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Pierre Curie

Pierre Curie

Pierre Curie (1859-1906)
BornMay 15 1859
Paris, France
DiedApril 19 1906 (aged 46)
Paris, France
Alma materSorbonne
Notable students  Paul Langevin
André-Louis Debierne
Marguerite Catherine Perey
Known forRadioactivity
Notable prizes Nobel Prize in Physics (1903)
Married to Marie Curie (m. 1895), their children include Irène Joliot-Curie and Ève Curie.

Pierre Curie (May 15 1859 – died April 19 1906) was a French physicist, a pioneer in crystallography, magnetism, piezoelectricity and radioactivity.

Additional recommended knowledge

He shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics with his wife, Maria Skłodowska-Curie (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."

Early life and work

Born in Paris, France, Pierre was educated by his father, and in his early teens showed a strong aptitude for mathematics and geometry. By the age of 18 he had completed the equivalent of a higher degree, but did not proceed immediately to a doctorate due to lack of money. Instead he worked as a laboratory instructor.

In 1880, Pierre and his older brother Jacques demonstrated that an electric potential was generated when crystals were compressed, i.e. piezoelectricity. Shortly afterwards, in 1881, they demonstrated the reverse effect: that crystals could be made to deform when subject to an electric field. Almost all digital electronic circuits now rely on this phenomenon in the form of crystal oscillators.

Prior to his famous doctoral studies on magnetism he designed and perfected an extremely sensitive torsion balance for measuring magnetic coefficients. Variations on this equipment were commonly used by future workers in that area. Pierre Curie studied ferromagnetism, paramagnetism, and diamagnetism for his doctoral thesis, and discovered the effect of temperature on paramagnetism which is now known as Curie's law. The material constant in Curie's law is known as the Curie constant. He also discovered that ferromagnetic substances exhibited a critical temperature transition, above which the substances lost their ferromagnetic behaviour. This is now known as the Curie point.



Pierre worked with his wife Marie Curie in isolating polonium and radium. They were the first to use the term "radioactivity," and were pioneers in its study. Their work, including Marie's celebrated doctoral work, made use of a sensitive piezoelectric electrometer constructed by Pierre and his brother Jacques.


The curie is a unit of radioactivity (3.7 x 1010 decays per second or 37 gigabecquerels) originally named in honour of Pierre Curie by the Radiology Congress in 1910, after Pierre's death.

Pierre died as a result of a carriage accident in a snow storm while crossing the Rue Dauphine in Paris on April 19, 1906. His head having been crushed under the carriage wheel, he avoided probable death by the radiation exposure that later killed his wife. Both Pierre and Marie were enshrined in the crypt of the Panthéon in Paris in April 1995.

Pierre and Marie Curie's daughter Irène Joliot-Curie and their son-in-law Frédéric Joliot-Curie were also physicists involved in the study of radioactivity, and were also awarded the Nobel prize for their work. Their other daughter Ève wrote her mother's biography. His granddaughter Hélène Langevin-Joliot is a professor of nuclear physics at the University of Paris and his grandson, Pierre Joliot, who was named after him, is a noted biochemist.


  • Nobel Prize in Physics (1903)
  • Davy Medal (1903)
  • Matteucci Medal (1904)

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Pierre_Curie". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.