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Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie, known simply as Marie Curie, 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 twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. Her husband, Pierre Curie, was a co-winner of her first Nobel Prize, making them the first married couple to win the Nobel Prize and launching the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was, in 1906, the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris.
Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter.
Pierre Curie was a French physicist, chemist and a pioneer in crystallography, magnetism, piezoelectricity and radioactivity. He shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with his wife, Marie Curie, and Henri Becquerel "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel". With their win, the Curies became the first married couple to win the Nobel Prize, launching the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes.
A beta particle, also called beta ray or beta radiation, is a high-energy, high-speed electron or positron emitted by the radioactive decay of an atomic nucleus, known as beta decay. There are two forms of beta decay, β− decay and β+ decay, which produce electrons and positrons, respectively.
Antoine Henri Becquerel was a French physicist who shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre and Marie Curie for his discovery of radioactivity. The SI unit of radioactivity, the becquerel (Bq), is named after him.
The sievert is a unit in the International System of Units (SI) intended to represent the stochastic health risk of ionizing radiation, which is defined as the probability of causing radiation-induced cancer and genetic damage. The sievert is important in dosimetry and radiation protection. It is named after Rolf Maximilian Sievert, a Swedish medical physicist renowned for work on radiation dose measurement and research into the biological effects of radiation.
The curie is a non-SI unit of radioactivity originally defined in 1910. According to a notice in Nature at the time, it was to be named in honour of Pierre Curie, but was considered at least by some to be in honour of Marie Curie as well, and is in later literature considered to be named for both.
The becquerel is the unit of radioactivity in the International System of Units (SI). One becquerel is defined as an activity of one per second, on average, for aperiodic activity events referred to a radionuclide. For applications relating to human health this is a small quantity, and SI multiples of the unit are commonly used.
Radioactive decay is the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by radiation. A material containing unstable nuclei is considered radioactive. Three of the most common types of decay are alpha, beta, and gamma decay. The weak force is the mechanism that is responsible for beta decay, while the other two are governed by the electromagnetic and nuclear forces.
Radiation dosimetry in the fields of health physics and radiation protection is the measurement, calculation and assessment of the ionizing radiation dose absorbed by an object, usually the human body. This applies both internally, due to ingested or inhaled radioactive substances, or externally due to irradiation by sources of radiation.
George Charles de Hevesy was a Hungarian radiochemist and Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate, recognized in 1943 for his key role in the development of radioactive tracers to study chemical processes such as in the metabolism of animals. He also co-discovered the element hafnium.
Specific activity is the activity per unit mass of a radionuclide and is a physical property of that radionuclide. It is usually given in units of becquerel per kilogram (Bq/kg), but another commonly used unit of specific activity is the curie per gram (Ci/g).
The measurement of ionizing radiation is sometimes expressed as being a rate of counts per unit time as registered by a radiation monitoring instrument, for which counts per minute (cpm) and counts per second (cps) are commonly used quantities.
The rad is a unit of absorbed radiation dose, defined as 1 rad = 0.01 Gy = 0.01 J/kg. It was originally defined in CGS units in 1953 as the dose causing 100 ergs of energy to be absorbed by one gram of matter. The material absorbing the radiation can be human tissue, air, water, or any other substance.
Radiobiology is a field of clinical and basic medical sciences that involves the study of the effects of ionizing radiation on living things, in particular health effects of radiation. Ionizing radiation is generally harmful and potentially lethal to living things but can have health benefits in radiation therapy for the treatment of cancer and thyrotoxicosis. Its most common impact is the induction of cancer with a latent period of years or decades after exposure. High doses can cause visually dramatic radiation burns, and/or rapid fatality through acute radiation syndrome. Controlled doses are used for medical imaging and radiotherapy.
Alpha particles, also called alpha rays or alpha radiation, consist of two protons and two neutrons bound together into a particle identical to a helium-4 nucleus. They are generally produced in the process of alpha decay but may also be produced in other ways. Alpha particles are named after the first letter in the Greek alphabet, α. The symbol for the alpha particle is α or α2+. Because they are identical to helium nuclei, they are also sometimes written as He2+ or 4
2He2+ indicating a helium ion with a +2 charge (missing its two electrons). Once the ion gains electrons from its environment, the alpha particle becomes a normal (electrically neutral) helium atom 4
2He.
The roentgen or röntgen is a legacy unit of measurement for the exposure of X-rays and gamma rays, and is defined as the electric charge freed by such radiation in a specified volume of air divided by the mass of that air . In 1928, it was adopted as the first international measurement quantity for ionizing radiation to be defined for radiation protection, as it was then the most easily replicated method of measuring air ionization by using ion chambers. It is named after the German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen, who discovered X-rays and was awarded the first Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery.
The timeline of quantum mechanics is a list of key events in the history of quantum mechanics, quantum field theories and quantum chemistry.
The committed dose in radiological protection is a measure of the stochastic health risk due to an intake of radioactive material into the human body. Stochastic in this context is defined as the probability of cancer induction and genetic damage, due to low levels of radiation. The SI unit of measure is the sievert.
Nuclear fission was discovered in December 1938 by chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann and physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch. Fission is a nuclear reaction or radioactive decay process in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller, lighter nuclei and often other particles. The fission process often produces gamma rays and releases a very large amount of energy, even by the energetic standards of radioactive decay. Scientists already knew about alpha decay and beta decay, but fission assumed great importance because the discovery that a nuclear chain reaction was possible led to the development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Hahn was awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission.
References
- ↑ Lind, SC (1946), "New units for the measurement of radioactivity", Science, 103 (2687): 761–762, Bibcode:1946Sci...103..761L, doi:10.1126/science.103.2687.761-a, PMID 17836457, S2CID 5343688.
- ↑ "The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1908".
- ↑ Harder, D (1976), "[The new radiologic units of measurement gray and becquerel (author's translation from the German original)]", Röntgen-Blätter, 29 (1): 49–52, PMID 1251122.
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