![]() To find the mysterious radioactive ingredient in Pitchblende, the Curies separated its different substances. Pitchblende, a mining waste product, turned out to be highly radioactive. After that, she tested dozens of other things, from metals to salts. Marie went on to test all the elements known at that time for radioactivity. The Curies discovered two new elements – all from mining waste Marie called the force behind these rays, ‘radioactivity’. ![]() She realised that these rays must be coming from the substance’s own atoms. Using specialist equipment Pierre developed, Marie discovered that some substances gave off invisible rays that could not be changed by an outside force, such as heat or other chemicals. The Curies, together with another French scientist called Henri Becquerel, started to explore what this invisible light could be. The ‘x’ in X-ray stood for ‘invisible light’, an unknown force at the time. When they married in 1895, X-rays had just been invented in Germany. She fell in love with her husband, Pierre, when they worked together at his physics lab in Paris. Originally from Poland, Marie was determined to learn as much as she could when she moved to France. ![]() She was the first woman in France to earn a PhD and then the first woman professor at the Sorbonne University. Curie was inspired by the search for 'invisible light'īy the time she developed the X-ray vans, Marie Curie was already the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, then the first person to win two Nobel Prizes.
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