Pierre Curie, (born May 15, 1859, Paris, France—died April 19, 1906, Paris), French bodily chemist, cowinner together with his spouse Marie Curie of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903. He and Marie found radium and polonium of their investigation of radioactivity. An distinctive physicist, he was one of many essential founders of recent physics.
Educated by his father, a physician, Curie developed a ardour for arithmetic on the age of 14 and confirmed a specific aptitude for spatial geometry, which was later to assist him in his work on crystallography. Matriculating on the age of 16 and acquiring his licence ès sciences at 18, he was in 1878 taken on as laboratory assistant on the Sorbonne. There Curie carried out his first work on the calculation of the wavelength of warmth waves. This was adopted by crucial research on crystals, during which he was helped by his elder brother Jacques. The downside of the distribution of crystalline matter in line with the legal guidelines of symmetry was to develop into one among his main preoccupations. The Curie brothers related the phenomenon of pyroelectricity with a change within the quantity of the crystal during which it seems, and thus they arrived on the discovery of piezoelectricity. Later Pierre formulated the precept of symmetry, which states the impossibility of bringing a couple of particular bodily course of in an surroundings missing a sure minimal dissymmetry attribute of the method. Further, this dissymmetry can't be discovered within the impact if it's not preexistent within the trigger. He went on to outline the symmetry of various bodily phenomena.
Appointed supervisor (1882) on the School of Physics and Industrial Chemistry at Paris, Curie resumed his personal analysis and managed to excellent the analytical stability by creating an aperiodic stability with direct studying of the final weights. Then he started his celebrated research on magnetism. He undertook to jot down a doctoral thesis with the goal of discovering if there exist any transitions between the three forms of magnetism: ferromagnetism, paramagnetism, and diamagnetism. In order to measure the magnetic coefficients, he constructed a torsion stability that measured 0.01 mg, which continues to be used and referred to as the Curie stability. He found that the magnetic coefficients of attraction of paramagnetic our bodies fluctuate in inverse proportion to absolutely the temperature—Curie’s legislation. He then established an analogy between paramagnetic our bodies and excellent gases and, because of this, between ferromagnetic our bodies and condensed fluids.
The completely completely different character of paramagnetism and diamagnetism demonstrated by Curie was later defined theoretically by Paul Langevin. In 1895 Curie defended his thesis on magnetism and obtained a doctorate of science.
In the spring of 1894 Curie met Marie Skłodowska, and their marriage (July 25, 1895) marked the start of a world-famous scientific achievement, starting with the invention (1898) of polonium after which of radium. The phenomenon of radioactivity, found (1896) by Henri Becquerel, had attracted Marie Curie’s consideration, and she or he and Pierre decided to review a mineral, pitchblende, the precise exercise of which is superior to that of pure uranium. While working with Marie to extract pure substances from ores, an endeavor that basically required industrial assets however that they achieved in comparatively primitive situations, Pierre himself targeting the bodily examine (together with luminous and chemical results) of the brand new radiations. Through the motion of magnetic fields on the rays given out by the radium, he proved the existence of particles electrically optimistic, destructive, and impartial; these Ernest Rutherford was afterward to name alpha, beta, and gamma rays. Pierre then studied these radiations by calorimetry and in addition noticed the physiological results of radium, thus opening the best way to radium remedy.
Refusing a chair on the University of Geneva in an effort to proceed his joint work with Marie, Pierre Curie was appointed lecturer (1900) and professor (1904) on the Sorbonne. He was elected to the Academy of Sciences (1905), having in 1903 collectively with Marie obtained the Royal Society’s Davy Medal and collectively along with her and Becquerel the Nobel Prize for Physics. He was run over by a dray within the rue Dauphine in Paris in 1906 and died immediately. His full works have been printed in 1908. Pierre and Marie’s daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie (born 1897), received the 1935 Nobel Prize for Chemistry along with her husband, Frédèric Joliot-Curie.