Activity 1

An artist in our community
Isabel Carter is a talented portrait painter, who is much admired in our community. Although she is quite young, she has already achieved a great deal. Her portraits,, which have been exhibited in local galleries and art shows, use bold strokes of color to express character and mood. Everyone in our community is familiar with Ms. Carter´s portraits because many of them depict people we all know. Her vision and technique make you see a person you thought you knew in a completely different way, which is quite remarkable. Ms. Carter has painted many beautiful portraits of people whom she has encountered around the world, and they are as fascinating to us as the portraits of people we know. If she can get a financial support, she will study painting in Italy next year.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1911
Marie Curie was born in Warsaw on November 7. She received a general education in local schools and some scientific training from her father and in 1891, she went to Paris to continue her studies at the Sorbonne where she obtained Licentiateships in Physics and the Mathematical Sciences. She succeeded her husband as Head of the Physics Laboratory at the Sorbonne, gained her Doctor of Science degree in 1903, and following the tragic death of Pierre Curie in 1906, she took his place as Professor of General. The discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896 inspired the Curies in their brilliant researches and analyses which led to the isolation of polonium, named after the country of Marie's birth, and radium. Curie developed methods for the separation of radium from radioactive residues in sufficient quantities to allow for its characterization and the careful study of its properties, therapeutic properties in particular. Curie's work is reflected in the numerous awards bestowed on her. She received many honorary science, medicine and law degrees and honorary memberships of learned societies throughout the world.
Together with her husband, she was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903, for their study into the spontaneous radiation discovered by Becquerel, who was awarded the other half of the Prize. In 1911 she received a second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry, in recognition of her work in radioactivity. She also received, jointly with her husband, the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in 1903, and in 1921, President Harding of the United States, on behalf of the women of America, presented her with one gram of radium in recognition of her service to science.