Breaking Barriers: The Legacy of Female Scientists Marie Curie and Rosalind

Franklin

Scientist is a person who researches to advance knowledge in an area of the natural

sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern
scientist.Instead,philosophers engage in the philosophical study of nature called natural
philosophy,a precursor of natural science. There are a lot of scientist around the world but
female scientist is role model to every woman in the world that being a female scientist
right now means being part of a movement determined to empower woman,level the
playing field and ensure equal opportunity for all.Dorothy scientist,Katherine Johnson,Cecilia
Payne-Gaposchkin,Lise Meitner are some of the scientist around the world but Maria
Salomea Sktodowska-Curie also known as Marie Curie was the one who caught my attention
because she was the first female scientist in the world.
She was a Polish and naturalised- French physicist and chemist who conducted
pioneering research on radioactivity.She was the first woman to win a nobel prize,the first
person to win a nobel prize in two scientific fields.She was, in 1906,the first woman to
become a professor at the Univeristy of Paris.She was born in Warsaw,in what was then the
Kindom of Poland,part of the Russian Empire.She studied at Warsaw’s clandestine Flying
University and begun her practical scientific training in Warsaw,in 1891,aged 24,she
followed her elder sister Bronistawa to study in Paris,where she earned her higher degrees
and conducted her subsequent scientific work.In 1895 she married the French physicist
Peirre Curie,where she shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with him and with the
physicist Henri Becquerel for their pioneering work developing the theory of “radioactivity”-
a term she coined in 1906 Pierre Curie died in paris street accident.Marie won the 1911
Nobel Prize in chemistry for her discovery of the elements polonium and radium,using
techniques she invented for isolating radioactive isotopes.Under her direction,the world’s
first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms by the use of radioactive
isotopes.She founded the Curie Institute in Paris in 1920,and the Curie Institute in Warsaw
in 1932;both remain major medical research centres.During the World War 1 she developed
mobile radiography units to provide X-ray services to field hospitals.While a French
citizen,Marie Sktolodoswka Curie,who used both surnames,never lost her sense of polish
identity.She tought her daugthers the polish language nad took them on visits to Poland.She
named the first chemical element she discovered polonium,after her native country.Marie
Curie died in 1934,aged 66,at the Sancellemoz sanatorium in Passy(Haute-Savoie),France,of
aplastic anemia likely from exposure to radiation in the course of her radiological work at
field hospitals during World War 1.
In addition to her Nobel Prizes,she received numerous other honours and tributes;in
1995 she become the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Paris
Pantheon,and Poland declared 2011 the year of Marie Curie during the International Year of
Chemistry.She is the subject of numerous biographical works.The result of the Curie’s work
was epoch-making.Radium’s radioactivity was so great that it could not be ignored.It seemed
to contradict the principle of the conservation of energy and therefore forced a
reconsideration of the foundations of physics.Marie Curie is remembered for her discovery
of radium and polonium,and her huge contribution to finding treatments for cancer.This
work continuous to inspire our charity’s mission to drive fundamental change in end of life
care so that everyone can have the best possible quality of life to the end.Her observation
was that ,when uranium ore was exposed to a photographer plate,a ahadow was cast on the
plate,indicating that radiation was present. This observation led to the discovery of the low
of radiation,which states that radioactive materials emit radiation at a constant rate.Aside
from Marie Curie there was also one who caught my attention and she was Rosalind Elsie
Franklin,Rosalind Franklin was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was
central to the understanding of the molecule structures of DNA(deoxyribonucleic
acid),RNA(ribonucleic acid),viruses,coal,and graphite.Although her works on coal and viruses
were appreciated in her lifetime,Franklin’s contributions to the discovery of the structure of
DNA were largely unrecognized during her life,for whick franklin has been variously referred
to as the “wronged heroine”,a “feminist icon”’and the “Sylvia Plathof molecular biology”.
Franklin graduated in 1941 with a degree in natural science from Newnham
College,Cambridge,and then enrolled for PhD in physicial chemistry under Ronald George
Wreyford Norrish,the 1920 Chair of Physicial Chemistry at the University of
Cambridge.Dissapointed by Norrish’s lack of enthusiasm,she took up a research position
under the British Coal Utilisation Research Association(BCURA) in 1942.The research on coal
helped Franklin earn aPhD from Cambridge in 1945.Moving to Paris in 1947 as a
chercheur(postdoctoral research)under Jacques Mering at the Laboratoire Central des
Services Chimiques de I’Etat,she become an accomplished(and famous)X-ray
crystallographer.
After joining King’s College London in 1951 as a research associate,Franklin discovered
some key properties of DNA,which eventually facilitated the correct description of the
double herlix structure of DNA.Owning to disagreement with her director,John Randall,and
her colleague Maurice Wilkins,Franklin was compelled to move to Birkbeck College in
1953.Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray different images of DNA while at
King’s College London,particularly photo 51,taken by her student Raymond Gosling,which led
to the discovery of the DNA double helix for which Farncis Crick,James Watson,and Maurice
Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962.Watson suggested that
Franklin would have ideally been awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry,along with Wilkins but
it was not possible because the pre-1947 rule dictated that a Nobel prize could not be
awarded posthumously unless the nomination had been made for a then-alive candidate
before Feb 1st of the award year and Franklin passed away a few years before 16 1962 when
the discovery of the structure of DNA was recognized by the Nobel committee.Working
under John Desmond Bernal,Franklin led pioneering work at Birkbeck on the molecular
structures of viruses.On the day before she was to unvell the structure of tobacco mosaic
virus at an international fair in Brussels,Franklin died of ovarian cancer at the age 37 in
1958.Her team member Aaron Klug continued her research,winning the Nobel Prize in
Chemistry in !958.These two are some of the female scientist who inspire not just woman
but also every person around the world,because of their invention that they created they
helped a lot of people.