Great scientists（Period 3 Listening and Speaking）
the linnaean manuscripts, and his herbarium and collections of insects and shells, purchased by sir j.e.smith in 1783, are carefully preserved by the linnean society at burlington house, london.marie curie
(born nov.7, 1867, warsaw, pol., russian empire.died july 4, 1934, near sallanches, france )maria sklodowska polish—born french physicist famous for her work on radioactivity and twice a winner of the nobel prize.with henri becquerel and her husband, pierre curie, she was awarded the 1903 nobel prize for physics.she was then the sole winner of the 1911 nobel prize for chemistry.from childhood she was remarkable for her prodigious memory, and at the age of 16 she won a gold medal on completion of her secondary education at the russian lycée.because her father, a teacher of mathematics and physics, lost his savings through bad investment, she had to take work as a teacher and, at the same time, took part clandestinely in the nationalist“free university, ”reading in polish to women workers.at the age of 18 she took a post as governess, where she suffered an unhappy love affair.from her earnings she was able to finance her sister bronia’s medical studies in paris, on the understanding that bronia would in turn later help her to get an education.she came first in the licence of physical sciences in 1893.she began to work in lippmann’s research laboratory and in 1894 was placed second in the licence of mathematical sciences. it was in the spring of this year that she met pierre curie.their marriage (july 25, 1895) marked the start of a partnership that was soon to achieve results of world significance, in particular the discovery of polonium (so called by marie in honour of her native land) in the summer of 1898, and that of radium a few months later.following henri becquerel’s discovery (1896) of a new phenomenon (which she later called“radioactivity”), marie curie, looking for a subject for a thesis, decided to find out if the property discovered in uranium was to be found in other matter.she discovered that this was true for thorium at the same time as g.c.schmidt did.in december 1904 she was appointed chief assistant in the laboratory directed by pierre curie.the sudden death of pierre curie (april 19, 1906) was a bitter blow to marie curie, but it was also a decisive turning point in her career: henceforth she was to devote all her energy to completing alone the scientific work that they had undertaken.on may 13, 1906, she was appointed to the professorship that had been left vacant on her husband’s death; she was the first woman to teach in the sorbonne.in 1908 she became titular professor, and in 1910 her fundamental treatise on radioactivity was published.in 1911 she was awarded the nobel prize for chemistry, for the isolation of pure radium.in 1914 she saw the completion of the building of the laboratories of the radium institute (institut du radium) at the university of paris.