How She Did It
4
Marie Curie was extremely dedicated
to earning a doctorates degree set aside
the common belief that a married woman
shouldn't be suitable to earn such a
degree. Her only trouble is that she wasn't
exactly sure what to research into.
Marie was very habitual on reading
scientific publications. One day in 1895
she happened to come across an article
about Wilhelm Rontgen's discovery of
X-rays. Then she learned of Henri
Becquerel's noting of the different
kinds of mysterious rays.
Curie built on Becquerrel's
observations of the element Uranium. At
first she believed that the rays were
violating a basic law of thermodynamics:
the conservation of energy. Then she
decided to post the far fetched hypothesis
that the rays may be a more basic property
of the uranium atoms. This would imply
that the atom isn't the most elementary
particle. This was one huge step in
scientific discovery.
Then, in her experiments the intensity
of radiation was far greater than
expected based on the amounts of the
elements she knew to be in her samples.
Then she came up with the idea that there
was a strong unknown substance in the
minerals. She proposed this idea to Pierre
and they immediately responded with
more testing which led to their revolut
ionary discovery of radium and polonium
in 1898.
The discovery of radium changed everything