100 years ago, 1898, 12.26, French Academy of Sciences were all people. A solemn and slightly tired young beauty stepped onto the platform, and the audience was suddenly silent. Her name is Marie Curie, and she and her husband pierre curie will announce an amazing discovery here today: natural radioactive element radium. Originally, she wanted her husband to do the report, but pierre curie insisted that she should do it. Before that, no woman had been on the podium of the French Academy of Sciences. Marie Curie is wearing a long black dress, and her white and dignified face shows a firm and slightly indifferent expression, while her slightly sunken big eyes make you feel that you can see through everything and the future. Her report shocked the audience, physics entered a new era, and her beautiful and solemn image was fixed in history and everyone's heart.
Madame Curie was not the first person to discover radioactivity, but she was a key figure. Before her, 1896 65438+ 10, German scientist Roentgen discovered X-rays, which are artificial radioactivity; 1896 in may, French scientist becquerel discovered natural radioactivity. Although all these discoveries were accidental, Madame Curie put forward new ideas about it. Are other substances radioactive? Just like finding a shell on the beach, others may just play with it, but Madame Curie has to study how the shell was born, how long it was and how it washed up on the beach. Others groped for her vines, and others picked leaves and asked her for roots. She coined the word radioactivity. Two years later, she discovered polonium, and then radium. In order to extract pure radium, the Curies got a ton of industrial waste residue which may contain radium. They set up a pot in the yard, melted it one by one, and then sent it to the laboratory for dissolution and precipitation analysis. The laboratory is just an abandoned shed. Mary stirred the slag in the pot in the smoky fire all day, leaving acid and alkali burns on her skirt and hands. One day, Mary, who was very tired, rubbed her sore lower back and asked Pierre across a table full of test tubes and measuring cups, "What do you think this radium will look like?" Pierre said, "I just hope it has beautiful colors." After three years and nine months, they finally extracted 0. 1g radium from several tons of slag. It really has a very beautiful color, and it emits a slight blue light in the dark broken wooden shed.
This beautiful light blue fluorescence is integrated into the life and unyielding belief of a beautiful woman. There is something more precious in Mary's character. She is firm and courageous, with lofty and persistent pursuit. This precious personality and lofty pursuit enabled Marie Curie to discover the meaning of life almost simultaneously with this great natural discovery. In the continuous research after the discovery of radium, Madame Curie is also changing. When the work is fruitful, the laser line is silently eroding her body. Her beautiful and healthy face is fading away quietly, and she is gradually becoming dizzy, tinnitus and fatigue. Pierre unfortunately died young, and social discrimination against women increased her heavy burden in life and thought. But she doesn't care about anything, just works silently. She changed from a beautiful little girl, a dignified and determined female scholar, to a new term "radiation" in science textbooks, to a new unit of measurement in physics, to a series of scientific theorems, and she became an eternal milestone in the history of science.
Madame Curie's fame spread all over the world from the moment she discovered radium, and it has been one hundred years now. This is the honor she bought with all her youth, faith and life. She won 10 awards, 16 medals and 107 honorary titles, especially two Nobel Prizes. She could have enjoyed any prize or honor, but she treated fame and fortune like dirt. She gave prizes for scientific research and war to France, and gave those medals as toys to her 6-year-old daughter. She is not tired of the beauty given by God, how can she bear the reputation given by the world? According to who is short and who is long, the man changed his name to intensive learning. As always, she buried herself in her work and left her beloved laboratory at the age of 67. Until 40 years after her death, there were still rays in her used notebook. Einstein said: "among all the world celebrities, Marie Curie is the only one who has not been spoiled by fame." She is practical and realistic, detached and free from vulgarity, and knows her own goals and values. It is difficult for ordinary people to know these two points, eliminate interference and remain unchanged for life, but Madame Curie did. She made us understand that people have multiple values and need multi-layer development. Some people stop at the form and sell their appearance; Some people stop at courage and show their strength; Some people stop at their hearts and have their own skills; Some people seek reason and use their wisdom. Zhuge Liang fought all his life and swallowed Cao Wu, but he didn't wear armor or a blade. Mao Zedong commanded the army and the people, and created a new China in the war, but he never got a rank and never fired a shot. Great voices are heard, the road is invisible, and people with great wisdom are not obsessed with shape, strength and technique. They live calmly, think quietly, make persistent progress, go straight to the highland of wisdom, control the law freely, and always maintain a rational beauty.
Madame Curie is such a great man standing on the highland of wisdom.
The role of radium:
Radium can relieve leukemia.
Three grams of radium
First, the description of teaching materials
Original text:
1920 One morning in May, an American journalist named Mrs. maloney finally met the discoverer of radium in the Paris laboratory after many twists and turns. The dignified and elegant Madame Curie and the extremely simple laboratory left a deep impression on the American journalist. At this time, radium has been 18 years, and its original value is as high as 750,000 gold francs. From this, American journalists concluded that only patented technology should make this lady rich.
But in fact, it was 18 years ago that the Curies gave up their rights and announced the purification method of radium without reservation. Madame Curie's explanation is very plain: "No one should make a fortune from radium, it belongs to all mankind."
Mrs. Malone was puzzled and asked, "Is there nothing you want most in this world?"
"Yes, a gram of radium, so that I can study. But I can't afford it today after 18, and its price is too expensive. "
This unexpected answer made Mrs. Malone both surprised and very uneasy. The purification technology of radium has made businessmen all over the world rich, but the discoverer of radium is in trouble! She immediately flew back to the United States and found that the market price of one gram of radium in the United States was $6,543,800. She first found a female millionaire of 654.38+00, thinking that they were all women and rich, and they would definitely take out their money to help. Unexpectedly, they ran into a wall. This made Mrs. Malone realize that this is not only a demand for money, but also a social education that calls on the public to understand science and carry forward the character of scientists. As a result, she ran around among women in the United States and finally succeeded. 1921On May 20th, the President of the United States presented Madame Curie with a gram of radium donated by the public.
A few years later, when Madame Curie wanted to set up a radium research institute to treat cancer in her native Warsaw, Poland, the American public donated a second gram of radium to her again.
Some people think that Madame Curie is stubborn in dealing with radium. If you sign the patent, all difficulties can be solved. Madame Curie answered this question in her later autobiography: "What they said is not unreasonable, but I still believe that my husband and wife are right. Humans need people who are good at practice. They can get great gains from their work. They can not forget the public welfare, but also protect their own interests. But human beings also need dreamers and need to be obsessed with the selflessness of their careers. "
Madame Curie had three grams of radium in her life. These three grams of radium show the great personality of a scientist.
"Three grams of radium" tells the story that Madame Curie had three grams of radium in her life, and shows the world the great personality of Madame Curie as a scientist: even for the sake of science, you can't take scientific research results for yourself. This is another contribution made by Madame Curie while contributing radium to mankind.
Madame Curie's three grams of radium, the first gram was extracted by herself; The second is Mrs. maloney, an American journalist, who runs around among American women for promotion and is donated to her by the American public. The third gram of radium was also donated by the American public. Madame Curie, as the discoverer of radium, was not only not as rich as the American journalists inferred, but also so poor. It is precisely because Madame Curie did not take the patent right of radium for herself, but dedicated it to all mankind.
A passage in Madame Curie's autobiography is difficult to understand. She said, "Human beings need people who are brave in practice. They can get great gains from their work, not forgetting the public welfare, but also safeguarding their own interests. However, human beings also need dreamers and selflessness, which shows two attitudes towards life: one is not forgetting the welfare of the public, but also safeguarding their own interests; One is a selfless idealist who is obsessed with his career. Both kinds of people are beneficial to society. Madame Curie also affirmed the former. But Madame Curie obviously belongs to the latter. She has contributed everything to science and all mankind. Patent right is the right granted by the state to the inventor to exclusively exploit his invention and creation. When the Curies extracted the first gram of radium, they announced the purification method of radium without reservation and gave up the patent. Even if the American public donated two grams of radium to her, one gram for scientific research and one gram for establishing a radium research institute for the motherland, it would have no effect on her. This is where her great personality lies! She thinks of people all over the world!
[The Discovery of Madame Curie and Radium]
Maria Skoro Dovskaya, a famous Madame Curie, is known as "the mother of radium". She was born on10.7 in Warsaw, the capital of Poland, under the rule of Russian czar invaders.
Sand. Her father is a physics professor at Warsaw University, which made her interested in scientific experiments since she was a child.
189 1 year, she went to Paris for further study and obtained two master's degrees. After finishing her studies, she planned to return to the motherland to serve the enslaved Polish people, but her acquaintance with the young French physicist pierre curie changed her plan. 1895, she married Pierre. 1897, she gave birth to a daughter, a future Nobel Prize winner.
Madame Curie noticed the research work of French physicist becquerel. Since Roentgen discovered X-ray, becquerel discovered another kind of "uranium ray" when he was checking a rare mineral "uranium salt", which his friends called Becquerel ray.
The ray discovered by Bekkerel aroused great interest of Madame Curie. Where does the energy of radiation come from? Madame Curie saw that no one in all laboratories in Europe had studied uranium rays in depth at that time, so she decided to enter this field.
At Pierre's repeated requests, the headmaster of the physics and chemistry school allowed Madame Curie to use a damp hut for physics and chemistry experiments. At the room temperature of 6 degrees Celsius, she devoted herself to the study of uranium salts.
Madame Curie received a strict advanced chemistry education. When studying uranium salt ore, she thinks there is no reason to prove that uranium is the only chemical element that can emit radiation. She determined the elements one by one according to Mendeleev's periodic law of elements. As a result, she soon discovered that another thorium compound can automatically emit rays, which are similar to uranium rays and have similar intensity. Madame Curie realized that this phenomenon is not just the characteristics of uranium, and it must be given a new name. Madame Curie called it "radioactivity", and uranium, thorium and other substances with this special "radioactivity" function were called "radioactive elements".
One day, Madame Curie thought, are minerals radioactive? With Pierre's help, she identified all the minerals that could be collected in a few days. She found that pitchblende was much more radioactive than expected.
After careful study, Madame Curie had to admit that the contents of uranium and thorium in these pitchblende can never explain the radioactivity she observed.
Where did this unusually high radioactivity come from? There is only one explanation: these bituminous minerals contain a small amount of new elements that are more radioactive than uranium and thorium. Madame Curie has checked all the known elements in her previous experiments. Madame Curie concluded that this is a new element that humans have not yet known, and she wants to find it!
Madame Curie's discovery caught Pierre's attention, and the Curies marched into the unknown elements together. In the damp studio, through the joint efforts of the Curie couple, in July 1898, they announced the discovery of this new element, which is 400 times more radioactive than pure uranium. To commemorate Madame Curie's motherland-Poland, the new element was named polonium (meaning Poland).
1898 to 65438+February, the Curies announced the discovery of a second radioactive element, which is more radioactive than polonium. They named this new element "Radium". However, at that time, no one could confirm their discovery, because according to the tradition of chemistry, when a scientist announces the discovery of a new element, he must get the physical object and accurately determine its atomic weight. However, in Madame Curie's report, there are no atomic weights of needles and radium, and there are no samples of radium at hand.
The Curies decided to prove it with real objects. At that time, pitchblende containing polonium and radium was a very expensive mineral, mainly produced in the San Joachimstahl mine in Bohemia. People refine this mineral and extract uranium salts to make colored glass. For the poor Curie couple, how can they afford the necessary expenses for this job? Their wisdom constitutes financial resources. They predict that after uranium is extracted, new radioactive elements contained in minerals will definitely still exist, so they can be found in mineral residues after uranium salt extraction. After many twists and turns, the Austrian government decided to give the Curie couple a ton of slag, and promised that if they needed a lot of slag in the future, they could supply it on the most favorable terms.
The laboratory conditions of the Curies are extremely poor. In summer, because the ceiling is glass, it is sunburned like an oven. In winter, people are freezing with cold. The Curies overcame unimaginable difficulties and tried to extract radium. Madame Curie immediately threw herself into the extraction experiment. She melted more than 20 kilograms of waste residue in a smelting pot, stirred the boiling substance with a thick iron bar for several hours, and then extracted only one millionth of trace substances from it.
They work from 1898 to 1902. After tens of thousands of times of refining, they treated dozens of tons of ore residue and finally got 0.l gram of radium salt, whose atomic weight was determined to be 225.
Radium was born!
The Curie couple confirmed the existence of radium, which made the whole world pay attention to the radioactive phenomenon. The discovery of radium triggered a real revolution in the scientific community.
Madame Curie finished her doctoral thesis entitled (Research on Radioactive Substances). 1903, Madame Curie received a doctorate in physics from the University of Paris. In the same year, the Curies and becquerel jointly won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
After the discovery of radium, other new radioactive elements, such as actinium, have been discovered one after another. Exploring the law of radioactive phenomena and the nature of radioactivity has become the primary research topic in the scientific community.