Heroes and Cultural Identity Project

SCE Heroes - Marie Curie

Marie Curie

My hero is Marie Curie. The reason I have chosen Marie Curie is for her groundbreaking achievements in chemistry and partly physics. This was noticed by the science community and awarded her a Nobel prize.

Marie Curie

The achievement I am going to discuss is her discovery of radium and polonium, which has helped so many lives. The first element discovered by the curies was polonium, which is found in the ore pitchblend, which emits strong radioactive energy. Marie Curie and her husband Pierre Curie wanted to see what substance gave off this energy source. Unaware at that time radioactive exposure with no protection was extremely dangerous they began experimenting. It didn't take long for the radioactivity to affect there health both of them becoming frail and commonly ill. Eventually though they bravely kept on with their attempts to extract a small amount of polonium from pitch blend and were successful. Making them the discoverers of the element polonium. This shows us the endurance of the Curies doing this long process with poor health.

Pierre Curie

The Curies then realised pitch blend must have another radioactive source in it, as the power and half-life of polonium were different to pitch blend. The curies then moved on to the discovery of radium. There health was constantly getting poorer and Pierre had developed sever cataracts. Marie continued with their mission, which showed her courage as she was devastated by her husband's death, but managed to discover radium roughly one month and a half later.

These new elements have saved or benefited many millions of life as they allowed x-rays for hospital patients to be invented allowing doctors to see inside an injured patient which will have saved millions of life's alone. Radium can also be used as a radioactive source in nuclear power stations which power many millions of homes.

Marie Curie at work

The Curies selflessly gave the process on how to make these elements to commercial companies for free when Marie could of easily become a millionaire by selling the process. She did this so people could be helped as soon as possible from the benefits of these elements showing Marie Curie was a real hero as she sacrificed her life to help millions of others.

Niall Ormiston is a science student following a one year university access course in biological sciences.