听读 Who Was Marie Curie-1

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听读 居里夫人传 Who Was Marie Curie  Chapter 1 - 4

Who Was Marie Curie?

By: Megan Stine

Narrated by: Sarah Scott

 One day in November 1903, Marie Curie and her husband got a letter in the mail. The letter invited them to travel from Paris to Sweden to meet the king and queen! Marie was about to be given a gold medal, a fancy dinner, and a huge amount of money. She was about to become famous all over the world. She was about to win the  NO-BEL PRIZE  !

 What had she done to deserve all this? Marie Curie was a scientist at a time when there were almost no female scientists. In fact,most women didn’t even go to college then! Marie wasn’t like most women.She spoke five languages. She loved math problems so much that her father sent them to her in his letters. She met Albert Einstein—the most famous scientist in the world! She was brilliant and determined to succeed.

 Marie was being given the NO-BEL PRIZE   for her work in science. She had discovered a new metal! She called it radium. At first,Marie didn’t even know what this new metal was. All she knew was that it was amazingly powerful. It gave off energy! It glowed in the dark, giving off a faint green light. Marie thought it looked like fairy light.

 By the time her work was done, Marie’s discovery would change the world in good ways and bad. Marie Curie would be the most famous woman scientist in history. 

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THE NO-BEL PRIZE

THE NO-BEL PRIZE  IS ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS AND IMPORTANT AWARDS GIVEN. IT WAS CREATED BY THE SWEDISH SCIENTIST WHO INVENTED DYNAMITE.

 ALFRED NOBEL WAS VERY RICH. HE WANTED TO REWARD PEOPLE WHO HELPED MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE. HE CREATED THE NO-BEL PRIZE  IN HIS  WILL. THE PRIZES ARE GIVEN FOR SCIENCES, MEDICINE, LITERATURE, AND PEACE. IN 2013, EACH  NO-BEL PRIZE CAME WITH A CASH AWARD OF MORE THAN  $1 MILLION! THE WINNERS OF THE NO-BEL PRIZE ARE INVITED TO COME TO STOCKHOLM,SWEDEN, FOR AFANCY CEREMONY. THERE, THEY ARE GIVEN A GOLD MEDAL BY THE KING OF SWEDEN! THEN A HUGE BANQUET IS HELD WITH THE KING AND QUEEN. THE VERY FIRST   NO-BEL PRIZES WERE GIVEN IN 1901. ONE OF THE SCIENCE PRIZES WAS GIVEN TO WILHELM RÖNTGEN, THE MAN WHO DISCOVERED X-RAYS. MARIE AND PIERRE CURIE WON IN 1903. OTHER FAMOUS WINNERS INCLUDE ALBERT EINSTEIN, MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., BARACK OBAMA, JIMMY CARTER, AND ALGORE. 

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Chapter 1 Eager to Learn

 Maria Sklodowska was born on November 7, 1867. She was the youngest of five children, with three older sisters and one brother.Her  parents were both teachers. Her mother was the principal of a school. Her father taught science. Later, he ran his own schools.

 Maria was born in Warsaw,the capital city of Poland.Poland didn’t really exist as a country at that time. The neighboring countries had taken over Poland and divided it up into three parts. Maria lived in the part that was ruled by Russia. Russian guards walked the streets where Maria lived, and patrolled the schools where her parents taught. The Russians had strict rules. No one could sing Polish songs. Schools weren’t allowed to teach Polish history. Students and teachers couldn’t even speak Polish! All the classes had to be taught in Russian.

 Maria’s family hated the Russians and hated the rules. Her father was very proud to be Polish. He taught his children to love their  country and hate the Russians. When Maria and her friend walked past a Russian statue, they spat on it!

  Maria was a wonderful, bright, and curious child. At age four, she loved to stare into a glass case that held her father’s science  equipment. She adored her father and listened intently to everything he said. Her father turned every conversation into a lesson. He created games to teach his children geography. He gave them math problems. He read poems aloud. He spoke five languages, and Maria learned to speak them, too. At school, Maria was the smartest girl in her class. She could recite all the right answers in either Polish or Russian. When the Russian guards weren’t around, the teachers were sneaky. They taught classes in Polish.

 One day a Russian guard came to visit. Quickly, the whole class switched back to speaking Russian. Everyone felt nervous. If the guards found out the truth, they might punish people. They might send them away to a cold, distant place in Russia called Siberia. The teacher called on Maria to answer questions in Russian for the guard. Maria passed the test brilliantly, but she felt bad for doing it! She felt like a traitor to her country for obeying the Russians.

 Life was hard for Maria’s family. Her mother was very sick with a disease called tuberculosis. She had to go away for more than a year to try to get well.

 Soon after, her father was fired from his job at a Russian school. To make money, he started a boarding school at home. More than twenty boys came each day. Some of them lived with the family. Others just came to study. The house was crowded, noisy, and not very clean.

 The crowding made it more likely that people would get sick. Maria’s sister Zosia got a disease called typhus and died. Four years later, Maria’s mother died. Maria became deeply sad. At the end of the school year, Maria’s teacher told her father that Maria was stressed out. The teacher thought Maria should take a year off from school. Instead, her father sent her to a tough Russian school. In Maria’s family, no one ever took a break from learning. In 1883, Maria graduated first in her class at the age of fifteen. She even  got the school’s gold medal for being the best student! After high school, Maria’s father agreed to let his daughter have a break.

 Maria was too young to get married, and her father could not afford to send her to college. Instead, he sent her to live withre latives in the country side.

 For the next year, Maria lived a wonderful,carefree life. Her uncles played music, took her to dances, and invited all kinds of  interesting guests to the house. Many days, Maria slept late and then played outside like a child. She loved swinging, collecting wild  berries, fishing, reading, and playing games. At night she went to parties and learned a Polish dance called the mazurka. She felt so  free! In the countryside, she later wrote, she could even “sing patriotic songs without going to prison.” It was the happiest time she had ever had in her young life.

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Chapter 2 The Secret School

Rested and older now, Maria was eager to start college,but there was only enough money in the family for one student at a time.

 Her brother Jozef was already in medical school.Maria and her sisters would have to wait their turns. Besides, Warsaw University didn ’t let girls in!

 For the next year, Maria decided to study on her own. She longed to be a scientist like her father. How would she ever learn science  without teachers and laboratories and classrooms?

 Luckily, there was a very clever woman who could help. The woman’s name was Jadwiga Dawidowa. Jadwiga knew that many young Polish women wanted to study, even if it meant risking punishment and breaking the Russian rules. Jadwiga started a secret university! At first, the classes were taught in private homes. The smartest scientists and writers in Warsaw volunteered to teach. Later, Jadwiga secretly moved the classes to bigger buildings. The classes had to keep moving—flying from place to place—so the Russian police wouldn’t find out. Soon it became known as the Flying University!

 Maria and her sister Bronia took classes at the Flying University.Still, they both dreamed of attending a real university someday, but where? The best choice was the Sorbonne, a famous university in Paris,France.It was probably the best school in Europe, and it accepted women.

 Maria and Bronia came up with a plan. They would take turns! Bronia would go to Paris first to study. Maria would stay in Poland to earn money for them both. After Bronia graduated from the Sorbonne, it would be Maria’s turn.

 Maria took a job as a governess. At the age of eighteen, she left her beloved father and home behind to live with a rich family in the countryside. Her job as governess was to teach the children in that family. One of her students was a girl a year older than Maria! At first, Maria liked the job. She had her own big room. There was plenty of food and the parents were kind to her. They invited her to parties and treated her almost like a member of the family. In her free time, she read math and science books.

 One day, something happened that changed everything. Maria met the oldest son in the family. His name was Kazimierz, or Kaz for short.

 Maria and Kaz fell in love, but when his family found out, they forbade him to marry her. Why? Because she was only a governess! Even though she was smart, educated, and had good manners, they thought she was more like a servant. She wasn’t good enough to marry their son. From that moment on, Maria was miserable. She hated living and working for people who looked down on her, but she had to keep her pledge to Bronia. For another year or more, she kept thejob, hating it all the time. After that, Maria worked as a governess for another family, then she returned home to study at the Flying University again. Finally her sister Bronia wrote to her from Paris.

 Bronia had finished her schooling and had married a man who happened to have the same name as Maria’s old boy friend—Kazimierz! Bronia and her Kaz invited Maria to come live with them so she could attend the Sorbonne. In 1891, Maria boarded a train for Paris.When she arrived, she would begin to use a new name—Marie. It was the French version of Maria. A whole new life was about to begin.

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Chapter 3 Hungry But Happy

 The train trip to Paris took three days. Marie couldn’t pay for a seat. She rode the whole way on a stool that she brought with her!

 The train car was so cold, she kept herself wrapped in blankets. She barely had enough food to eat during the trip. It was just the  first of many hardships that would soon be part of her everyday life. Marie didn’t care, though. She was happy to be finally  fulfilling her dream. The Sorbonne was such a different kind of place. There were almost no rules. She could take whatever classes she wanted. She didn’t have to attend class if she didn’t feel like it. She could even choose whether or not to take tests! Best of all, the tuition was free. Living with Bronia was not so much fun, though. Bronia and Kaz were both doctors. Their patients came to the apartment for treatment. The house was always crowded and noisy. Marie’s trip to the Sorbonne every day was a long one. She had to ride in the cold, on the top deck of an open bus, an hour each way.

 After six months, Marie moved out and rented her own place closer to the Sorbonne. Her apartment was a tiny single room on the top floor of an apartment building. She had no kitchen, so she did all her cooking over an alcohol lamp! Her meals were skimpy—just bread with maybe a cup of hot chocolate, an egg, or fruit. One time, Marie was so hungry that she fainted while studying in the library. In winter, her room was so cold that water would freeze in a bowl! If she wanted heat, she had to buy coal and carry it up six flights of stairs. She couldn’t always afford coal.Most of the time she slept with all her clothes piled on top of her, to keep warm! It was a hard time for a woman to live alone in Paris. Very few women went to college. When Marie entered the science department at the Sorbonne, there were 1,825 students—but only twenty-three of them were women! There were so few women studying in France that the French didn’t even have a word for “female student.” The only word they had meant “girl friend of a student.”

 Marie spoke French but not very well at first. She had to work hard to understand French people and to make sure she pronounced words correctly. Still, Marie was happy. Years later, she called it one of the best memories of her life. She loved her classes, and spent every waking minute studying. She didn’t care about anything except science, and she was being taught by some of the most famous scientists in all of Europe. One of her professors,Gabriel Lippmann, would later win a NO-BEL PRIZE  for inventing a way to make color photographs. After three years of hard work and constant study, Marie took her final exams in science. Only two women graduated that year. Marie was first in her whole class—ahead of all the men!

 Now that she was finished studying, Marie thought she would go home to Poland.She had promised her father to come back and take care of him. Then something lucky happened. She got a scholarship to stay another year. This time she would study math! Marie couldn’t resist. Learning was the most satisfying thing she had ever done in her life. Why would she want to stop now?

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Chapter 4 Two Loves

 For the next year, Marie studied math at the Sorbonne. When she took her exams, she came in second in the class! Was it time now to go back to Poland as she had promised? Not quite yet. Marie’s professor, Gabriel Lippmann, found her a job in a lab at the Sorbonne. Her task was to study magnetism and steel. Magnetism is the force that causes magnets and metal to stick together. It was perfect for Marie —she was always happiest doing experiments. There was only one problem—the lab didn’t have the best equipment. Marie struggled with her experiments. She couldn’t get good results.

 To help her, some friends from Poland introduced Marie to a Frenchman named Pierre Curie.Pierre was a scientist who had become famous at a very young age. When Pierre was twenty-one, he and his brother had discovered that quartz crystals could hold an electrical charge. After that, he invented a scientific tool called an electrometer. It was used to measure very small amounts of electricity.

 Marie needed his electrometer for her experiments.

 The day Marie met Pierre, her whole life changed. Until then,she had thought she would never fall in love again. She thought it didn’t matter. She was planning to devote her life solely to science. But Pierrewas so special, so different from other men. He was smart, quiet, and he loved science as much as she did. In so many ways, he was just like Marie. Pierre had been brought up in a family just like Marie’s, too. His father was a doctor and scientist. His parents thought education was extremely important—just like Marie’s.

 Unlike Marie,Pierrehad had trouble learning in school, so his parents taught him at home. They let him find his own way. When he discovered how much he liked math and science, he went from being a slow learner to being super fast. By the time Pierre was twenty-three years old he was teaching college! The minute Marie and Pierre met, they each knew that the other was special. Pierre felt he had found a “woman of genius.” Marie knew that Pierre was the kind of man she could talk to and trust. She invited him to her tiny room to discuss science and sip tea.

 Very soon,Pierre was in love with Marie. He wanted to marry her, but Marie was not so sure. In the summer of 1894, she went home to Warsaw. Her heart had been broken once by Kaz.She wasn’t ready to take another chance on love. Pierre wouldn’t give up, though. He wrote to her and begged her to come back to Paris to be with him. He even offered to leave France—a country he loved—and come live in Poland. Finally Marie realized Pierre truly loved her and that they could have a life together as scientists. The two of them were married in France on July 26, 1895. On a perfect summer day, the wedding reception was held in his parents’ garden. Wonderful food was served, including a huge turkey and giant peaches! After they ate, the guests played a French ball game on the lawn. It was a happy occasion in every way. For their honeymoon, they bought two bicycles and rode off on a long adventure. Their honeymoon bike trip lasted all summer long!

 When they came back to Parisin the fall, they quickly got to work.Nothing made them happier than spending all day—and even all night —in a lab.

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Chapter 5 Marie’s Discovery

 For the next few years, Marie kept studying. At the same time, she kept her job doing research in magnetism. Mean while, she enjoyed her life with Pierre. She bought fresh flowers each week for their apartment. She learned to make jelly from goose berries. She and Pierre rode their bicycles everywhere. They fell more and more in love. On September 12, 1897, Marie and Pierre had a baby girl. They named her Irene. When the baby was a few months old, Pierre’s father moved in with them. His wife had just died, and he was alone. He was willing to help take care of his granddaughter. Marie was glad because she was ready to get back to work.

 In those days, women almost never worked out side of the home, but Marie was different. She wanted to do some important research so that she could get her PhD—the degree that would make her a professor. The only question now was: What should she work on? Marieand Pierre lived during an exciting time in Paris. The whole world was going crazy for a new scientific discovery—X-rays! The mysterious X-rays had just been discovered two years earlier. Scientists were trying to figure out how X-rays really worked. They soon noticed that X-rays could make some things glow in the dark. But Marie wanted to study a topic of her own. She decided to study a different kind of  rays, called Becquerel rays. These rays were named for Henri Becquerel, the man who discovered them. The rays came from a metal called uranium.

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HENRI BECQUEREL

HENRI BECQUEREL CAME FROM A FAMILY OF SCIENTISTS. BOTHHIS FATHER AND HIS GRANDFATHER WERE SCIENTISTS. THEY HAD STUDIED THINGS THAT WERE PHOSPHORESCENT—THINGS THAT GLOWED IN THE DARK. HENRIFOLLOWED IN THEIR FOOTSTEPS. WITHOUT DOING MUCH WORK, HE WAS QUICKLY ADMITTED TO THEFRENCHACADEMYOF SCIENCES. BECAUSE HENRI’S FATHER WAS FAMOUS, HENRI HAD AN EASY PATH TO SUCCESS.HENRI EXPERIMENTED WITH X-RAYS AND URANIUM. HE DISCOVEREDRADIOACTIVITY BEFORE MARIE CURIE DID, BUT BECQUEREL DIDN’T USE THE WORDRADIOACTIVITY. HE DIDN ’T REALIZE THAT LOTS OFCHEMICALS COULD GIVE OFF ENERGY, AND HE DIDN’TCOMPLETELY UNDERSTAND WHERE THE ENERGY WAS COMING FROM.

 BECQUEREL HELD ON TO THE IDEA THAT THE ENERGY HADSOMETHING TO DO WITH PHOSPHORESCENCE. AFTER HIS FIRST SUCCESS, HENRI STOPPED EXPERIMENTING WITH URANIUM. THAT’S ONE REASON MARIECURIE DECIDED TO PICK IT UP.

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