Marie Curie Read Online Free Page B

research on magnetism. He had zero problem with her continuing education—they were each other’s biggest cheerleaders. He always kept his favorite photo of her, labeled “the good little student,” in his vest pocket.
    “We dreamed of living in the world quite removed from human beings,” he wrote. They spent their evenings reading scientific journals and discussing the articles. He didn’t pay attention to what he ate and often couldn’t remember whether he had eaten. Once in a while they went to the theater or to a brand-new sensation, the movies (pioneered by Frenchmen Auguste and Louis Lumière in 1896). They had little sense of fashion—he wore threadbare jackets and failed to keep his beard and mustache trimmed, while she wore cheap dresses in black or navy blue so as not to show stains from the lab. Their one luxury was fresh flowers in every room.
    Four months into their marriage came a remarkable scientific discovery. Not, however, made by either Curie, but by a reclusive German physicist named Wilhelm Röntgen. In November 1895, he accidentally discovered a new kind of ray. These rays had the ability to travel through opaque material that was impenetrable to ordinary light—they could travel through wood, even flesh. The rays were invisible but revealed themselves on a special phosphorescent screen that was standing nearby. very mysterious. He labeled them X-rays, “X” as in the math term used when a quantity is unknown.
    He wrote to a friend that initially he told no one except his wife Bertha about the discovery. He feared people would say, “Röntgen is out of his mind.” One of the very first X-ray pictures he made was of Bertha’s hand—not only was the wedding ring on her fourth finger visible, but so were her bones. It was to become one of the most famous pictures in the world. Röntgen finally announced his discovery in a dramatic lecture in 1896, capping his performance by x-raying onstage the hand of an eighty-year-old man. Seeing the entire bone structure beneath the skin, the audience rose as one in a standing ovation. Here was a new way of looking inside nature, seeing what had never been visible before.
    Röntgen refused to patent X-rays for private gain, wanting them to benefit humanity. He later died broke.
    Meanwhile, only a few months after Röntgen’s X-ray discovery, a French physicist discovered what appeared to be yet another kind of ray. Henri Becquerel, who came from four generations of illustrious scientists, was studying X-rays and working with uranium. This element had been discovered in 1789 and named for the then-newest planet, Uranus. Becquerel observed that uranium salts, in spite of being wrapped in a protective envelope, left a visible image on a photographic plate. Continuing to experiment, he discovered something really odd—a constant stream of rays were emitted from uranium in all directions. It seemed impossible to measure these rays or to do anything further with them. He assumed he’d reached a dead end.
    Röntgen’s X-rays thrilled scientists, especially medical doctors, who leapt on them with great energy. Anyone who has ever broken a bone clearly understands their value. One year after the announcement of his discovery, there were forty-nine books or pamphlets published about X-rays, plus over a thousand papers.
    Becquerel’s discovery, on the other hand, caused no such sensation. His rays were mostly ignored. They seemed much the same as X-rays, only weaker. Just a day or so after his discovery, he reported on them to the Monday meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, the most powerful organization for science in France. His colleagues listened, then went to the next item on the agenda. Becquerel himself sort of dropped the ball and drifted for the time being into other areas of research.
    Back in the Curie apartment, the nightly discussions were centering on the work of both Röntgen and Becquerel. Marie had published her first article on the