”, while Mary Curie was called “Pierre Curie’s assistant”.

But the fact is that for the concept and theory of radioactivity, Mary Curie was the true pioneer and her husband Pierre was her assistant. In April 1895, the Royal French Academy of Sciences read the paper entitled “Radioactivity of Uranium and Tritium Compounds” by Mary Schvodovska-she was not married to Pierre Curie at the time (Pierre Curie later joined after his wife studied radium for two years, helping to improve the testing equipment) .

Mary Curie eventually appeared on the winning list because of her husband’s insistence. But Becquerel is said to have said this:

“Mrs. Curie’s contribution is to serve as a good assistant to Mr. Pierre Curie, which has reason to believe that God made women to be the best assistants to cooperate with men.”

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Anyway, Mary Curie was recognized from the Nobel Prize in 1903. But what awaits her next is a more cruel fate.

On April 19, 1906, three years after receiving the Nobel Prize, Pierre Curie was hit by a carriage on the road and died on the spot. The couple who have been supporting each other along the way, now only 39-year-old Mary Curie is left alone.

Photos of the Curie couple during their honeymoon, and the bicycle is their new wedding item

Then Paul Langevin broke into her life.

Langevan is 5 years younger than Mary, a student of Pierre Curie, and a very talented scientist. After the death of Pierre Curie, Langevin became Mary’s good friend and a trusted scientific researcher. During Mary’s most difficult time, Lang Zhiwan helped her step out. Marie Curie declined the French government’s pension, saying that she could support herself and her daughter by teaching at Sorbonne, and her first class at Sorbonne was the textbooks that Langlang helped prepare.

The two have been together for a long time, and friendship has gradually become love-but Lang Zhiwan is a married woman.

In thisIn the group photo called “Bringing the Smartest Brains in the World”, the act next to Einstein’s right is Paul Langevin, which shows his status at the time. And Mary Curie is the only woman among all the gods.

Lang Zhiwan, from a poor background, married Jenny, the daughter of a small grocery store owner. You can hardly tell whether the marriage is right or wrong, but because of the huge gap between the education and knowledge of the two sides, Lang Zhiwan gradually lost his common language with his wife. The wife did not want him to do any research, only he would bring more More money to support the family.

This is not a very demanding requirement for a wife who has not received much education. The wife has to raise children and run the family. She also has her difficulties. But Lang’s pursuit is definitely not this. Cha Cha Ni seems to have a stronger temper, and is said to have broken Lang Zhiwan’s head.

Curie Marie wanted to mediate at first. She even criticized Lang Zhiwan for being too rude to his wife, but gradually, she found that their conflict was irreconcilable, and she fell in love with it. Lang Zhiwan, so began to persuade them to divorce. In 1910, Langevin rented a small house next to Sorbonne University in his own name, where it became a place where he and Mary Curie were together. Mary called that house “our place”.

In the front row are Mary Curie and Langevin. In 1911, Mary Curie won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the separation of pure metal radium. Become the only person in history who has won both the Nobel Prize in Physics and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Unfortunately, Langevin’s divorce failed. To make matters worse, his wife got a love letter written by Marie Curie to his wife, and these letters were taken to French media.

The whole of France is a sensation-how can boring scientific research be more interesting than celebrity gossip?

Newspapers such as the French newspaper, “News tabloid”, “Works” and other newspapers began to report on the “mysterious relationship” of Mary Curie and Lang Zhiwan. “And started publishing her letters in bulk (but do not take out the original) , and the media started to figure out whether Pierre was alive when Pierre was alive. .

After the death of her husband, Mary Curie independently raised two daughters to grow up. Her eldest daughter, Irena Curie, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with her husband in 1935.

Mary Curie fought back in anger, warning her not to violate her privacy. (letter) , but soon became more popular. Overwhelmed-Some Frenchmen started attacking her house, smashing her windows with stones, and someone called ‘Get out, the foreigner’! Or “Thief!”

A love letter with no veracity revealed again-in that letter, Mary Curie showed a longing for sex. Naturally romantic French men seemed to express such desire for women, and Curie began to add a new title: Polish slut.

A group of French scientists who originally supported Mary Curie also began to change their minds. They began to write a letter to let Mary leave France, including Paul Epel, Mary’s most loyal comrade in arms. To this end, Abel’s daughter and father had a big fight. (daughter is Curie’s student) , the one who never hit his father The daughter announced that she would break off with her father, and said: “If Mary Curie was a man, all this would not happen!”

This may indeed be the case.

Einstein, Mary Curie’s best friend, is a mess in her private life, but few people care about it. In this case, Einstein wrote a letter in solidarity with Mary: “If two people love each other, no one has the right to interfere.” Then the man who also has to bear responsibility, Lang Zhiwan?

He returned to his wife after a period of separation—provided that his wife allowed him to publicly have a female secretary as a lover. manyYears later, Lang Zhiwan was allowed by his wife to be with a young female student again. In order to feed the female student lover, Lang Zhiwan even asked Mary Curie to arrange a position for the student at the institute.

The next three years, Mary Curie was admitted to a hospital run by a nun to escape everything.

Everyone except her has no loss.

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In 1914, the French public’s interest in discussing the Marie Curie scandal weakened significantly, because in this year, World War I broke out.

Facing the Frenchman who smashed the window of her house and called her a “slut” and asked her to leave France, Mary Curie did the following:

First, she took the Nobel medal to the bank, hoping to donate it to the government to help win the war. After learning that the bank refused to melt the medals, Curie Marie took out all the Nobel prize money and bought French war bonds.

Mary Curie then shut down the Radium Lab she just completed and began studying X-rays. Her reason is that during the war, the research of radium was of little significance, but X-rays might be useful on the battlefield.

Mrs Curie and daughter Irena are in the experiment. Curie later brought his daughter to the battlefield.

Mary Curie first convinced the French government to make herself a Red Cross radiologist, then convinced her rich friends to donate cars and money. ( The Curie couple could have easily become billionaires, but they abandoned patent applications related to radium because Mary Curie thought it was the common wealth of science. At the end of October 1914, Mary Curie learned X-ray science and human anatomyHe also obtained a driver’s license and mastered basic car maintenance skills.

She then assembled a generator, a hospital bed, and a mobile X-ray machine on a Renault truck.

In order to convince the government and the military that X-rays are of great help in the examination of the wounded in the army, 47-year-old Mary Curie, risking her life, drove to the front line and began to get the wounded soldiers on board for inspection.

Shots of bullets and howitzers, which were previously difficult to find, are exposed to X-rays, which greatly reduces the difficulty of surgery. Officers and soldiers slowly began to admire the little woman in front of them. They called the little truck that Curie drove, affectionately called “Little Curie.”

And many soldiers do n’t know that the woman who checked them for wounds in person is the two-time Nobel Prize winner.

Mrs Curie and her X-ray cart “Little Curie”

Just working alone, Mary Curie found that it was not enough. She needs more vehicles and more X-ray equipment to help the wounded.

So she opened an X-ray training class for 150 women and brought her daughter Irena to the battlefield to continue to manage the X-ray apparatus. She then retrieved her radium element and began collecting radioactive gas (氡) to make hollow needles to disinfect tissue infections.

Mrs Curie teaches radiology to nurses

In 1918, World War I finally declared an armistice.

On the day the news of the truce came, Mary Curie was collecting puppets in the laboratory. When she heard the news, she immediately hung out the French flag on the window, and drove “Little Curie” to the street to celebrate.

At that moment, she looked more elated than many French people.

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In 1934, Mary Curie, 67, came to an end.

Due to long-term exposure to radioactive (especially during the X-ray study period) , Mary Curie had malignant leukemia. After her death, the French government realized that her X-ray research might have rescued hundreds of thousands of French soldiers, and she was awarded a medal.

Mary Curie has been working in a radioactive environment for a long time. Her clothes, experimental equipment, and various notebooks are full of radioactivity. People can only dare to touch them by wearing special protective clothing.

At that time, no one finally cared about her other things, but paid homage to her noble personality who devoted herself to science.

Einstein said, “Of all the world’s celebrities, Mary Curie is the only one who has not been spoiled by fame.”

In July 1913, Mrs. Curie and the Einstein family hiked in the Alps for two weeks. The children walked in front to play, Curie Mrs. and Einstein slowly followed, discussing physical issues. This photo is regarded by many as one of the most moving pictures in physics.

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Someone was a little bit upset about the name “Mrs. Curie”.

Because Mary Curie has her own name, after her husband passed away, she won many honors with her own efforts, but she has always been called “Mrs Curie”. In fact, I feel that in the context of Chinese, “Mrs.” is more an honorable title than a subordinate representing marriage.

But in other ways, Mary Curie has suffered a lot of injustice.

She went to university in Paris because the university in Warsaw does not accept female students. Although she graduated with honors from college, she can only be a female teacher in middle school. She is not qualified to read her thesis aloud at the French Academy of Sciences.

In 1911, she was elected to the French Academy of Sciences by one vote, citing that “the Academy does not have a female academician.”

After the death of Pierre Curie, and as a wife, she did not have the right to use the laboratory. Later, it was Marie Dordon who applied to regain her research qualification.

And her feelings.

It is true that even if Lang Zhiwan’s marriage is unfortunate, it is not a reason for her to intervene before his divorce, but she also experienced various consequences. And Lang Zhiwan, as a man, the responsibility of derailment does not seem to exist at all. As long as he finally returns to the family, everything can be forgiven, leaving Mary alone to bear the ridicule and even insult of everyone.

It is worth mentioning that it is a kind of helplessness and pain that Lang Zhiwan’s original Jenny later acquiesced to his lover.

Mary Curie calmly said to her daughter, “In a world where men make rules, they think that a woman’s function is sex and fertility.” Is that so? Is it not?

Look at some men who have derailed themselves, and some public opinion will first review the injured woman: Are you too busy with your career to be gentle enough to your husband? Didn’t you realize the hard work of the husband? As long as he’s willing to turn around, forgive him! Women can’t live without family! A woman has a child and a husband is the winner of life!

This is the “winner” set by the world view of men!

It must be admitted that today’s story about Curie Mary is not so much a demonstration of her great personality and scientific achievements as a record of her efforts and struggles for the rectification of women.

In the most advocating rational and objectiveIn the scientific community, the success of women scientists is still so difficult, let alone in other industries?

This is also Mrs. Mary Curie’s greatness as a female scientist.

This article is from WeChat public account: mantoutalk , author: bread masters