Pierre Curie was born on May 15, 1859, and died on April 19, 1906. He was a French scientist who studied physics and chemistry. He was one of the first people to research crystallography and magnetism. In 1903, Pierre shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with his wife, Marie Curie, for their research on radioactivity. This made them the first married couple to win a Nobel Prize. The Curie family later won a total of five Nobel Prizes.

Education and career

Pierre Curie was born on May 15, 1859, in Paris. He was the son of Eugène Curie (1827–1910), a doctor of Huguenot origin from Alsace, and Sophie-Claire Depouilly (1832–1897). His father taught him, and by his early teens, he showed a strong aptitude for mathematics and geometry.

In 1878, Curie earned his License in Physics from the Faculty of Sciences at the Sorbonne. He worked as a laboratory demonstrator until 1882, when he joined the faculty at ESPCI Paris.

In 1895, Curie received his D.Sc. from the Sorbonne and was appointed Professor of Physics. The material he submitted for his doctorate included his research on magnetism. In 1900, he was promoted to Professor in the Faculty of Sciences, and in 1904, he became Titular Professor.

Research

In 1880, Pierre and his older brother, Jacques, showed that pressing crystals created electricity, a phenomenon called piezoelectricity. To help with their research, they created a device called the piezoelectric quartz electrometer. In 1881, they also showed that applying electricity to crystals could make them change shape. Today, many digital circuits use this principle through crystal oscillators. Later, Pierre studied magnetism and created the Curie scale. His work required precise tools like balances and electrometers.

Before his doctoral research on magnetism, Pierre designed a very sensitive torsion balance to measure magnetic properties. This tool became widely used by future scientists. For his doctorate, he studied ferromagnetism, paramagnetism, and diamagnetism. He discovered how temperature affects paramagnetism, now called Curie’s law. The constant in this law is named the Curie constant. He also found that ferromagnetic materials lose their magnetic properties above a certain temperature, now known as the Curie temperature. This temperature helps scientists study plate tectonics, treat hypothermia, measure caffeine, and understand magnetic fields in space. The unit "curie," used to measure radioactivity, was named after Marie and Pierre Curie in 1910.

Pierre created the Curie Dissymmetry Principle, which states that a physical effect cannot have a feature that is not present in its cause. For example, sand in zero gravity has no direction (it is isotropic). When gravity is introduced, the sand grains can sort themselves by density, showing the direction of the gravitational field.

Pierre and his wife, Marie, discovered polonium and radium. They were the first to use the term "radioactivity" and studied it extensively. Their research used a sensitive piezoelectric electrometer built by Pierre and Jacques. In 1898, Pierre, Marie, and M. G. Bémont published their discovery of radium and polonium. This work was honored by the American Chemical Society in 2015. In 1903, the Royal Society invited Pierre to present their research. Marie could not speak, so Lord Kelvin sat beside her while Pierre gave the lecture. Pierre and Marie later received the Davy Medal from the Royal Society and the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903, along with Henri Becquerel.

Pierre and his student, Albert Laborde, discovered nuclear energy by observing heat continuously released from radium. Pierre also studied radiation emissions using magnetic fields. He found that some emissions carried positive charges, some negative charges, and some were neutral. These are now known as alpha, beta, and gamma radiation.

In the late 1800s, Pierre studied magnetism and became interested in spiritualist experiments by scientists like Charles Richet and Camille Flammarion. He believed studying the paranormal might help answer questions about magnetism. He wrote to Marie, his future wife: "I must admit that those spiritual phenomena intensely interest me. I think they are questions that deal with physics." Pierre’s notebooks from this time show he read many books on spiritualism. He attended séances, such as those of Eusapia Palladino in 1905, but treated them as scientific experiments. He recorded observations carefully and did not aim to communicate with spirits. Pierre considered himself an atheist.

Family

Pierre Curie's grandfather, Paul Curie (1799–1853), was a doctor of medicine who believed in Malthusian humanist ideas. He married Augustine Hofer, the daughter of Jean Hofer and the great-granddaughter of Jean-Henri Dollfus, important business leaders from Mulhouse during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Because of his grandmother, Pierre Curie is also a direct descendant of Jean Bernoulli (1667–1748), a scientist and mathematician from Basel. Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, who won the 1991 Nobel Prize in Physics, is also a descendant of Jean Bernoulli.

Pierre Curie met Maria Skłodowska through their friend, physicist Józef Wierusz-Kowalski. He invited her to work in his laboratory as his student. He admired her because she did not interfere with his research and began to see her as a source of inspiration. She did not accept his first marriage proposal but later agreed to marry him on July 26, 1895.

Pierre and Marie Curie had a happy marriage. Their daughter, Irène, and her husband, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, were scientists who studied radioactivity. Both won Nobel Prizes for their work. Their other daughter, Ève, wrote a famous biography about her mother. She did not become a scientist. Ève married Henry Richardson Labouisse Jr., who received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1965 on behalf of UNICEF. Pierre and Marie Curie's granddaughter, Hélène Langevin-Joliot, is a professor of nuclear physics at the University of Paris. Their grandson, Pierre Joliot, who was named after Pierre Curie, is a well-known biochemist.

Death

On April 19, 1906, while walking across the busy Rue Dauphine in the rain near the Quai de Conti, Pierre Curie slipped and fell under a heavy horse-drawn carriage. One of the wheels ran over his head, breaking his skull and causing his death immediately.

Both Pierre and Marie Curie were exposed to large amounts of radiation during their research, either accidentally or on purpose. They both suffered from radiation sickness. Marie Curie died from radiation-induced aplastic anemia in 1934. Even today, many items from the 1890s, including Marie Curie’s cookbooks, are still radioactive. Their laboratory notes are stored in special lead boxes, and people who want to view them must wear protective clothing. Most of these items are located at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. If Pierre Curie had not died in the accident, he likely would have eventually died from radiation exposure, just as his wife, Marie, their daughter Irène, and Irène’s husband, Frédéric Joliot, did.

In April 1995, Pierre and Marie Curie were moved from their original resting place, a family cemetery, and placed in the crypt of the Panthéon in Paris.