After
World War I, with support from
Constantin Kirițescu,
Ștefania Mărăcineanu obtained a fellowship that allowed her to travel to
Paris to further her studies. In 1919 she took a course on radioactivity at the
Sorbonne with
Marie Curie. Afterwards, she pursued research with Curie at the
Radium Institute until 1926. Mărăcineanu received her
Ph.D. at the institute, where she researched the
half-life of
polonium and devised methods of measuring
alpha decay. This work led her to believe that
radioactive isotopes could be formed from atoms as a result of exposure to polonium's alpha rays, an observation which would lead to the
Joliot-Curies' 1935 Nobel Prize. In 1935,
Frederic and
Irene Joliot-Curie (n.r.—daughter of scientists
Pierre Curie and Marie Curie) won the
Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of artificial radioactivity. Ștefania Mărăcineanu expressed her dismay at the fact that Irene Joliot-Curie had used a large part of her work observations regarding artificial radioactivity, without mentioning it. Mărăcineanu publicly claimed that she discovered artificial radioactivity during her years of research in Paris, as evidenced by her doctoral dissertation, presented more than 10 years earlier. "Mărăcineanu wrote to
Lise Meitner in 1936, expressing her disappointment that Irene Joliot Curie, without her knowledge, used much of her work, especially that related to artificial radioactivity, in her work," is mentioned in the book
A devotion to their science: Pioneer women of radioactivity. Historians, however, have thrown doubt on the claims of Mărăcineanu. == See also ==