Download Marie Curie received her second Nobel Prize in 1911 in chemistry

Marie Curie received her second Nobel Prize in 1911 in chemistry “in recognition of her
services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium,
by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable
element”(Insert Citation/Source 3 here).
Ms. Curie was born in 1867 in Warsaw, Poland. As a young woman, she studied
mathematics, chemistry, and physics in Paris. She was the first woman in Europe to receive her
doctorate of science and went on to become one of the first women scientists to win worldwide
fame. Marie Curie is recognized as one of the great scientists of this century.
Maria Goeppert-Mayer
Maria Goeppert-Mayer was born on June 28, 1906, in Katowice, Poland, and moved with
her parents to Gottingen, Germany, when she was four years old. She decided she “wasn’t going
to be just a woman” and enrolled at the University at Gottingen to pursue a career in
mathematics, but she soon became interested in physics and quantum mechanics (Insert
Citation/Source 4 here). In 1930, she earned a doctorate in theoretical physics.
She and her husband, Joseph Edward Mayer, a chemical physicist, moved to Baltimore to
work at Johns Hopkins University. In 1939, they accepted appointments at Columbia
University; and then she moved to the University of Chicago in 1945 and soon began work on
nuclear shell structure. In 1960, Dr. Goeppert-Mayer moved to the University of California, San
Diego, where she taught while conducting research and publicly encouraged young women to
pursue careers in the sciences. In 1963, a Nobel Prize in physics was jointly awarded to Maria
Goeppert-Mayer and Hans Jensen for their work on the shell model of nuclear structure; i.e.,
their discoveries concerning the organization of neutrons and protons within atomic nuclei.
Irène Joliot-Curie
Irène Joliot-Curie (1897-1956), along with her husband, Frederic Joliot, are best known
for their study of artificial radioactivity and for their contributions toward the discovery of the
neutron.
Irène Curie was born on September 12, 1897, in Paris, the daughter of the French
physicists Marie and Pierre Curie. She studied at the University of Paris and assisted her mother
at the University’s Institute of Radium. After marrying in 1926, Irène and her husband worked
together as a scientific team specializing in nuclear physics; and both assumed the name of
Joliot-Curie. In 1933, they made the important discovery that radioactive elements can be
artificially prepared from stable elements. For their contribution to nuclear research, the JoliotCuries were awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in chemistry (Insert Citation/Source 5 here).
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin
The British chemist Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910-1994) was best known for her use
of x-ray diffraction to study the structure of macromolecules. In 1964, Hodgkin was awarded the
Nobel Prize in chemistry “for her determinations by x-ray techniques of the structures of
important biochemical substances” (Insert Citation/Source 6 here). The molecular structures that
she determined include those of cholesteryl iodide, penicillin, vitamin B12, vitamin B12
coenzyme, and the protein hormone insulin.
Dorothy Crowfoot was born in Cairo, Egypt, and received a chemistry degree from
Somerville College, University of Oxford. She obtained a Ph.D. at Cambridge University. Ms.
Crowfoot became a tutor and fellow of Somerville College where she met her husband, Thomas
Hodgkin, also a tutor of Somerville College. One of her students was Margaret Roberts, later
Margaret Thatcher, the only British Prime Minister to hold a degree in science (Insert
Citation/Source 6 here).