Google doodle celebrates Romanian physicist Ștefania Mărăcineanu’s 140th birthday

To honor, Ștefania Mărăcineanu, the Romanian physicist Google doodle on May 18, 2022.  Google celebrated her 140th birth anniversary with a doodle that features Maracineanu working on Polonium in a laboratory.

Ștefania Mărăcineanu was one of the pioneering women in the discovery and research of radioactivity.

On this day, Ștefania Mărăcineanu was born in Bucharest in the year 1882. She was the daughter of Sebastian Mărăcineanu. She completed high school at the Central School for Girls in her native city in 1907. She enrolled at the University of Bucharest, receiving her degree in physical and chemical sciences in 1910.

While there, Ștefania Mărăcineanu earned a scholarship from the Romanian Ministry of Science. She decided to pursue graduate research at the Radium Institute in Paris.

The Radium Institute was quickly becoming a worldwide center for the study of radioactivity under the direction of physicist Marie Curie. Mărăcineanu began working on her Ph.D. thesis on polonium, an element that Curie discovered.

During her research on the half-life of polonium, Ștefania Mărăcineanu noticed that the half-life seemed dependent on the type of metal it was placed on. This got her wondering if the alpha rays from the polonium had transferred some atoms of the metal into radioactive isotopes. Her research led to what is most likely the first example of artificial radioactivity.

Ștefania Mărăcineanu enrolled at Sorbonne University in Paris to finish her Ph.D. in physics, which she earned in just two years!  After working for four years at the Astronomical Observatory in Meudon, she returned to Romania and founded her homeland’s first laboratory for the study of Radioactivity.

Ștefania Mărăcineanu dedicated her time to researching artificial rain, which included a trip to Algeria to test her results. She also studied the link between earthquakes and rainfall, becoming the first to report that there is

significant increase of radioactivity in the epicenter leading up to an earthquake.

In 1935, Irène Currie, daughter of Marie Curie, and her husband received a joint Nobel prize for their discovery of artificial radioactivity. Ștefania Mărăcineanu didn’t contest the Nobel prize but asked that her role in the discovery be recognized. Mărăcineanu’s work was recognized by the Academy of Sciences of Romania in 1936 where she was elected to serve as a Director of research, but she never received global recognition for the discovery.

The Curie Museum in Paris contains the original chemical laboratory in the Radium Institute, where Ștefania Mărăcineanu worked. Today’s Doodle honors Ștefania Mărăcineanu’s 140th birthday and pays tribute to her legacy.

Also Read: Google doodle celebrates Sweden National Day!