Everything about Pierre Curie totally explained
Pierre Curie (
May 15 1859 – died
April 19 1906) was a
French physicist, a pioneer in
crystallography,
magnetism,
piezoelectricity and
radioactivity.
He shared the 1903
Nobel Prize in physics with his wife,
Maria Skłodowska-Curie (Marie Curie), and
Henri Becquerel, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they've rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel."
Early life and work
Born in
Paris,
France, Pierre was educated by his father, and in his early teens showed a strong aptitude for mathematics and geometry. By the age of 18 he'd completed the equivalent of a higher degree, but didn't proceed immediately to a doctorate due to lack of money. Instead he worked as a laboratory instructor.
In 1880, Pierre and his older brother Jacques demonstrated that an electric potential was generated when crystals were compressed, for example
piezoelectricity. Shortly afterwards, in 1881, they demonstrated the reverse effect: that crystals could be made to deform when subject to an electric field. Almost all digital electronic circuits now rely on this phenomenon in the form of
crystal oscillators.
Prior to his famous doctoral studies on magnetism he designed and perfected an extremely sensitive
torsion balance for measuring magnetic coefficients. Variations on this equipment were commonly used by future workers in that area. Pierre Curie studied
ferromagnetism,
paramagnetism, and
diamagnetism for his doctoral thesis, and discovered the effect of
temperature on paramagnetism which is now known as
Curie's law. The material constant in Curie's law is known as the Curie constant. He also discovered that ferromagnetic substances exhibited a
critical temperature transition, above which the substances lost their ferromagnetic behavior. This is now known as the
Curie point.
Pierre formulated what is now known as the
Curie Dissymmetry Principle: a physical
effect can't have a dissymmetry absent from its efficient
cause. For example, a random mixture of sand in zero gravity has no
dissymmetry (it is
isotropic). Introduce a
gravitational field, then there's a dissymmetry because of the direction of the field. Then the sand grains can ‘self-sort’ with the density increasing with depth. But this new arrangement, with the directional arrangement of sand grains, actually reflects the dissymmetry of the gravitational field that causes the separation.
Work
Pierre worked with his wife Marie Curie in isolating
polonium and
radium. They were the first to use the term "
radioactivity," and were pioneers in its study. Their work, including Marie's celebrated doctoral work, made use of a sensitive piezoelectric
electrometer constructed by Pierre and his brother Jacques.
Pierre and one of his students made the first discovery of
nuclear energy, by identifying the continuous emission of
heat from
radium particles. He also investigated the radiation emissions of radioactive substances, and through the use of magnetic fields was able to show that some of the emissions were positively charged, some were negative and some were neutral. These correspond to
alpha,
beta and
gamma radiation.
The
curie is a unit of radioactivity (3.7 x 10
10 decays per second or 37
gigabecquerels) originally named in honour of Pierre Curie by the Radiology Congress in 1910, after Pierre's death. Subsequently, there has been some controversy over whether the naming was in honour of Pierre, Marie, or both.
Pierre and Marie Curie's daughter
Irène Joliot-Curie and their son-in-law
Frédéric Joliot-Curie were also physicists involved in the study of radioactivity, and were also awarded the Nobel prize for their work. Their other daughter
Ève wrote her mother's biography. His granddaughter
Hélène Langevin-Joliot is a
professor of nuclear physics at the
University of Paris and his grandson,
Pierre Joliot, who was named after him, is a noted biochemist.
Death
Pierre died as a result of a carriage accident in a snow storm while crossing the
Rue Dauphine in
Paris on
April 19,
1906. Both Pierre and Marie were enshrined in the
crypt of the
Panthéon in Paris in April 1995.
Prizes
Further Information
Get more info on 'Pierre Curie'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://pierre_curie.totallyexplained.com">Pierre Curie Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
