Reviews for Marie Curie and the science of radioactivity

The average rating for Marie Curie and the science of radioactivity based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-10-23 00:00:00 Spiros Bozikis Maria Skłodowska, soon to be known as Marie Curie, was born in Warsaw, a part of Poland controlled by Russia at that time, on November 7, 1867. Her childhood was not a good one. Her mother died of tuberculosis at the age of 42 when Marie was 10. Her dad lost the family savings in a bad investment and always blamed himself for it. It was not until Marie's 20s, she decided that she would become a scientist. As women were not allowed a formal education at the time, she attended an illegal school at night. Soon, Marie and her sister decided that Marie would help her sister, Bronya, Pat for her schooling and Bronya would repay Marie as soon as she could. So, when Marie was 17, she worked as a tutor, and at a beet sugar factory. In 1891, after Bronya had married in Paris, Marie was to travel to Paris to further her education. Marie lived through hunger and cold nights while she was studying. In 1893, Marie earned a master's degree in physics, and one year later, she earned another in math. Marie Skłodowski met Pierre Curie in the spring of 1894. Pierre and Marie were married in 1895. Pierre had made some scientific discoveries before have had married Marie as well. He worked with his brother, Jacque, to create a special type of electrometer designed to measure small electrice currents. Pierre earned his much deserved, and belated doctorate in March 1895. Marie passed a qualification test to tech science in 1896. She worked with Pierre at The School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry. In 1897, their first daughter, Irène, was born. Marie was given a small, unused lab at the university, and she was researching the proportion of radioactive rays to the amount of uranium present. Marie found that two minerals found in uranium, uranium oxide and copper uranyl phosphate, then known only as pitchblende and chalcocite, were more radioactive than uranium itself. She wanted to isolate the element inside these minerals that made them so active. Using the electrometer that Pierre and his brother had invented previously, she found that the radioactivity was contained in barium and bismuth. They reasoned that there must be two unknown elements in these compounds. They named them polonium and radium. Marie wanted more. She wanted to prove to the scientific community that these elements existed. She wanted the isolate them element from the compound in it's pure form. She needed a bigger lab. In 1902, Marie successfully isolated on tenth of a gram of radium chloride, and she determined the new element's weight. During their research, Marie and Pierre both showed severe signs of harm from the radioactive material, but Marie failed to relate the physical decline to the experiments. Later in 1902, Marie father died after a gallbladder surgery. People started to publicize Marie and Pierre's discovery of radium and the effect it had on living tissue as a miracle cure. In 1903, the Curies were awarded novel prizes for their work on radioactivity. In 1903, their second daughter, Eve was born. In 1906, when Pierre and Marie were working on using radium to be used as a of medical aid, on the way to work, Pierre was hit by a horse drawn cart and died. Marie was crippled with sadness, but not for long. The Sunday after Pierre's death, she went back to her lab to further what they had started. Not a month after Pierre's death, the University of Paris offered Pierre's post to Marie, which she accepted. In 1910, Pierre's father, who had been living with the Curies up until then, died. That very year, it was decided that the official unit for measuring radioactivity would be the curie. In 1911, trouble arose for Marie. Rumors that she had an affair with another scientist at the university. People started falsely saying she was of Jewish ancestry, and that Pierre had committed suicide in a time of despair. In 1912, Marie fell badly sick, with kidney problems, and deep depression. In 1914, it was gone. World War 1 had just begun. Marie developed mobile radiology vehicles to be deployed on battlegrounds in WWI. She also found that radon, the gas spontaneously emitted by radium, could be dosed in syringes, to form scar tissue over wounds. Following the war, Marie work with many people, such as newspaper publishers and playwrights to publicize her research and try to earn funding. In 1934, Marie's own daughter and her husband discovered that artificial radioactive isotopes could be created, meaning that it would cost less, and take less time to work with them. Marie Curie died less than six months after. In 1935, Albert Einstein published "Marie Curie in Memoriam", he said, "Marie Curie is, of all celebrated beings, the only one whom fame has not corrupted." I think this book was a good informative read. It was interesting, for a biography, because it is pretty hard to make telling the story of someone's life interesting. This book did good in making it not completely boring. It also did a really detailed job of explaining the science behind Marie and Pierre's studies, as opposed to other sources that tell you what they did, but not what that does today and how it affects us in our day to day lives. It really related the information in the book to things that we can see and use today, which made the book a lot easier to understand. The book was fairly easy to comprehend, but it could have been more organized. I liked and disliked that they included random two to three page mini biographies on other scientists whose discoveries influenced Marie in some way. This helped me understand some of the technical things in the book, but they were sporadic, and cut off the main story so that you had to go back and figure out where they left off before the excerpt. I think that Marie Curie was a woman who was very devoted. Devoted to what she wanted to do, and to helping the world. Think about everything she put herself through for her studies on radioactivity. She went through college, where she went hungry commonly, had to bear the intense cold, and she kept herself from being social because it could affect her studies. When her husband died, she went back to work the same week. She had a kidney stone, but didn't get it removed, or even take time off work. She and her husband constantly went through pain, humiliation, and being ignored, but they continued to further their research and help the world. The only complaint I have about this book is that it goes to far in depth about some things that are not important. An example of this would be the affair between Marie and Paul Langevin. It takes two pages just to talk about that, and even later, it continues to bring it up. I would have liked some more details about Marie Curie's death, like whether or not her death was directly caused by the radiation, and what happened publicly after her death. I also would have liked the book to explain the effects of Marie's "Petite Maries" and radon shots in World War One. Before reading this book, I had a very limited perspective about scientific discoveries, especially ones that direct affect our modern everyday lifestyle. Before this, I never would have thought that the things we take for granted today were painstakingly and carefully designed in Russia during World War One. I knew about Marie Curie, but before her, were so many other scientists that all were essential in the many breakthroughs that Marie Curie and Pierre Curie made in their lifetimes. So, to summarize, overall, the book was great. It really informed me of Marie Curie's life, and it didn't just inform me, it gave me a good understanding of Marie Curie's life and her studies. You can get facts from any source, but this book actually guarantees that you understand, and remember them. Albert Einstein was right. Say whatever you want, but nothing you say or do will diminish the great accomplishments that Marie Curie made.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-10-07 00:00:00 Harley Crow Marie Curie ve hayatına dair birçok şey öğrendim. Kitapta hoşuma gitmeyen tek nokta, bir kadının bilim dünyasında yaşadığı zorlukları anlatırken kadın çevirmenin inatla "bilim adamı" terimini kullanması oldu. Doğrusu "bilim insanı" olmalı.