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See our privacy and cookies policies for more information. News Opinion Magazine Events About. Get TFN updates. Sign in Sign up. This list is over 7 years old. Stephen Fry: 5ft 9in Actor, comedian, journalist, author — the ways to describe Stephen Fry are debatable but the one thing most people agree on is that he is intelligent.
David Cameron: 6ft 1in What about world leaders? Angela Merkel: 5ft 5in Regardless of their gender many high ranking politicians appear to fit the height to IQ ratio. The scandal had finally blown over: Madame Langevin had not mentioned Madame Curie by name in the separation agreement. The French academic world was ready to welcome the world's only double Nobel laureate. At the ceremony on December 10, , the president of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences explained why Curie's discovery of two new elements deserved this additional recognition.
It had not only revolutionized scientific understanding of the nature of the atom but had also opened up new areas of medicine and even helped measure the age of the earth. In her lecture the following day, Curie reasserted her claim to be the first to see that radioactivity was a property built into atoms. Svante Arrhenius, an influential Swedish physicist on the Nobel committee, at first encouraged Curie to accept the award in person, but when the scandal deepened he advised her to decline it until her name was cleared.
She gave credit, however, to Rutherford and other scientists for their contributions in explaining radioactive phenomena. She experimented with a uranium-rich ore called pitchblende, and found that even with the uranium removed, pitchblende emitted rays that were stronger than those emitted by pure uranium. She suspected that this suggested the presence of an undiscovered element.
In March , Curie documented her findings in a seminal paper, where she coined the term "radioactivity. Curie stated that measuring radioactivity would allow for the discovery of new elements. And, that radioactivity was a property of the atom. The Curies worked together to examine loads of pitchblende. The couple devised new protocols for separating the pitchblende into its chemical components.
Marie Curie often worked late into the night stirring huge cauldrons with an iron rod nearly as tall as she was. The Curies found that two of the chemical components — one that was similar to bismuth and the other like barium — were radioactive. In July , the Curies published their conclusion: The bismuth-like compound contained a previously undiscovered radioactive element, which they named polonium , after Marie Curie's native country, Poland.
By the end of that year, they had isolated a second radioactive element, which they called radium , derived from "radius," the Latin word for rays. In , the Curies announced their success in extracting purified radium. In June , Marie Curie was the first woman in France to defend her doctoral thesis.
In November of that year the Curies, together with Henri Becquerel, were named winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics for their contributions to the understanding of "radiation phenomena. The Millions. More from pw. The Best Books of PW Picks: Books of the Week. New Pub Dates for Forthcoming Books: Children's Announcements.
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