The Age of Marie Curie
I. Marie Curie (born Marie Sklodovska) (1867-1934) was born in Poland and emigrated to France in 1891. Marie Curie discovered and purified the first samples of the elements Polonium and Radium. After Antoine Becquerel's accidental discovery of radioactivity, she was the first scientist to systematically study the phenomenon and the different elements and isotopes that exhibited it. She won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 along with Antoine Becquerel and her husband Pierre Curie. She also won an unprecedented second Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911. Author of Radioactive Substances (1903). Marie Curie was an experimental chemist of great ingenuity, endurance, and devotion, to which the following tribute by Albert Einstein attests:
Her strength, her purity of will, her austerity toward herself, her objectivity, her incorruptible judgment--all these were of a kind seldom found joined in a single individual . . . The greatest scientific deed of her life--proving the existence of radioactive elements and isolating them--owes its accomplishment not merely to bold intuition but to a devotion and tenacity in execution under the most extreme hardships imaginable, such as the history of experimental science has not often witnessed. (Albert Einstein (Out of My Later Years (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950), pp. 227-228.)
The first selection in this section includes translations of excerpts from the original papers by Marie and Pierre Curie, in 1898, announcing the discovery of new radioactive elements. The second selection is from the most influential work in the history and philosophy of science of the twentieth century: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn. This selection discusses how the discovery of new facts requires a revolution in the scientist's view of the world and is not simply a matter of simple observation. Kuhn uses the word paradigm to refer to the whole set of beliefs, practices, and ways of interpreting facts that determines how a scientist operates. He argues that scientific discoveries of the type Marie Curie made require a paradigm shift, or a radical revision in how we see the world around us.
II. Some Key Ideas of the Age:
Social Darwinism: Charles Darwin (1809-1882) had argued that new species of organisms arose through a struggle for survival in which only the fittest would survive. Much economic thinking following the industrial revolution applied this to the way that competition in the economy would allow the fittest individuals and companies to rise to the top. This was part of the optimism of the Victorian Era (named for Queen Victoria of England who reigned from 1837-1901) that the scientific and technological advances of the industrial revolution would inevitably lead to the betterment of mankind. This confidence was undermined, to a large degree, by the First World War and its unprecedented use of technological weapons. Marie Curie's career in science spanned this change in attitude.
Quantum Mechanics: The work of experimental scientists, such as Marie Curie, on the nature of the atom and theoretical physicists, such as Albert Einstein, Neils Bohr, and Werner Heisenberg, on a mathematical description of the motion of sub-atomic particles culminated in a theory of the fundamental nature of matter as wave-like bundles or packets (quanta) of energy that have no determinate location and speed until observed. This made matter seem completely unlike the familiar hunks of tangible stuff of our common sense understanding. It also raised serious questions about what the real nature of matter was, whether we could know it, and whether it was dependent on human observation. Marie Curie's work helped to begin what was, perhaps, the most radical reformulation of how we understand the world in the history of humanity.
III. Some Contemporaries: Karl Marx (1818-1883); German Chancellor Otto von Bismark (1815-1898); Louis Pasteur (1822-1895); King Edward VII of England, son of Victoria (1841-1910); Henry Ford (1863-1947); Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948); Albert Einstein (1879-1955) ; Pablo Picasso (1881-1973); Adolph Hitler (1889-1945)
IV. Some Selected Questions of the Age:
--- Will science and technology lead to the salvation of the human race or its destruction?
--- Should women be allowed to vote?
--- Should Science and Philosophy restrict themselves to discussing only what can be verified by experiment and observation?
--- Has scientific knowledge revealed the basic nature of reality to be out of the reach of a common sense understanding? Can humans understand the fundamental character of matter?
--- Do the ethnic tensions between the European powers and their competition for colonial resources make war inevitable?
--- Will Industrial Capitalism or some form of Socialism come to be the dominant economic system in the twentieth century?
V. Some Important Events of the Age:
1851 The Great Exhibition, a World's Fair in London featuring a Crystal Palace, showcased wonders of technology and industry; it represented the height of Victorian optimism about technological progress and its promise for human flourishing.
1867 Marie Curie Born
Karl Marx publishes first volume of Das Kapital
Nobel patents Dynamite
1879-1900 French and European Colonialism in Africa and Asia:
1879- France and England take control of Egypt; 1880- France annexes Tahiti; 1881- invades Tunis in Africa; 1882- captures Hanoi, Vietnam; 1893- Laos becomes part of French Indochina, Ivory Coast in Africa taken; 1896- Madagascar annexed.
1880 Piezoelectric effect involving electric currents in crystals discovered by Pierre Curie
1881 First Pogroms against Jews in Poland and Russia
1885 Louis Pasteur develops Rabies vaccine
1889 Gustave Eiffel builds metal tower as temporary structure for exhibition in Paris.
1893 New Zealand pioneers the vote for women
1894 Dreyfus affair: army officer Alfred Dreyfus court-martialled on false charges as a result of anti-Semitism.
1895 X-rays discovered by Wilhem Röntgen
Sigmund Freud's first book on psychoanalysis published in Austria
1896 Discovery of Radioactivity by French Physicist Antoine Becquerel
1897 English Physicist J.J. Thomson discovers the electron.
1898 Marie and Pierre Curie discover new radioactive element in pitchblende ores and announce existence of polonium and radium
1901 Queen Victoria of England dies, succeeded by Edward VII.
1902 Russian Revolutionaries Leon Trotsky and V.I. Lenin first meet in exile.
1902 Marie Curie isolates pure samples of the radioactive elements Radium and Polonium.
1905 Albert Einstein publishes his Special Theory of Relativity.
1907 Picasso paints Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
1908 Henry Ford produces the Model T Ford the first mass produced car.
1911 Ernest Rutherford discovers the atomic nucleus.
1913 Danish physicist Neils Bohr formulates the theory of the atom with small central nucleus and orbiting electrons.
1914 World War I begins with the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne, 28 June.
1915 Poison gas (chlorine) used for the first time in warfare by Germans.
1915 Mahatma Gandhi returns to India from South Africa.
1916 Albert Einstein publishes his General Theory of Relativity
1917 Russian Revolution, Czar Nicholas II abdicates.
1917 The United States enters W.W. I
1918 W.W. I ends, and along with it much of European optimism about science and technology as the source of human flourishing.
1920 Women win vote in USA.