What contribution did Marie Curie make to medicine?

Answer 1

Maria Skłodowska-Curie was a Polish-French physicist and chemist. She was a pioneer in the field of radioactivity, the first twice-honored Nobel laureate (and still today the only laureate in two different sciences), and the first female professor at the Sorbonne

Answer 2

Marie Curie Contribution

Answer 3

In her pioneering way, Marie Curie decided, in 1897, to take a physics doctorate. Henri Becquerel, who was studying X-rays, had recently observed that uranium salt left an impression on a photographic plate in spite of its protective envelope. What better subject could there have been for Marie than to try and understand the effect, the energy of these uranic rays? Pierre consented. And so his frail wife set about her work, handling tons of minerals; she noted that another substance, thorium, was "radioactive", a term she herself had coined. Together, they demonstrated in a major discovery that radioactivity was not the result of a chemical reaction but a property of the element or, more specifically, of the atom. Marie then studied pitchblende, a uranic mineral in which she measured a much more intense activity than is present in uranium alone. She deduced that there were other substances besides uranium that were very radioactive, such as polonium and radium, which she discovered in 1898.

She also had to fight the prejudices of her day: hatred of foreigners and sexism which, in 1911, prevented her from entering the Academy of Science. And yet, soon after, she was honoured with a Nobel Prize for Chemistry for determining the atomic weight of radium. But her real joy was "easing human suffering". The founding of the Radium Institute by the University of Paris and the Pasteur Institute in 1914 would enable her to fulfil her humanitarian wish.

Answer 4

Your teacher might give you extra credit if you wrote about somebody who played an important role yet is relatively unknown. Julius Petri developed the Petri dish and Angelina Hesse suggested to her husband Walther the use of agar in the nutrient medium. These made bacteria much easier to culture, incubate, identify and study. Or, Vivien Thomas who assisted the renowned Dr. Alfred Blalock in the development of surgery for certain cyanotic infants. Thomas' contributions were largely ignored during much of his career. Great choice for MLK day and black history month, too.

Answer 5

She discovered polonium and radium and pioneered the study of radioactivity. Radium was the first of these elements to be used in medicine to "see" inside people's bodies through x-rays. She personally prepared the radium in these machines that were used to treat soldiers in World War I.

Answer 6

Radio activity and radium/X-rays

Answer 7

This website has a lot of info on her:

http://myhero.com/myhero/hero.asp?hero=madameCurie

Hope this helps!

Answer 8

She is the mother of radiation oncology.