Physics is...

Questions answered by Marie Curie (1867 – 1934)(Source: Eve Curie, “Madame Curie”)

1. What were your reasons for studying physics? “I was interested in literature [...] as well as in sociology and in science in general. During my busy years [as a private tutor to be able to finance my studies], however, I gradually tried to discover my real talents, and so I finally turned towards mathematical subjects and physics. Of course my lonesome studies abounded with difficulties. The scientific education I received at grammar school was rather incomplete, so I tried to fill the gaps by reading books which accidentally fell into my hands. This method was not very efficient. It had, however, the advantage that I got used to work independently and that I also acquired a certain knowledge which later was of great value to me.”
2. What university did you go to? At the Sorbonne in Paris.
3. Did you know a physical experiment at school which particularly impressed you? What are the physical experiments which impress you? From her early childhood, Marie Curie was particularly fascinated with the physical equipment in the study of her father, who was a grammar school teacher.
4. Your physical aha-experience? Marie and Pierre Curie searched for an unknown substance: “This radiation which I cannot understand is unquestionably emitted by a chemical element so far unknown. We are convinced that it exists, we only have to find it. The physicists with whom we have discussed think that there must be an error in my experiments and recommend us to be careful with such a statement, but I know for sure that I am not mistaken!” (In 1898, Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium).
5. Do you have a favourite experiment? The luminescence of radium. “This luminescence cannot be observed in bright daylight, but you immediately see it in the half-dark. The light emitted by a small radium source can be so strong that its reflex allows you to read in the dark.”
6. Are you also interested in a completely different speciality? Politics
7. What profession did you aim for as a child? Teacher in Warsaw
9. By what do you recognize a physicist? A characteristic of a physicist is a nature idealistic above average, as “science only deals with objects, and not with persons.”
10. Your recommendation for future students of physics? “I use to read several things at the same time, as continuous occupation with one and the same thing might overfatigue my brain which is already strongly overstrained. If I feel completely unable to read with advantage, I solve algebraic or trigonometric tasks, as they force me to pay attention and that gets me back on the right lines.”
11. Do correct measurements require a healthy amount of ambition? Yes, the ambition to work accurately. An assistant observed Marie Curie during her work in the laboratory: “She sits in front of an apparatus and performs measurements in a half-dark room which is not heated to avoid temperature variations. The individual maneuvers – turning on the apparatus, releasing the chronometer, lifting the weight etc. – are carried out by Mrs. Curie with admirably controlled and balanced movements, as it could hardly be done by the dexterous hands of a pianist. She has the excellent technique which tries to reduce the coefficient of the personal error to zero. When she then compares the calculations made before with incredible quickness with the results obtained, you see her sincere, and not a feigned, joy, because the deviations lie far below what is permitted, which proves the accuracy of the measurement.”
24. Would you tell us three important events of your biography? November 3, 1891 – Finally, Marie Sklodovski can start her scientific studies at the Sorbonne she hand longed for. July 26, 1895 - Marie Sklodovski marries Pierre Curie.
1898 – The Curies discover radium.
25. Do you think there are things which cannot be measured? In the affirmative, what? The freedom of Poland. In 1920, Marie Curie wrote to her brother Joseph Sklodovski: “So – born in slavery, forged in chains already in the cradle (quotation from Adam Mickievicz’s “Messer Thaddäus”) - we still have seen the resurrection of our country we have dreamt about! We had not expected to see the great moment ourselves, we thought this privilege would be granted to our children – and now it is there! It is true that our country has paid and still has to pay dearly for this luck. But can you compare the clouds which darken the situation today with the bitterness and disappointment which would weigh on us if Poland had remained in chains and cut to pieces after the war? Like you I am full of confidence in the future.”
26. Did you ever see the primary kilogram in Paris? Probably yes, since she handed over to the “Bureau of Weights and Measures” at Sèvres near Paris the standard measure for radium (a small glass tube with 21 mg of pure radium) which she had personally sealed.
28. Which physicist do you admire? Pierre Curie: “He was everything to me and even more than I dreamt of when I united my life with his. My admiration for his extraordinary, high and rare qualities permanently increased so that I often regarded him as an astounding creature. He was completely free from the vanity and narrow-mindedness we use to judge with clemency when we notice it in others or in ourselves but which we do not at all consider ideal."
30. It is said that Goethe’s last words were “more light!” What should be your last measurement? Marie Curie in the true sense of the word measured the radium with her body and died of the after-effects of the radiation injuries.
31. Do you remember the most important measurement of your life? It was the most painful one. “Sunday morning after your death, Pierre [in 1906, Pierre Curie died in a road accident], I again went to the laboratory for the first time. I tried to measure a curve for which we had determined some points together – but I was not able.”
32. There was a time when certain physical experiments were suddenly regarded as politically undesired. How political can physics be in your opinion? Marie Curie suffered from the rule of tsarist Russia over her homeland Poland. In 1898, the Curies wrote to the Academy:
“We think that the substance we separated from the pitchblende contains an unknown element whose analytical properties resemble those of bismuth. If the existence of this new element is confirmed, we propose naming it p o l o n i u m after the homeland of one of us.”
During World War I, Marie Curie personally made X-ray apparatuses available to French military hospitals, developed mobile X-ray stations and visited the country’s military hospitals in a car converted into an X-ray station. “The history of radiology during the war is a striking proof of the unforeseen expansion the practical application of purely scientific discoveries may undergo under certain conditions. Until the war, X-rays had been practically used only to a very limited extent. Only the great disaster which came over mankind and claimed innumerable victims aroused as countereffect the burning desire to apply all conceivable means to preserve endangered human lives and to prevent infirmity.