MADAME CURIE AND RADIUM G213

 MADAME CURIE AND RADIUM

Madame Curie will always be remembered as the discoverer of the element radium.

A certain scientist had discovered that a metal called uranium gave off a kind of radiation, which Marie Curie was later to call radioactivity. But where did this radiation come from, and what was it like? This was what she set out to discover. She did experiment after experiment. There was failure, a little success, a little more failure, a little more success. All seemed to prove that in the mineral which she was examining there was some source of radiation which man knew nothing about.

Four years before this, Marie had expressed her thoughts in words much like this: "Life is not easy for any of us. We must work, and above all we must believe in ourselves. We must believe that each one of us is able to do something well, and that, when we discover what this something is, we must work until we succeed." This something in Madame Curie's own life was to lead science down a new path to a great discovery.

At this time her husband left his own laboratory work, in which he had been very successful, and joined her in her search for this unknown radiation. In 1898 they declared that they believed there was something in nature which gave out radiation. To this something, still unseen, they gave the name radium. All this was very interesting, but it was against the beliefs of some of the scientists of that day. These scientists were very polite to the two Curies, but did not believe them. The common feeling among them was: "Show us some radium, and we will believe you."

There was an old building at the back of the university where Pierre Curie had been working. Its walls and roof were made of wood and glass. It was furnished with some old tables, a blackboard, and an old stove. It was not much better than a shed, and no one else seemed to want it. The Curies moved in and set up their laboratory and workshops. Here for four very difficult years they worked every moment that they could spare, weighing and boiling and measuring and calculating and thinking. They believed that radium was hidden somewhere in the mass of mineral dirt which was sent to them from far away. But where?

The shed was hot in summer and cold in winter, and when it rained, water dripped from the ceiling. But in spite of all the discomforts, the Curies worked on. For them these were the four happiest years of their lives.

Then, one evening in 1902, as husband and wife sat together in their home, Marie Curie said: "Let's go down there for a moment." It was nine o'clock and they had been "down there" only two hours before. But they put on their coats and were soon walking along the street to the shed. Pierre turned the key in the lock and opened the door. "Don't light the lamps," said Marie, and they stood there in the darkness. "Look! ... Look!"

And there, glowing with a faint blue light in the glass test-tubes on the tables, was the mysterious something which they had worked so hard to find: Radium.