Is Your Career a Dying Passion: The Curie Family

 "Our fingerprints don't fade from the lives we touch." Robert Pattinson

 Do you dream of leaving a legacy in life? Many have had instinctual-deep guttural ideas that were crazy, only later to be of great benefit for humanity leading to greater findings for centuries.

Often given in long term suffering - frustration or succumb to death without a thought or notion, they might choose another career or path in life to live by.

Many of these people have been women, (such as the movie) Iron Jawed Women: Alice Paul, one of many suffragettes who defied the odds. Having admired Susan B Anthony's work, took up office in the same old dusty station, thrilling when seated at Susan's dusty old desk from the 1800's. Alice Paul conducted business, raised their own chapter funding, wrote many doctrines for the Suffrage movement that found ratification in 1920, giving women the rights to vote state wide and country elections.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO70ZjZ0wrw (LI does not recognize UTube links) The Suffragettes will have their own article in subsequent article.

The list of thousands’ of men and women who have given their lives for ardent dreams, benefiting globally. Ameliorate the flaws of mankind, without question, without a second thought, beyond determination. This internal fortitude is a burning fire that consumes an individual to the extent they MUST* live the person within without question. *[The Crossroads of Should and Must, by Elle Luna].

Women pioneer: the Currie family, a family who won five (5) Nobel Prizes for their work, an ingrained impetuosity spreading through three generations. In our twenty-first century we all prosper from their findings. What we now commonly use in the 21st century, take for granted in the medical field, X-rays which proliferated in the development of MRIs and other common lifesaving scanning equipment. These findings cost the Curie women their lives.

Marie Sk?odowska was born November 7th 1867, Naturalized-French physicist and chemist conducted pioneering research on radioactivity, Marie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and the only woman to win the Nobel Prize twice in multiple sciences. In conjunction to these accomplishments, Marie was the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, leaving a legacy in women’s equality.

As in all life, the Curie family and predecessors lives were riddle with tragedy: Marie lost her mother at the age of 11, Bronsitwa (also a scientist) to tuberculosis.

Historically women were exempted from education and historical documentation (e.g. Hypatia), and were not allowed an educational privilege in attending "the men-only University of Warsaw."

Marie continued her education in Warsaw's "floating university," a set of underground, informal classes held in secret. Both Marie and her sister Bronya dreamed of going abroad to earn official degrees, but lacked the funding to pay for further education. Undeterred, Marie collaborated with her sister for both to have their desired education. Marie worked to support Bronya while she was in school, later Bronya-- would return the favor after completing her studies.--

For approximately five years, Marie worked as a tutor and a governess. She used her spare time to study, reading about physics, chemistry and math. In 1891, she finally made her way to Paris where she enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Vigilantly determined and dedicated to her studies, Marie survived on buttered bread and tea while completing her master's degree in physics in 1893. After which, Marie earned another degree in mathematics the following year, 1894. During this time, she received a commission to do a study on different types of steel and their magnetic properties.

You were not meant to sit in the shade of life

Fortuitously, while in need of a lab, Marie met her future husband, a French physicist Pierre Curie. A romance developed between the brilliant pair, and became a scientific dynamic duo. They had their first daughter, Irene, September 12th 1897 who later became a Nobel Prize winner in science.

In 1902, the Curies announced that they had produced a decigram of pure radium, the presence of another radioactive material in the pitchblende. In 1903 Marie became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in physics. She won the prestigious honor along with her husband Pierre and Henri Becquerel, for their work on radioactivity. With their Nobel Prize winning, they used their prize money to continue their research, founding the Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw which remain major centers of medical research today.

Marie took Becquerel's work a few steps further, conducting her own experiments on uranium rays. She discovered that the rays remained constant, no matter the condition or form of the uranium. The rays, she theorized, came from the element's atomic structure. This revolutionary idea created the field of atomic physics and Marie herself coined the word radioactivity to describe the phenomena.

During these productive and award winning years in 1904 Marie and Pierre bore their second child, a daughter name Eve. A happy time, until tragedy would come on April 19th, 1906, Pierre was killed in a road accident. Walking across the Rue Dauphine in heavy rain, he was struck by a horse-drawn vehicle, once again a devastating loss for the Curie family.

Never relinquishing her work, on 13 May 1906 the physics department of the University of Paris decided to retain the chair that had been created for Pierre and to offer it to Marie. She accepted it hoping to create a world-class laboratory as a tribute to Pierre.

“First principle: never to let oneself be beaten down by persons or events. Creating something out of nothing. Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance. And above all confidence in ourselves.” Marie Sk?odowska-Curie

Despite her tremendous grief, Marie continued on receiving yet another great honor in 1911, winning her second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry. She was selected for her discovery of radium and polonium. Marie shared the honor jointly with her late husband in her acceptance speech.

At the first Solvay Conference in Physics (1911), Marie joined with other famous

scientists, including Max Planck, Curie (seated, second from right) confers with Henri Poincaré; standing, fourth from right, is Rutherford; second from right, Einstein; far right, Paul Langevin,

Afterwards, Marie re-entered a more orthodox learning environment at the Collège Sévigné in central Paris from 1912 to 1914, later a Faculty of Science at the Sorbonne, to complete her Baccalaureate.

When WWI commenced in 1914, Marie devoted her time and resources to

helping the veterans. She championed the use of portable X-ray machines trucks in the field, lending the nickname "Little Curies.” The development of this technology greatly assisted doctors to locate shrapnel in wounded soldiers. The operations were a crude portable X-ray techniques, with Marie and Irène serving as nurse radiographers, both unaware to their suffering from large doses of radiation exposure which Marie carried in her pockets. It is estimated that over a million wounded soldiers were treated by these new founded X-ray units. In spite of all her humanitarian contributions to the French war effort, Curie never received any formal recognition from the French government.

After the WWI, Marie returned to Paris to study at the Radium Institute, previously built by her parents. The institute was completed in 1914, remained empty during the war. Her doctoral thesis was presented regarding the alpha rays of polonium, the element was named after Marie’s country, Poland.

In 1915 Marie produced hollow needles containing 'radium emanation', a colorless, radioactive gas given off by radium, later identified as radon, to be used for sterilizing infected tissue. She provided the radium from her own one-gram supply. In 1925 Marie gained her title of, Doctor of Science, using her celebrity to advance her research by traveling to the United States twice— in 1921 and in 1929, to raise funds to buy radium and to establish a radium research institute in Warsaw.

Marie Curie died in 1934 at the Sancellemoz (Haute-Savoie a France sanatorium), at the age of 67 due to aplastic anemia brought on by the exposure of radiation. She left a legacy of exceptional scientific discoveries furthering the current 21st century in medical sciences in all internal X-ray formulated venues. With many accomplished breakthroughs in her lifetime, she has stood out among the most famous female scientist of all time, and has received numerous posthumous honors.

In 1995, Marie became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon Paris proving women were always equal to men. Both Marie Pierre remains are interred in the Panthéon in Paris, the final resting place of France's greatest minds.

The Currie legacy did not end with Marie and Pierre. The year of Marie’s death in 1934, her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie followed in her mother's footsteps, winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935. Irène Joliot-Curie shared the honor with her husband Frédéric Joliot for their work on their synthesis of new radioactive elements. Building on the work of Marie and Pierre, who had isolated naturally occurring radioactive elements, the team known as Joliot-Curies realized the alchemist’s dream of turning one element into another, creating radioactive nitrogen from baron and then radioactive isotopes of phosphorus from aluminum and silicon from magnesium. This discovery led to an ability to create radioactive materials for use in medicine.

The Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1935 brought with it fame and recognition from the scientific community. Irène Joliot-Curie was awarded a professorship at the Faculty of Science. Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie followed in her mother's footsteps, winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935. Joliot-Curie shared the honor with her husband Frédéric Joliot for their work on their synthesis of new radioactive elements.

Working so closely with such deadly materials, Irène accidentally exposed to polonium when a sealed capsule of the element exploded on her laboratory bench in 1946. Irène Joliot-Curie she was diagnosed with leukemia.

Treatment with antibiotics and a series of operations did relieve temporarily suffering as her condition continued to deteriorate. Despite these major setbacks, Joliot-Curie continued to work drawing up plans for a new physics laboratories at the Universitie d’Orsay, south of Paris in 1955.

Today several educational and research institutions and medical centers bear the Curie name, including the Institute Curie and the Pierre and Marie Curie University, both in Paris.

Both Curie women died from the consequences of accumulated radiation exposure over their professional life.

A statue of Maria Curie-Sk?odowska University, Lublin, Poland face the Radium Institute Warsaw. Marie Curie has become an icon in the scientific world and has received tributes from across the globe, in a 2009 Marie Curie was voted the "most inspirational woman in science."

Given the enormity of the Curie family, I ask myself often: Are you willing to give your life for your career? What am I willing to risk? Are we willing to die for our creations? Taking a momentary action that may leave a legacy affecting generations to come?

Are we willing to die for our creations? Taking a momentary action that may leave a legacy affecting generations to come?

Many will never propose such when embarking on life, but would you, in all guttural intensity and dedication, live and die for your career?

I have met many determined - enthusiastic designing brilliant people as I travel through life, they have the internal burning aspirations that surge, pound - gnaw at our internal fortitude, in a variety of life's venues. Some face tireless sleepless days and nights. Thousands of them have been women.

Admirable caution blinds one to unanticipated possibilities Thomas Jefferson

About the Author. MicheleElys is a Behaviorist – Writer - Speaker- Innovative Behavior & TBI Recovery Solutions - Reluctant French Chef - Equine Devotee.

Dedicated to Behavioral Solutions for the betterment of life. 

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