French physicist · 1859–1906
Pierre Curie
Pierre Curie was already a respected physicist when he joined his wife Marie’s research into radioactivity. Together they discovered polonium and radium in 1898.
- Elements credited
- 2
- Discoveries
- 1898
- Co-discoverers
- 1
- Where
- France
The work
The Curies measured radioactivity with an instrument based on piezoelectric quartz, which Pierre and his brother Jacques had invented. It could measure tiny electric currents accurately enough to compare the activity of different samples.
When Marie found that pitchblende was more active than its uranium could explain, Pierre set aside his own research on crystals to help. They split the ore chemically, followed the radioactivity, and found two new elements: polonium in July 1898 and radium in December. Pierre also made the first measurements of the heat radium gives off, and tested its effect on skin by strapping a sample to his arm.
Polonium and Radium side by side
Life and career
Pierre was born in Paris and educated at home by his father, a doctor. In 1880 he and Jacques discovered piezoelectricity, the electric charge some crystals produce when squeezed. His later study of magnetism gave us the Curie point, the temperature at which a magnet loses its magnetism.
He shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Marie and Henri Becquerel. In April 1906 he slipped in a Paris street in the rain and was killed by a horse-drawn wagon.
Also known for
- Co-discovery of piezoelectricity
- Curie’s law and the Curie temperature in magnetism
- 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics