Curie, Pierre
. Curie, Pierre (1859-1906), French physicist and Nobel laureate, best known for the work on radioactivity that he did with his wife, Marie Curie . In radioactive materials the atoms break down spontaneously, releasing radiation in the form of energy and subatomic particles. Pierre Curie also worked on important topics in the structure of crystals and helped discover the piezoelectric effect in crystals—a property of producing electrical voltages when they are compressed. Pierre Curie was born in Paris and educated at home by his parents. He studied physics at the University of Paris, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1875. He became an assistant teacher at the University of Paris in 1878 and turned his research to crystallography. In 1880 Pierre and his brother Jacques Curie discovered that some crystals developed positive electrical charges at one end and negative electrical charges at the other when the crystals were compressed. These crystals also change shape when exposed to elect