Part Three: Question: What triggered Marie ’ s interest in rays that later were described as radioactive by her? Meeting Pierre Curie 4 One of Marie’s professors arranged a research grant for her to study the magnetic properties and chemical composition of steel. In arranging for lab space, she was introduced to a young man named Pierre Curie. Pierre was a brilliant researcher himself and had invented several instruments for measuring magnetic fields and electricity. He arranged a tiny space for her at the Municipal School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry where he worked. The two were married in the summer of 1895. 5 Marie had been intrigued by the reports of Wilhelm Roentgen’s discovery of X-rays and by Henri Becquerel’s report of similar “rays” emitted from uranium ores. She decided to use Pierre’s instruments to measure the faint electrical currents she detected in air that had been bombarded with uranium rays. Her studies showed that the effects of the rays were constant even when the uranium ore was treated in different ways. She confirmed Becquerel’s observation that greater amounts of uranium in an ore resulted in more intense rays. Then she stated a revolutionary hypothesis; Marie believed that the emission of these rays was an atomic property of uranium. If true, this would mean that the accepted view of the atom as the smallest possible fragment of matter was false.