August 1914 should have been the superlative of Marie Curie ’s vocation . After all , she haddiscoveredtwo element , open up the skill of radioactivity , snag not one but two Nobel Prizes , and was on the precipice of open a groundbreaking institute for the study of radium in her embrace hometown of Paris .
But the twentieth 100 was not tolerant to Marie , who was born on this mean solar day 150 years ago . First , her beloved married man and scientific partner , Pierre , was run over by a horse - draw rig and killed . She was overlook by the French Academy of Sciences , then vituperate forher participation in an extramarital thing . And though France seemed eager to claim her as one of theirs , they were all too quick to sour on her when the correct - wing presspainted her as a dangerous foreigner . Finally , after dragging herself through a free burning period of vivid depression , she finally oversee the completion of her Radium Institute in 1914 — only to have all of her male research laboratory workers drafted .
And so , as German bombs fell on Paris that fall , Marie Curie decided to go to war .
The first front was fiscal . The French government called for gold for the state of war effort , so Marie showed up at a banking concern with her Nobel Prize medals , quick to donate them to the state of war travail . When bank officials refused tomelt them down , she donated her prize money to purchase war bonds or else . Back in her abandoned lab , moved by a sense of tumultuous nationalism and irritated by her unfitness to help , she rack her psyche for something — anything — to do .
Her inspiration for what do next might have come from the lead box of radium she stowed in a dependable deposition loge in Bordeaux that summer . The single gramme she had worked so hard to isolate was the only Ra available for research in France . She would be ineffective to experiment with radium during the warfare , so why not pass her clock time check more about another kind of radiography ? Marie had long wanted to con more about X - electron beam . As she set to study educating herself about this sister skill , she apace realized that she had a powerful applied science on her hands . And then it take up her : The warfare was probable to be long and bloody . deep conditions and advanced arms promised the bloodiest war in history . Maybe X - rays could help . Why not play them to the field ?
When Marie had a programme , she movedswiftlyand decisively . First , she swallow her impatience with the French regime and convinced them to name her Director of the Red Cross Radiology Service ( it probably helped that nobody knew what radiology was ) . Then , she plow to her richest and most powerful champion , finagle , begging , and hassle them until they donate money and vehicles to support her idea . By late October , Marie had not only given herself acrash courseon X - light beam technology and human anatomy , but hadlearnedto drive and mastered basic auto mechanic . The traveling ten - ray whole she patched together in a Renault van turn out to be the first of 20 .
Marie Curie ( 2d from right hand ) instructs nurses in radioscopy , via Médecins de la Grande Guerre
The construct behind what military men start out to call " petite Curies " was unproblematic enough : Equip a van with a source , a infirmary bed , and 10 - ray equipment . Drive to the battlefield . Examine the hurt . But to Marie ’s amazement , the concept of X - rays on the front was n’t just foreign — it was actively oppose against by doctors who felt that new - fangled radiology had no place at the front . discount the dissent of the French ground forces ’s aesculapian high - ups , Marie drove to the Battle of the Marne at the hair - raising speed of 25 miles per hour , captive on prove her point . Soldiers came to the mobile social unit riddled with shrapnel , bullets , and junk , unaware they were being treated by a two - sentence Nobel laureate . Assisted by her 17 - year - old girl , Irène , Marie took their X - rayscalmly and methodically , without shields or other protective measures . And the machine work beautifully .
Now that it had been prove that the battlefront disco biscuit - ray help military surgeons , Marie would n’t be stopped . She worked feverishly . There must be more van . More X - shaft of light units . Why not add stationary social unit , 200 of them ? Disgusted by the U. S. Army ’s unwillingness to adopt unexampled technology and better train its own military recruit , Marie rent matters into her own hand . She gave a crash trend in tenner - rays to 150 womanhood , send Irène back to the field to extend administering ex - rays , then retrieved her box of radium and begin to collect radium gas ( radon ) to desexualise infectious tissue ( again without protection ) .
Marie was in her science lab isolating Rn when armistice was declare in 1918 . She hung Gallic flags from her windows , then took the Petite Curie into the street to fete . And though the Gallic government never acknowledged the X - rays she enabled for well over a million Gallic soldiers ( they did give a military medal to Irène ) , she treasured her achievement until her end from radiation vulnerability in 1934 . Marie ’s clothing , science lab equipment , and notebooks arestill so riddled with radioactivitythat researchers must do by them with special baseball mitt and protective clothing .
" What seemed unmanageable became easy,“recalled Marie about her war . " All those who did not realise give in or accepted ; those who did not recognize learned ; those who had been indifferent became devoted . "
Additional sources : Madame Curie : A Biography , Eve Curie;Marie Curie : A Life , Susan Quinn;Marie Curie : Mother of Modern Physics , Janice Borzendowski .
