Pierre Curie

I have already said that in 1897 Pierre Curie was occupied with an investigation on the growth of crystals. I myself had finished, by the beginning of vacation, a study of the magnetization of tempered steels which had resulted in our getting a small subvention from the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry. Our daughter Irene was born in September, and as soon as I was well again, I resumed my work in the laboratory with the intention of preparing a doctor's thesis.

Our attention was caught by a curious phenomenon discovered in 1896 by Henri Becquerel. The discovery of the X-ray by Roentgen had excited the imagination, and many physicians were trying to discover if similar rays were not emitted by fluorescent bodies under the action of light. With this question in mind Henri Becquerel was studying uranium salts, and, as sometimes occurs, came upon a phenomenon different from that he was looking for: the spontaneous emission by uranium salts of rays of a peculiar character. This was the discovery of radioactivity.

The particular phenomenon discovered by Becquerel was as follows: uranium compound placed upon a photographic plate covered with black paper produces on that plate an impression analogous to that which light would make. The impression is due to uranium rays that traverse the paper. These same rays can, like X-rays, discharge an electroscope, by making the air which surrounds it a conductor.

Henri Becquerel assured himself that these properties do not depend on a preliminary isolation, and that they persist when the uranium compound is kept in darkness during several months. The next step was to ask whence came this energy, of minute quantity, it is true, but constantly given off by uranium compounds under the form of radiations.

The study of this phenomenon seemed to us very attractive and all the more so because the question was entirely new and nothing yet had been written upon it. I decided to undertake an investigation of it.

It was necessary to find a place in which to conduct the experiments. My husband obtained from the director of the School the authorization to use a glassed-in study on the ground floor which was then being used as a storeroom and machine shop.

In order to go beyond the results reached by Becquerel, it was necessary to employ a precise quantitative method. The phenomenon that best lent itself to measurement was the conductibility produced in the air by uranium rays. This phenomenon, which is called ionization, is produced also by X-rays and investigation of it in connection with them had made known its principal characteristics.

For measuring the very feeble currents that one can make pass through air ionized by uranium rays, I had at my disposition an excellent method developed and applied by Pierre and Jacques Curie. This method consists in counterbalancing on a sensitive electrometer the quantity of electricity carried by the current with that which a piezo-electric quartz can furnish. The installation therefore required a Curie electrometer, a piezo-electric quartz, and a chamber of ionization, which last was formed by a plate condenser whose higher plate was joined to the electrometer, while the lower plate, charged with a known potential, was covered with a thin layer of the substance to be examined. Needless to say, the place for such an electrometric installation was hardly the crowded and damp little room in which I had to set it up.