Small but Powerful When Curie began her work with pitchblende she estimated radium would make up approximately 1 100 of the mineral Instead it made up 1 1,000,000 of pitchblende This is why so many tons of the mineral had to be processed to produce just 0 10 gram of radium Although Curie knew radium would be more powerful than uranium she hadn’t guessed just how much more powerful Its radiation is five million times more intense than uranium’s 7 work stretched to four years Despite the difficulty of the task Curie felt that these were the happiest days of her life Later she wrote We were very happy in spite of the difficult conditions under which we worked A great tranquility reigned in our poor shabby hangar occasionally while observing an operation we would walk up and down talking of our work present and future We lived in a preoccupation as complete as that of a dream 5 Even after their busy days in the lab Curie and Pierre often left their daughter in the care of Pierre’s father and walked back to the lab at night There they paused to admire the jars of radium that according to Curie glowed blue in the dark like faint fairy light 6 SUCCESS Finally on March 28 1902 after processing more than eight short tons 7 3 metric tons of pitchblende Curie had isolated 0 10 gram of pure radium Although this amount would fill only 1 50 of a teaspoon it was enough for Curie to calculate the The shed that Curie used as a lab was very minimal and lacked basic comforts 10
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element’s atomic weight as 225 93 No one could dispute the facts the Curies had discovered a new element Almost immediately their discovery gave rise to a scientific movement as Curie later noted 8 Scientists around the world scrambled to complete research on radioactive substances The results of that research led to a drastic change in the way scientists viewed the world Before they had believed atoms were the smallest particles of matter But Curie’s discovery indicated atoms were actually made up of even smaller parts known as subatomic particles These discoveries unlocked the Lingering Radioactivity As they conducted their work the Curies were exposed to high levels of radiation with little protection Their lab instruments clothing and even cookbooks soon became contaminated by radiation More than 100 years after the Curies discovery of radioactivity these items still exhibit high levels of radioactivity In the 1990s the Curies granddaughter Hélène Langevin-Joliot donated her grandparents personal and scientific papers to the National Library in Paris Although she mentioned that the items were still radioactive library employees placed the papers in plastic covers that did little to prevent the emission of radiation Hélène then helped the library sort the items based on the level of radioactivity each exhibited The most radioactive materials underwent a two-year decontamination process Even so traces of radioactivity lingered on some As a result the papers are stored in lead-lined boxes Researchers wishing to access the papers are required to sign a medical waiver and wear protective clothing 12
Curie’s contributions to science led to a wide variety of applications including in energy and medicine secrets of the atom’s structure unleashed the power of atomic weapons and even led to new treatments for cancer But if the results of Curie’s work seemed immediate she knew they had come after years of painstaking toil As she later wrote A great discovery does not leap completely achieved from the brain of the scientist it is the fruit of accumulated preliminary work 9 For Curie that preliminary work had begun decades earlier 13
