Google Doodle honours Stefania Maracineanu; know all about Romanian physicist's research

On the occasion of the 140th birth anniversary of Stefania Maracineanu, who is popularly known for the discovery of radioactivity, search giant Google has unveiled a special doodle. The Google Doodle for June 18 has been made to pay tribute to the Romanian physicist, one of the pioneering women in the field of radioactivity discovery and study. Today's Google doodle features Maracineanu working on Polonium in a laboratory.

Once one will click on the doodle, it will take to a web page where one can find all the related information about Maracineanu, who was very well known for her unparalleled “knowledge of precise electrometric measurements”.

Who is Stefania Maracineanu?

Maracineanu who was born in Bucharest, on June 18, 1882, earned her degree in physical and chemical science in 1910 and began working as a teacher at Bucharest's Central School for Girls. Maracineanu received a scholarship from the Romanian Ministry of Science. She chose to continue her studies at the Radium Institute in Paris. 

Under the guidance of physicist Marie Curie, the Radium Institute swiftly became a global hub for the research of radioactivity. Mărăcineanu started to work on her Ph.D. thesis on polonium, a chemical element discovered by Curie. 

Maracineanu discovered during her study that the half-life of polonium seemed to depend on the sort of metal it was placed on. This made her question whether the polonium's alpha particles had converted some of the metal's atoms into radioactive isotopes. Her work resulted in the most probable first instance of artificial radioactivity. 

Maracineanu established the country's first laboratory for the research of radioactivity. Maracineanu devoted herself to researching artificial rain, which included a journey to Algeria to test her findings. She also looked into the connection between earthquakes and rainfall and was the first to discover that the epicenter of an earthquake had a considerable rise in radioactivity in the days preceding up to an earthquake. 

Maracineanu's work was acknowledged by the Romanian Academy of Sciences in 1936 when she was chosen as a Director of Research, but she never garnered international acclaim for the discovery. The actual chemical laboratory of the Radium Institute, where Stefania Maracineanu used to research, is now in the Curie Museum in Paris. 

(Image: Google)