Lesson 9: Beautiful Colors

Lesson 9: Beautiful Colors

EVE. Curie

The most pleasant period of Marie Sklodowska's student life was spent in the penthouse; Marie Curie was now to taste a new and great pleasure in a dilapidated cottage. It was a strange new beginning, a hard and subtle pleasure (undoubtedly not experienced by any woman before Marie), and on both occasions the most humble of sets were chosen.

   The shack at Loumont Road could be considered the archetype of discomfort. In the summer, because the roof is glass, the shack is hot and dry inside like a greenhouse. In winter, it was hard to know whether to hope for frost or for rain, and if it rained, it fell drop by drop on the floor, on the workbench, on the place where the two physicists marked never to put their instruments, with an annoyingly soft sound; if it frosted, even people froze and there was no way to remedy the situation. The stove, even if it burned it to a blazing degree, but also completely disappointing, walk almost to the place where you can touch it, to feel a little warmth, but leave a step, immediately back to the cold zone.

However, Marie and Pierre had to get used to the cold outside, and their equipment for refining bituminous uranium ore was so rudimentary that most of the refining had to be done in the open field of the yard, as there was no "ventilation hood" to let out the harmful gases. Whenever sudden rains arrived, the two physicists hurriedly moved the equipment into the shed and opened the windows and doors wide to allow air to circulate so that they could continue their work without being suffocated by smoke.

This very special method of treating tuberculosis, which Marie mostly did not brag about to Dr. Fortier!

Later she wrote: "We had no money, no laboratory, and almost no one to help us get this important and difficult work done. It was like trying to create something out of nothing. If my years of student life were what Casimir Delusky used to call 'the heroic years of my aunt's life,' I can say without exaggeration that the present period is the heroic period of my husband's and my common life.

"...... The best and happiest years of our lives, however, were spent in this humble old shack, where we devoted ourselves entirely to our work. I often cooked our meals right there so that some particularly important process would not be interrupted. Sometimes I spent the whole day stirring a large pile of boiling stuff with an iron bar that was almost as tall as I was. By the end of the day, it was simply exhausting."

It was under these conditions that Mr. and Mrs. Curie worked from 1898 to 1902.

During the first year, they worked together on the chemical dissociation of radium and polonium and studied the radioactivity of the active products they obtained. Soon they decided that the division of labor was more efficient, and Biel tried to determine the properties of radium in order to become familiar with this new metal. Mary continued refining and extracting pure radium salts.

In this division of labor, Marie chose the "man's job" and did the work of a strong man. Her husband concentrated on meticulous experiments in the shed. Mary was in the yard in her old dusty and acid-stained overalls, her hair blowing in the wind, the smoke around her irritating her eyes and throat.

She was a factory all by herself.

She writes, "I refined 20 kilograms of material at a time, resulting in a shed full of large bottles with precipitates and solutions. Carrying the containers, transferring the solution, stirring the boiling material in the melting pot for hours on end, it was

It was an extremely tiring job." But radium wanted to maintain its mystery and did not want humans to know it at all. Mary had naively predicted that the residue of the bituminous uranium ore contained one percent radium; where was that estimate now? This new substance was extremely radioactive, and the very small amounts of radium scattered throughout the ore were the source of some touching phenomena that were easy to observe or measure. What is most difficult, or almost impossible, is to isolate this very small amount of material and separate it from the impurities with which it is closely mixed.

The working day became the working month, the working month became the working year. Biel and Marie did not lose their courage. This resistance to their material fascinated them. The tenderness between them and their intellectual enthusiasm united them; they lived the "anti-natural" life in this boarded-up house, a life for which they were born, like each other.

Mary later wrote: "Thanks to this unexpected discovery, during this period we were completely captivated by the new horizons that unfolded before us. Although our working conditions brought us many difficulties, we still felt happy. Our time was spent in the laboratory. A great tranquility prevailed in our very poor shack; sometimes we paced back and forth, paying close attention to the progress of some experiment, while talking about our present and future work. When we felt cold, we were comfortable again with a cup of hot tea by the fire. We lived our lives in a unique concentration scenario, as if in a dream.

"...... We had only a few guests in the laboratory. Occasionally a few physicists or chemists came, either to see our experiments or to ask certain questions of Biel Curie, who is well known in many branches of physics. They talked right in front of the blackboard, and such conversations leave a clear memory, for they were a refresher for scientific interest and enthusiasm for work, and did not interrupt the progress of thought or disturb the air of calm concentration, which was the true atmosphere of the laboratory."

Biel and Marie sometimes left the apparatus and chatted calmly for a while, always about their fascination with radium, saying everything from the most profound to the most childish.

One day Marie said with eager curiosity, like a child expecting a toy already promised, "I really want to know what 'it' will be like, what it will look like. Beale, what shape does it take in your imagination?"

This physicist replied pleasantly, "I don't know ...... you can think of, I hope it has very beautiful colors."

......

They had worked hard that day, and it was reasonable that the two scholars should be resting at this moment. But Biel and Marie didn't always follow reason. They put on their coats, told Dr. Curie that they were going out, and slipped away ...... They walked arm in arm, saying very little. Along the lively streets of this neighborhood, far from the city center, they walked past factories, vacant lots and unpretentious housing. They reached Loumont Road, crossed the courtyard, Biel inserted the key into the lock hole, the door rattled (it had rattled like that thousands of times), and they stepped into their domain, into their dream world.

Marie said, "Don't light the lamp!" Then laughed softly and said again, "Do you remember the day you said to me 'I wish it had a very beautiful color'?"

The truth about radium, which had fascinated Biel and Marie for months, was actually more lovely than they had ever naively hoped for. Radium doesn't just have a "beautiful color," it also glows automatically! There were no cabinets in this dark shack, these scattered treasures were in tiny glass containers on boards or tables nailed to the walls; their slightly blue fluorescent outlines shone, hanging in the darkness of the night.

"Behold ...... behold!" This young woman whispered.

Carefully walked forward to find, found a chair with a straw cushion, and sat down. In the darkness, in the silence, both faces turned toward these shimmering lights, toward the mysterious source of this ray, toward radium, toward their radium! Mary's body leaned forward, looking eagerly, his posture at that moment, as he had looked at the child at the head of her sleeping child's bed an hour earlier.

Her partner gently stroked her hair with his hand.

She would always remember this night of watching the fluorescence, and would always remember the wonder of this divine world.