See also: Curie

Pierre Curie (May 15th 1859 with Paris - April 19th 1906 with Paris) is a physicist Autodidacte French. It is mainly known for its work in Radioactivité and Piézoélectricité. He and his wife, Marie Curie, pioneers of the study of the Radiation S, accepted the Nobel Prize of physics in 1903, with Henri Becquerel.

Biography

Pierre Curie is the son of a doctor Protesting, Eugene Curie (1827-1910) and of Sophie-Claire Depouilly (1832-1897). He has an older brother, Jacques Curie (1856-1941), with which he discovers the Piézoélectricité. This last is the grandson of Paul Curie (born in 1799), French physicist. The grandfather of Pierre Curie, Paul Curie (1799-1853), is a Humaniste Malthus IEN committed and married to Augustine Hofer, girl of Jean Hofer, large French industrialist of the first part of the 19th century.

Pierre Curie attends neither the school, nor the college, teaching becoming obligatory in France only as from 1881 (laws Ferry). Its instruction is consequently ensured by his/her parents, then by a family friend, Mr. Bazille, who teaches mathematics to him elementary and special, which develops the mental capacities of Pierre, which clearly has an interest for this science. To 18 years, it brilliantly passes its license of physics to the Sorbonne. But it cannot continue in doctorate, for lack of money. It then takes a post of instructor of laboratory.

Before making his important studies and experiments on radioactive substances, Pierre Curie studies, in collaboration with his older brother Jacques, the properties of the crystals. In 1880, the two brothers observe an important phenomenon, the Piézoélectricité: a pressure exerted on a crystal of quartz created an electric Potential . Then, following an article of Gabriel Lippman published in 1881 on the opposite Piezoelectricity, the two brothers manage to show the opposite effect: the crystals can be deformed when one subjects them to an electric field. Nowadays, almost all the electronic circuits use this property.

In 1883, it is named chief of work to the University of industrial physics and chemistry of the town of Paris. There, it is interested mainly in symmetry and the repetitions in the crystalline mediums, before working on the Magnétisme. In its thesis supported in 1895 on the magnetic properties of the bodies at various temperatures, it states the Loi of Curie and defines the Point Curie, temperature beyond which certain materials lose their magnetic properties. Paul Langevin, which was the pupil of Pierre Curie at the University of industrial physics and chemistry, gave the theoretical explanation of the law of Curie in 1905. In 1895, Pierre Curie is named professor of electricity and magnetism at the School of physics and industrial chemistry of the Town of Paris.

This same year 1895, he marries a Polish young person, Marie Sklodowska, come to continue his scientific studies with the Sorbonne in 1892. It is interested closely in discovered of Wilhelm Röntgen on the X-rays and those of Henri Becquerel, which discovered the Radioactivité in 1896. Pierre Curie consequently gives up his research on magnetism and works with his wife on the Uranium. In 1898, they publish their first results and announce the discovery of two new radioelements: the Polonium and the Radium. They use for the first time the term of “Radioactivité”. Their work, including the famous report of doctorate of Marie, rests on a electrometer piezoelectric precis built by Pierre and his Jacques brother.

Pierre and one of his students make first discovered nuclear energy, by identifying the emission continues Chaleur by particle S of Radium. He also studies the radioactive substance emissions per radiation and, by using magnetic fields, he shows that certain emissions are positively charged, some are negative and other neutrals. They are radiations alpha, beta and gamma.

Until 1902, Pierre and Marie try to extract a sufficient quantity from radium to determine the Atomic mass of it, attempt successful in 1902. Following the results of this research, Pierre and Marie receive the Nobel Prize of physics in 1903 “ in recognition of the extraordinary services which they rendered by their common research on the phenomena of radiation discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel. ” This same year, they are both prizes winner of the Davy Médaille. One creates to him in 1904 a pulpit of general physics to the Faculty of Science of Paris. He is elected member of the Academy of Science in 1905.

He dies in Paris, reversed accidentally by on April 19th, horse-drawn carriage 1906.

With Marie Curie, Pierre Curie had two girls:

• Irene Joliot-Curie, which will receive, like her parents, the Nobel Prize of physics with its husband, Frederic Joliot-Curie for their work on the artificial radioactivity,
• Eve Curie, which will write an universally known biography of his/her mother, and who will marry the Nobel Prize of peace, Henry Labouisse.

The April 21st 1995 its ashes and those of his wife are transferred from the family cemetery of Sceaux to the the Pantheon of Paris.

Homage

The curie is a unit of radioactivity (3,7 X 10¹⁰ disintegrations a second) whose name is a homage paid to Pierre Curie by the Congress of radiology of 1910.

Anecdotes

• Pierre Curie was a close friend of Fulcanelli, famous and mysterious alchemist.

• Pierre Curie wrote in connection with his walks in the drills close to the Étangs of the Mine to Guyancourt in Yvelines: " Yes, I would always remember with recognition wood the Mine! It is of all the corners that I saw, that which I liked the most and where I was happiest. I often left the evening, and I went up the valley, I returned with twenty ideas at the head… " . Reference: Extract of the Newspaper of Pierre Curie at Gallimard.

See too

• Family Curia

Simple: Pierre Curie