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Marie Curie

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Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934), known simply as Marie Curie, was a Polish and naturalised-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. Her husband, Pierre Curie, was a co-winner of her first Nobel Prize (the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics), making them the first married couple to win the Nobel Prize and launching the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes.

Marie won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of the elements polonium and radium, using techniques she invented for isolating radioactive isotopes. Under her direction, the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms by the use of radioactive isotopes. She founded the Curie Institute in Paris in 1920, and the Curie Institute in Warsaw in 1932; both remain major medical research centres. During World War I, she developed mobile radiography units to provide X-ray services to field hospitals.

Quotes

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Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.
You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.
One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.
  • One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.
    • Letter to her brother (1894)
  • I have no dress except the one I wear every day. If you are going to be kind enough to give me one, please let it be practical and dark so that I can put it on afterwards to go to the laboratory.
    • Instructions regarding a proposed gift of a wedding dress for her marriage to Pierre in July 1895, as quoted in ''Madame Curie : A Biography (1937) by Eve Curie Labouisse, as translated by Vincent Sheean, p. 137
  • Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.
    • Response to a reporter seeking an interview during a vacation with her husband in Brittany, who mistaking her for a housekeeper, asked her if there was anything confidential she could recount, as quoted in Living Adventures in Science‎ (1972), by Henry Thomas and Dana Lee Thomas
    • Variant: In science, we must be interested in things, not in persons.
      • This is stated to be a declaration she often made to reporters, in Madame Curie : A Biography (1937) by Eve Curie Labouisse, as translated by Vincent Sheean, p. 222
  • Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.
    • 'La vie n’est facile pour aucun de nous. Mais quoi, il faut avoir de la persévérance, et surtout de la confiance en soi. Il faut croire que l’on est doué pour quelque chose, et que, cette chose, il faut l'atteindre coûte que coûte.'
      • As quoted in Madame Curie : A Biography (1937) by Eve Curie Labouisse, Part 2, p. 116
  • We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity.
    • Lecture at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York (14 May 1921)
  • All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child.
    • Pierre Curie (1923), as translated by Charlotte Kellogg and Vernon Lyman Kellogg, p. 162
  • You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.
    • Pierre Curie (1923), as translated by Charlotte Kellogg and Vernon Lyman Kellogg, p. 168
  • I believe international work is a heavy task, but that it is nevertheless indispensable to go through an apprenticeship in it, at the cost of many efforts and also of a real spirit of sacrifice: however imperfect it may be, the work of Geneva has a grandeur that deserves our support.
    • Letter to Eve Curie (July 1929), as quoted in Madame Curie : A Biography (1937) by Eve Curie Labouisse, as translated by Vincent Sheean, p. 341
  • I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. We should not allow it to be believed that all scientific progress can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, gearings, even though such machinery also has its beauty.
    Neither do I believe that the spirit of adventure runs any risk of disappearing in our world. If I see anything vital around me, it is precisely that spirit of adventure, which seems indestructible and is akin to curiosity.
    • As quoted in Madame Curie : A Biography (1937) by Eve Curie Labouisse, as translated by Vincent Sheean, p. 341
    • Variant translation: A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician: he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales.
  • Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. Without doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research.
    • As quoted in Astrophysics of the Diffuse Universe (2003) by Michael A. Dopita and Ralph S. Sutherland
  • I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.
    • Java Connector Architecture: Building Custom Connectors and Adapters‎ (2002) by Atul Apte, p. 69
  • There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.
    • As quoted in The Commodity Trader's Almanac 2007 (2006) by Scott W. Barrie and Jeffrey A. Hirsch, p. 44

Misattributed

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  • I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries.
    • As quoted in White Coat Tales : Medicine's Heroes, Heritage and Misadventures‎ (2007) by Robert B. Taylor, p. 141. The original source is the last sentence of the Nobel lecture of Pierre Curie (available here).

Quotes about Marie Curie

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  • Marie Curie was at heart a Baconian, boiling tons of crude uranium ore to demolish the dogma of the indestructibility of atoms.
    • Freeman Dyson, "Birds and Frogs" (Oct. 4, 2008) AMS Einstein Public Lecture in Mathematics, as published in Notices of the AMS, (Feb, 2009). Also published in The Best Writing on Mathematics: 2010 (2011) p. 58.

Radio-activity (1904)

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by Ernest Rutherford (a 2nd edition was published in 1905).
  • Marie Curie made a detailed examination by the electrical method of the great majority of known substances, including the very rare elements, to see if they possessed any activity. In cases when it was possible, several compounds of the elements were examined. With the exception of thorium and phosphorus, none of the other substances possessed an activity even of the order of 1/100 of uranium.
  • It seemed probable that the large activity of some of these minerals, compared with uranium and thorium, was due to the presence of small quantities of some very active substance, which was different from the known bodies thorium and uranium. This supposition was completely verified by the work of M. and Mme Curie, who were able to separate from pitchblende by purely chemical methods two active bodies, one of which in the pure state is over a million times more active than the metal uranium. This important discovery was due entirely to the property of radio-activity possessed by the new bodies. The only guide in their separation was the activity of the products obtained. ...The activity of the specimens thus served as a basis of rough qualitative and quantitative analysis, analogous in some respects to the indication of the spectroscope.
  • The chief difficulty lay in the fact that pitchblende is a very complex mineral and contains in varying quantities nearly all the known metals. ...The analysis of pitchblende by chemical methods, using the procedure sketched above, led to the discovery of two very active bodies, polonium and radium. The name polonium was given to the first substance discovered by Mme Curie in honor of the country of her birth. The name radium was a very happy inspiration of the discoverers, for this substance in the pure state possesses the property of radio-activity to an astonishing degree.

See also

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