![]() The first truck was prepared to transport the famous scientist herself to the front line at the Battle of Marne (1914). She produced the X-rays from Crookes tubes, which require a source of electricity.” For this, Curie connected a dynamo to the petroleum-powered engine of the vehicle, which also contained photographic material and darkroom equipment to develop the plates. Jorgensen, Radiation Biology Specialist at Georgetown University (USA) and author of Strange Glow: The Story of Radiation (Princeton University Press, 2016), “the portable X-ray machines that Curie used in her cars were actually invented by a Spaniard, Mónico Sánchez Moreno. Source: Wikimediaĭespite all the difficulties, Curie managed to equip her first car, converted into a truck. Presumably, anti-female bias played a role, if not the only role, in that situation.” Curie was able to equip 20 vehicles with portable X-ray machines. Naomi Pasachoff, a science historian at Williams College and author of Marie Curie and the Science of Radioactivity (Oxford University Press, 1997), points out to OpenMind that Curie’s status as a woman did not make things easy for her: “Curie had to set the radiological service up by herself, without the support of the government. To equip her first vehicle, she had the help of the Union of Women of France and the Red Cross, as the government’s bureaucratic obstacles were excessive. Not only did she have to learn radiology, but also how to change a tire and clean a carburettor. She was unaware of the clinical management of X-rays, and did not even know how to drive. To begin with, Curie was a researcher, not a physician. Curie set out to bring radiology to the front lines in cars that housed portable X-ray machines. In particular, X-rays had become an enormously useful tool for surgeons since their discovery by Wilhelm Röntgen in 1895, but the machines were only available in large hospitals. Radiology in the front linesĬurie knew that reaction time was critical to treating wounded troops on the battlefield, but military doctors were forced to work with meagre resources. Instead, she chose to put her science at the service of the French army. Eager to contribute to the war effort, she bought war bonds and wanted to donate to the government the gold medals from her two Nobel prizes, a gift that was not accepted. Source: Wikimediaīut unlike others, Curie did not seek refuge in Bordeaux, but decided to return to Paris. The French government moved to Bordeaux, where the scientist also brought her most precious treasured, a gram of radium in a lead-lined container, which she left in a safety deposit box at a local bank. ![]() ![]() With the outbreak of conflict and the threat of a German invasion looming over Paris, daily life was suspended, including Curie’s research. Less well known, though equally well documented, is Curie’s work during the First World War, inspired by her humanitarian spirit and devotion to her host country. For all this Marie Curie received not one Nobel Prize, but two, being the first person to achieve this and the only one who has ever done so in two different scientific disciplines-physics and chemistry. The finding that elements such as uranium emitted radiation was joined in the same period with the discovery of the electron, which proved that the atom was not indivisible as was believed. The discovery of radium and polonium allowed us to define the properties of radioactivity, a term coined by the researcher herself. The achievements of Curie and her husband Pierre, who died in 1906, are well known. ![]() But there was no radium in the remains, which suggested that the disease that killed the researcher was not due to the radioactive elements that she handled, but rather to an excessive exposure to X-rays caused by her unusual invention: the mobile radiology machine that she took to the battlefields during the First World War. When in 1995 the remains of the French-Polish scientist Marie Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) were exhumed from the Sceaux cemetery to be transferred to the Pantheon in Paris, it was feared that they would emit harmful levels of radiation, such as still occurs today with her laboratory notebooks. ![]()
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