Marie Curie: One Glow of History; by Hannah

Author’s Note:
Marie Curie was born as Marya Sklodowska in Warsaw, Poland on November 7, 1867. She had a bad childhood because her mother and a sister died. When she was 23 she attended the Sorbonne, a university in Paris, where she studied to be a scientist. Later she married Pierre Curie and together they discovered radium. She died on July 4, 1934 from her own discoveries.

“We did it! We can finally prove that Radioactivity exists!”

I was overwhelmed with happiness. It was on a winters night of 1902, in a small old shed in Paris, that we, Pierre and I, could finally prove after three years of hard work, little sleep, and scarce meals, our greatest discovery, Radium. I had been waiting for this moment for centuries, it seemed, and now we finally did it!

The strong glow of radium lit up the shed. I blew out the candles around us so I could have a better look at “the glow”. The smell of burned candles then filled the air. I couldn’t help but to stare at our radium. We finally had enough radioactivity to prove to the world that it exits but, the amount still disappointed me. We had used tons and tons of uranium to make about one jar full of radium.

I looked around. Everything and Everyone glowed in a luminous blue. People from the busy streets of Paris noticed us. I saw heads looking in through the windows, and I heard a crowd chattering in French. The noise gradually grew louder and louder, stronger and stronger then slowly faded again.

I couldn’t wait for the news to get around, but something bothered me… would this distract our future research? “We did it Marie! We did it!”

My husband and science partner, Pierre, shared my excitement and pulled me out of my thoughts. I was speechless. My mouth was dry and felt glued shut. Glowing warm with excitement my heart felt like the sun in the summer, even though the air around me told me that winter was there. I looked at Pierre. I said in a no joke voice,” I don’t want to accept any money for this. It just doesn’t feel right. I know that we can achieve more as scientists.”

I thought he would understand. But, I quickly added,” Being rich and famous would be big distraction. We brought it this far, we reached our goal, we can’t end it now.”

Pierre looked at me and said in a serious voice,” I know. I feel the same.”

I sat down on a hard wooden chair, Pierre standing behind me. We stared at our luminous blue glow of radioactivity for hours. Silence.

The buzz about our brilliant discovery was around the world in what felt like seconds. In 1903 I enrolled for a doctorate and I became the first women in Europe to be awarded one. With that Pierre Curie, Henri Becquerel (discoverer of the x-ray) and I, Marie Curie, won the Nobel Prize for Physics with our work on Radioactivity. That Nobel Prize proved that science is important and that women could be scientists. But, we kept our word and never accepted any money for our discovery.

A few years later radium rays (used for x-rays) were used during World War 1. My oldest daughter Irene and I traveled far to cure soldiers and to teach other doctors how to use x-rays. I trained over 150 operators! I can truly say that radioactivity changed the world.