100 years ago, 1898, 12.26, French Academy of Sciences were all people. A solemn and slightly tired young beauty stepped onto the platform, and the audience was suddenly silent. Her name is Marie Curie. Today, she and her husband pierre curie will announce an amazing discovery here. They discovered the natural radioactive element radium. Originally, she wanted her husband to make this report, but pierre curie insisted that she speak, because no woman had ever been on the podium of the French Academy of Sciences before. Marie Curie is wearing a long black dress, and her white and dignified face shows a firm and slightly indifferent expression, while her slightly sunken big eyes make you feel that you can see through everything and the future. Her report shocked the audience, physics entered a new era, and her beautiful and solemn image was fixed in history and everyone's heart.
Madame Curie was not the first person to discover radioactivity, but she was a key figure. Before her, 1896 65438+ 10, German scientist Roentgen discovered X-rays, which are artificial radioactivity; 1896 in may, French scientist becquerel discovered that uranium salt can make film sensitive, which is natural radioactivity. This is still an accidental discovery, but Madame Curie immediately raised a new question. Are other substances radioactive? Is there another brand-new field in the material world? Others found shells on the beach, but she wanted to study how shells were born, how long they were and how they washed up on the beach. Others touched her for vines, and others picked leaves and asked her for roots. She coined the word radioactivity. Two years later, she discovered polonium, then radium, and the tip of the iceberg was exposed. In order to extract pure radium, the Curies got a ton of industrial waste residue which may contain radium. They set up a pot in the yard, melted it one by one, and then sent it to the laboratory for dissolution and precipitation analysis. The so-called laboratory is an abandoned shed where autopsy bodies were once parked. Mary stirred the slag in the pot in the smoky fire all day, leaving acid and alkali burns on her skirt and hands. One day, exhausted and rubbing her sore lower back, Mary asked Pierre across a table full of test tubes and measuring cups, "What do you think this radium will look like?" Pierre said, "I just hope it has beautiful colors." After three years and nine months, they finally extracted 0. 1g radium from several tons of slag. It really has a very beautiful color, and it emits a slight blue light in the dark broken wooden shed. It also automatically releases heat, and the heat released in one hour will melt the same weight of ice.
This beautiful pale blue fluorescence in the old wooden shed was bought with the life and belief of a beautiful woman. It seems that this great discovery that opens a new era of science should not fall on a woman. For thousands of years, beauty has always been a woman's highest honor and biggest capital. As long as you are lucky enough to get this, don't ask the rest. Mo Bosang said in his masterpiece "The Necklace": "Women have no social class and no racial differences; Their beauty, elegance and charm are the symbols of their life experience and family. " Madame Curie belongs to that kind of beauty. Her portrait is now hung in scientific research and teaching institutions all over the world, and we can still see her once elegant demeanor. But she just didn't use this capital, and it was from this point that she conquered herself. When she was a primary school student, she showed God's love for her, and her beautiful appearance was enough to please everyone around her. But there is something more precious in her character, that is, the backbone that people often add to men. She is firm and courageous, with lofty and persistent pursuit. In order not to be disturbed by beauty, she deliberately cut her blonde hair very short. She said to her brother, "There is no doubt that everyone in our family has talent, and this talent must be shown by one of us!" " After graduating from high school, she worked as a governess in the city and the countryside for seven years, saved a little tuition and came to Paris to study. At that time, there were few female students in universities. This beautiful exotic woman with high forehead, blue eyes and slender figure quickly became the center of discussion. In order to see her better, or to get together and say a few words, male students often crowded in the corridor outside the classroom, and her girlfriend even had to drive away these admirers with an umbrella handle. But she dismissed the excitement. She arrives first every day and sits in the front row, giving those searching eyes a ruthless back of the head. She is always wrapped in a layer of frosty armor, which makes those "groupies" afraid to approach. She used to live at her sister's house. In order to be quiet, she rented a small attic, ate only one meal a day and studied hard day and night. It was too cold to sleep at night, so I pulled a chair on my body to get a little warmth. This kind of undivided enterprising spirit is hard for even ordinary men to achieve. Song Yu said that a beautiful woman looked at him on the wall for three years without being tempted; Fan Zhongyan studied in a ruined temple before entering Jinshi. He cooked a bowl of porridge in the morning, cooled it and divided it into four portions, which is the daily ration. On the other side of the world in France, a Polish woman is so calm, so persistent, so able to endure the biting cold. At the tender age of 25, she is indifferent to the tide of suitors. As long as she loosens her hand a little and turns her head back, she will fall back into the soft embrace and praise bubble, but she is ambitious and ambitious, and she knows that only the flower of discovery and creation can be invincible. So she is willing to let acid and alkali gnaw at her soft hands and let the choking smoke wrinkle her beautiful forehead.
Marie Curie could have lived in another way. She can live a relaxed and happy life in admiration and praise, while being young and beautiful, just like a modern girl eating a youthful meal. But she didn't. She knows her deeper value and farther goal. The idiom "a little taste" refers to people's understanding of the outside world, but I don't know how many people often know little about themselves and are happy to see pets. A few years ago, a mother told me that her daughter's grades had dropped. Why? Answer: "I know I love beauty, and I always use a pencil rod as her curling iron in class." Beauty is an addition to man, just as meter is an addition to poetry. Rhyme is difficult to write, but beauty is difficult. If it is done well, it will be earth-shattering, and if it is not done well, it will wither and wither. Marie Curie let women all over the world know that they have more important things besides "life experience" and "family background".
1852, Mrs. Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, which led to the outbreak of the American Civil War. Lincoln said that it was a little woman who triggered the revolution to liberate slaves. Madame Basto discovered radium about 50 years later. It was a little woman who triggered a revolution, a scientific revolution. It directly led to Lu Se's exploration of atomic structure, the explosion of the atomic bomb and the arrival of the atomic age. More importantly, the philosophical significance of this discovery. Philosophers say that things are always changing; Western philosophers say that people can't step into the same river twice; In A.D. 1082, Su Dongpo, an oriental philosopher, looked at the moon at Chibi and sighed, "Gai must look at it from its own changes, so heaven and earth cannot flash;" From its constant point of view, things are infinite. " Now, Madame Curie has proved that radium is such a substance that it can't exist in an instant. It can continuously emit light, heat and radiation, burn people's skin, penetrate black paper to make the film sensitive and make the air conductive. In an instant, it is itself, but it is not itself. Philosophy permeates the pores of every atom. Marie Curie almost completed this great natural discovery and discovered the meaning of life. She is also constantly changing. When the work is fruitful, the laser line is silently eroding her body. Her beautiful and healthy face is fading away, and she gradually becomes dizzy and tinnitus, and her face is pale and weak. Pierre unfortunately died young, and social discrimination against women increased her heavy burden in life and thought. But she doesn't care about anything, just works silently. She changed from a beautiful little girl, a dignified and determined female scholar, to a new term "radiation" in science textbooks, to a new unit of measurement in physics, to a series of scientific theorems, and she became an eternal milestone in the history of science. "Never change to see", she gets eternity. "I hate that spring is nowhere to be found and I don't know where to turn in." Just like the substitution reaction of chemistry, her youth and beauty were transferred into science textbooks and into the history of human culture.
Madame Curie's fame spread all over the world from the moment she discovered radium, and it has been one hundred years now. This is the honor she bought with all her youth, faith and life. She won 10 awards, 16 medals and 107 honorary titles, especially two Nobel Prizes. She could have enjoyed any prize or honor, but she treated fame and fortune like dirt. She gave prizes for scientific research and war to France, and gave those medals as toys to her 6-year-old daughter. She is not tired of the beauty given by God, how can she bear the reputation given by the world? According to who is short and who is long, the man changed his name to intensive learning. As always, she buried herself in her work and left her beloved laboratory at the age of 67. Until 40 years after her death, there were still rays in her used notebook. Einstein said: "among all the world celebrities, Marie Curie is the only one who has not been spoiled by fame." She is practical and realistic, detached and free from vulgarity, and knows her own goals and values. It is difficult for ordinary people to know these two points, eliminate interference and remain unchanged for life, but Madame Curie did. She made us understand that people have multiple values and need multi-layer development. Some people stop at the form and sell their appearance; Some people stop at courage and show their strength; Some people stop at their hearts and have their own skills; Some people seek reason and use their wisdom. Zhuge Liang fought all his life and swallowed Cao Wu, but he didn't wear armor or a blade. Mao Zedong commanded the army and the people, and created a new China in the war, but he never got a rank and never fired a shot. Great voices are heard, the road is invisible, and people with great wisdom are not obsessed with shape, strength and technique. They live calmly, think quietly, make persistent progress, go straight to the highland of wisdom, control the law freely, and always maintain a rational beauty.
Madame Curie is such a great man standing on the highland of wisdom.
The role of radium:
Radium can relieve leukemia.
Three grams of radium
First, the description of teaching materials
Original text:
1920 One morning in May, an American journalist named Mrs. maloney finally met the discoverer of radium in the Paris laboratory after many twists and turns. The dignified and elegant Madame Curie and the extremely simple laboratory left a deep impression on the American journalist. At this time, radium has been 18 years, and its original value is as high as 750,000 gold francs. From this, American journalists concluded that only patented technology should make this lady rich.
But in fact, it was 18 years ago that the Curies gave up their rights and announced the purification method of radium without reservation. Madame Curie's explanation is very plain: "No one should make a fortune from radium, it belongs to all mankind."
Mrs. Malone was puzzled and asked, "Is there nothing you want most in this world?"
"Yes, a gram of radium, so that I can study. But I can't afford it today after 18, and its price is too expensive. "
This unexpected answer made Mrs. Malone both surprised and very uneasy. The purification technology of radium has made businessmen all over the world rich, but the discoverer of radium is in trouble! She immediately flew back to the United States and found that the market price of one gram of radium in the United States was $6,543,800. She first found 654.38+00 female millionaires, thinking that they were all women and rich, and they would definitely take out their money to help. Unexpectedly, they ran into a wall. This made Mrs. Malone realize that this is not only a demand for money, but also a social education that calls on the public to understand science and carry forward the character of scientists. As a result, she ran around among women in the United States and finally succeeded. 1921On May 20th, the President of the United States presented Madame Curie with a gram of radium donated by the public.
A few years later, when Madame Curie wanted to set up a radium research institute to treat cancer in her native Warsaw, Poland, the American public donated a second gram of radium to her again.
Some people think that Madame Curie is stubborn in dealing with radium. If you sign the patent, all difficulties can be solved. Madame Curie answered this question in her later autobiography: "What they said is not unreasonable, but I still believe that my husband and wife are right. Humans need people who are good at practice. They can get great gains from their work. They can not forget the public welfare, but also protect their own interests. But human beings also need dreamers and need to be obsessed with the selflessness of their careers. "
Madame Curie had three grams of radium in her life. These three grams of radium show the great personality of a scientist.
"Three grams of radium" tells the story that Madame Curie had three grams of radium in her life, and shows the world the great personality of Madame Curie as a scientist: even for the sake of science, you can't take scientific research results for yourself. This is another contribution made by Madame Curie while contributing radium to mankind.
Madame Curie's three grams of radium, the first gram was extracted by herself; The second is Mrs. maloney, an American journalist, who runs around among American women for promotion and is donated to her by the American public. The third gram of radium was also donated by the American public. Madame Curie, as the discoverer of radium, was not only not as rich as the American journalists inferred, but also so poor. It is precisely because Madame Curie did not take the patent right of radium for herself, but dedicated it to all mankind.
A passage in Madame Curie's autobiography is difficult to understand. She said, "Human beings need people who are brave in practice. They can get great gains from their work, not forgetting the public welfare, but also safeguarding their own interests. However, human beings also need dreamers and selflessness, which shows two attitudes towards life: one is not forgetting the welfare of the public, but also safeguarding their own interests; One is a selfless idealist who is obsessed with his career. Both kinds of people are beneficial to society. Madame Curie also affirmed the former. But Madame Curie obviously belongs to the latter. She has contributed everything to science and all mankind. Patent right is the right granted by the state to the inventor to exclusively exploit his invention and creation. When the Curies extracted the first gram of radium, they announced the purification method of radium without reservation and gave up the patent. Even if the American public donated two grams of radium to her, one gram for scientific research and one gram for establishing a radium research institute for the motherland, it would have no effect on her. This is where her great personality lies!