Google Doodle: Today i.e. 18th June Google Doodle is very special. Google is celebrating Stefania Maracineanu's 140th birthday with a doodle today. Stefania was one of the first women to discover and research radioactivity. She graduated in physical and chemical science in 1910. Stefania started her career as a teacher at the Central School for Girls in Bucharest. Now we will know who was Stefania, on whose birthday Google is paying tribute to her in this special way.
Stefania Maracineanu was born on June 18, 1882, in Bucharest. She studied high school i.e. 10 at Central School for Girls. After this, in 1907, she was admitted to Bucharest University. While teaching at the Central School for Girls in Bucharest, she received a scholarship from the Romanian Ministry of Science and later decided to pursue graduate research at the Radium Institute in Paris.
At that time the institute was becoming a centre for the study of radioactivity around the world under the direction of the physicist Marie Curie. Maracineanu began work on a PhD thesis on Polonium. It was discovered by Curie.
During research on polonium, Moresinu observed that its half-life depended on the type of metal it was placed on. This made her wonder whether the alpha rays from polonium had transferred some of the metal atoms into radioactive isotopes. To complete her PhD in Physics, Moresinu was admitted to the Sorbonne University in Paris. After working for four years at the Astronomical Observatory in Medon, she returned to Romania and established her first laboratory for the study of radioactivity.
Maracineanu spent most of her time researching artificial rain. This also included a trip to Algeria to test its results. She also studied the link between earthquakes and rainfall. She became the first woman to report that the earthquake caused an increase in radioactivity in the epicenter. Maracineanu's work was recognized by the Academy of Sciences of Romania in 1936, where she was elected as Director of Research. However, she never received global recognition for this discovery.