Pierre Curie Biography

Pierre Curie was a French scientist and physicist, the precursor in the studies of radioactivity and the one who discovered piezoelectricity. He was born in Paris on May 15, 1859. Pierre was the son of Eugène Curie and Claire Depoully. In his childhood, he was educated in the family environment, since his father thought that the home was the way to develop his intellect and his personal abilities.

By 1875, after having graduated as a scientific bachelor, he began to show a strong interest in mathematics, demonstrating great numerical strengths and spatial geometry, a knowledge that he used in his studies of crystallography. In that same year, he began his studies in physics at the Faculty of Sciences of the Sorbonne.

In the year 1878, he obtained his license in sciences (What is currently a master) he could not do his doctorate, because he did not have enough financial resources, so he had to start working as a laboratory assistant at the Sorbonne.

While working as a laboratory assistant, Pierre Curie began to do his first research related to the measurement of the wavelength of infrared radiation, in these works he was accompanied by his brother Jacques. After analyzing several results, in 1880, he discovered piezoelectricity, a phenomenon that consisted of generating electrical potential by compressing a crystal (Quartz). Sometime later, again with the help of his brother, they showed that the crystals could also be deformed by the application of the electric potential.

Around 1882, he was appointed the director of the Sorbonne laboratories, where he worked until 1889, to work at the Municipal School of Physics and Industrial Chemistry in Paris. In the year 1884, he published a memoir that dealt with the symmetry of crystals.

He explained the universal principle of symmetry in the year 1894, with which he explained that the symmetries present in the causes of a physical phenomenon are also found in their consequences. A year later, he obtained his doctorate in science, after making an excellent presentation on the magnetic properties of bodies at different temperatures.

He proposed and developed a torsion scale with sensitivity for the study of magnetic phenomena. In addition, he made a study on ferromagnetism, paramagnetism, and diamagnetism. With the result of these studies, he discovered the effect of temperature on paramagnetism, currently known as Curie’s law. He also discovered the so-called Curie point, which explained that ferromagnetic substances have a temperature above which they lose their ferromagnetic character.

In the year 1903, Pierre Curie won the Nobel Prize in Physics in conjunction with Marie Curie

and Henri Becquerel, where they were recognized for the excellent services given in research on radiation. In that same year, he also received the Davy Medal from the Royal Society of London.

Pierre Curie died in Paris on April 19, 1906, after being run over by a horse-drawn vehicle. His remains were taken from the family vault to the Pantheon in Paris.

In 1910, the Congress of Radiology decided to call the unit of radioactive activity curium, in honor of Pierre Curie.

On November 6, 1939, Fernand Rigaux discovered an asteroid, which was named asteroid (7000) Curie, in honor of Pierre Curie and Marie Curie. In honor of the scientist’s memory, there is also the synthetic curium element (Cm) discovered in 1944, as well as the Curie crater on the Moon and the Curie crater on Mars.