FAMOUS WOMAN SCIENTIST

Evening Star, Issue 18173, 13 January 1923, Page 7

FAMOUS WOMAN SCIENTIST

SKETCH OF MADAME CURIE.

A word-sketch of tho famous woman scientist, Madame Curio, describes her as a, slim Polish woman of some fatty-four veara. She has a pale, squarish, rather sad face, intent dark eyes, a womans tender mouth, relieving a cbm of almost masculine firmness. A writer m linie and Tide ’ who saw her arrive m America to receive her famous gift of £20,00U worth of material (a gram of radium} ? which was contained in a tiny 2in bottle set in a mahogany casket with a lead shell, said that Madame Ouno looked “ ethereal, tired, and rather lost.” She was accompanied by a young, tall daughter, who had an nir of watching over her. Marja Curio Sklodowska, os she signs herself, is described as the greatest woman scientist tho world has known. She came of a. distinguished Polish family, and was born in Warsaw, where her father taught Hi Ilia Lyceo. Tlioro wore two other daughters and a son. Her earlv life was spent as though her father had’eaught a glimpse of his daughter’s great destiny. When she was sixteen he took her under his tuition, and guided her into the special channels of study for which she showed such amazing aptitude—-physics, chemistry, and mathematics. Within a fow years pupil outstripped master, and as Warsaw offered no scope for a girl student of high qualifications Marja left there and entered at Pans at the Paculto des Sciences as a student o! chemistry. Her means were small, and she eked them out by giving lessons in elementary science, and so trained hursotf for teaching, as well as for research work. These experiences stood ijer in good stead later. They enabled her, when she came to occupy the professorial platform, to prove to tho satisfaction of her strictest critics—and on tho score of her sex she had many—that her talents did not begin and end in the study and laboratory. In those clay./ which were very happy ones, she occupied rooms on the fourth floor of a house in a humble part of Paris, and did her own cooking and housework.

In tho Science Academy she soon mado her mark. Among those who were attracted by her gifts was Henri Poincare, brother of the President of France. Another scientific man who took personal interest in her was Professor Bccquerel, chemist and physicist, who invited her to assist him in tho laboratory. And one ol tho professors, Pierre Curie, fell in lova with her. She was a very charming person, not carrying her Knowledge heavily, but sympathetic with tho lighter side of life, and fond of sculpture and painting. She was fond of tho drama, also, and one of tho things sho liked best was to escape on fine Sundays to the country. The marriage was an ideal one, for in homo and in the laboratory she and Professor Curio wero comrades and partners. Picrrs laid the table while Marja did tho shopping. Tho housework, for in tho early years of their married life they dispensed with a maid, was divided between thorn, and they remained comparatively poor and entirely" happy. Between tho year of her marriage and her husband s tragic death in 1906—h0 was run over in a Paris street and killed—Maria taught, worked in laboratory and study, conducted her house, published several scientific works, and brought, her two children, Irene and Eve, into the world. Sho had her hours of weariness, hut it was only physical weariness.

The definite uureuit of radium began the year after Ircr marriage. With Becquovel she investigated tho newly-dis-covered X-ray, aud came on tho discovery of radio-activity. Tho path of her work is sketched most interestingly, and hor infinite skill, paiieuce, and persistence is shown, for she had to cover much essential preliminary ground and excavate a path lo tho hr nr lof tho secret. Sho discovered tho new .strange ray in thorium. In testing a mass of pitchblende known to contain a. certain weight of uranium she concluded that it must harbor a hitherto unsuspected dement which was radio-active to a degree almost frightening, it was deal’ to her that tho new element, whatever it was. would not merely penetrate matter as light penetrates glass, but would burn a hole in nerve, flesh, bone, metal, etc. film proved to bo rigid. Three grammes of radium laid on a man’s body would kill him in forty hours by destroying tissue and bones. Radium has the ’greatest power of all sources of energy man has discoverer! thus far. It is a potent force for 20,000 years. Excitement was caused in tho medical world, and, incidentally, the news that a substance had been found worth some 15,000 times as much as gold interested a largo portion of the rest of the world. Later it was thought pitchblende was not the only substance containing radium, and tho radium-bearing qualities of carnotita were investigated with satisfactory results. Congratulations camo to the Curies from all parts of the world, and, with Bccquorcl, they gained in 1905 tho Nobel Prize for physics. Tho Paris Faculty made Madame a doctor of science, aud tho Royal Society invited her and her husband to receive tho Davy Medal. In 1900 Madame Curio was nominated professor of physics and chemistry at Sevres, aud in this post she remained until her husband’s death, when sho returned to Paris and succeeded him as professor of the faculty of sciences of the Sorbonno. Sho worked steadily on, always advancing the causes of science, till the outbreak of war interrupted her, and sho took an Xray motor outfit and worked it in conjunction with the French Red Cross services behind the lines. Sho is now director of the Physicochemical Department of Die University of Paris. She has a laboratory of her own. aud a beautiful home in +ho Boulevard Kellernnm Madame Curio numbers among her friends tho most powerful and distinguished men in art, politics, literature, and .-donee, but goes out very little and lives most simply. .Scientists, concludes the writer of tho little sketch, arc now considering the possibility of controlling the vast energy of radium, and, undoubtedly. lim problem, will bo solved, if not in ‘his century, then next, Tho result., the. “ lia me wing of tho atom,” will, tie such as will change tHn face of civilisation, .'lull, incidentally, make war impossible. Ttiis is life potential zenith of Madamo Curie's discovery, and it assures her an imperishable name.