Leonardo DiCaprio * Actor * USA

Leonardo Di Caprio * Actor
Born: 11 November 1974
Birthplace: Los Angeles, California
Best known as:
Heartthrob star of the 1997 film Titanic
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Leonardo DiCaprio
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Leonardo DiCaprio has been an international superstar since the box office megahit Titanic (1997, directed by James Cameron). In front of the camera since childhood, his first big role came in 1991, on the television series Growing Pains.
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As a young movie actor he won critical raves for his role in This Boy's Life (1993, with Robert DeNiro), and an Oscar nomination for What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993, with Johnny Depp).
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His performance in 1996's Romeo and Juliet proved his bankability as a leading man and heartthrob, and after the success of Titanic (with Kate Winslet), DiCaprio became a favorite of the tabloids, with a party-boy reputation.
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He kept on working, however, and has since grown into one of Hollywood's top movie actors. Along the way he appeared in Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998, with Gretchen Mol), starred in Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (2002, with Christopher Walken) and made three movies with Martin Scorsese: Gangs of New York (2002, co-starring Cameron Diaz), The Aviator (he was nominated for an Oscar for playing eccentric innovator Howard Hughes) and The Departed (2006, starring Matt Damon).
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His performance in Blood Diamond (2006, with Djimon Hounsou) brought him another Oscar nomination. Off-screen DiCaprio is an advocate for environmental protection, an issue he became publicly involved with after he and the makers of The Beach (2000) were criticized for the environmental impact their filming had on locations in Thailand.

Carl Sagan * 1934–1996 * Astronomer

BIOGRAPHY * USA * ASTRONOMER
Carl Sagan - 1934 (Nov 09) – 1996, American astronomer and popularizer of science. Born in New York City.
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Early in his career he investigated radio emissions from Venus and concluded that the cause was a surface temperature of c.900°F (500°C) and crushing atmospheric pressure.
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He also studied color variations on Mars' surface, concluding that they were not seasonal changes as most believed but shifts in surface dust caused by windstorms. Both conclusions were substantially confirmed years later by space probes.
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Sagan is best known, however, for his research on the possibilities of extraterrestrial life (see exobiology), including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation.
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A professor of astronomy and space sciences at Cornell Univ. after 1968, he was involved with numerous NASA planetary space probes and was the creator and host of the 1980 public television science series Cosmos.
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His publications include The Dragons of Eden (1977; Pulitzer); a novel, Contact (1985); with Richard Turco, A Path Where No Man Thought (1990), on nuclear winter; with Ann Druyan, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1992); Pale Blue Dot (1994); and The Demon-Haunted World (1995).
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Bibliography:
See biographies by K. Davidson (1999) and W. Poundstone (1999).

Madame Curie * 1867 (Nov 07) –1934 * Scientist * France

BIOGRAPHY * FRANCE
Madame Curie * 1867 (Nov 07) –1934

Curie (kürē') [key], family of French scientists. Pierre Curie,. 1859–1906, scientist, and his wife, Marie Sklodowska Curie,. 1867–1934, chemist and physicist, b. Warsaw, are known for their work on radioactivity and on radium. The Curies' daughter Irène (see under Joliot-Curie, family) was also a scientist.

Pierre Curie's early work dealt with crystallography and with the effects of temperature on magnetism; he discovered (1883) and, with his brother Jacques Curie, investigated piezoelectricity (a form of electric polarity) in crystals.
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Marie Sklodowska's interest in science was stimulated by her father, a professor of physics in Warsaw. In 1891 she went to Paris to continue her studies at the Sorbonne. In 1895 she married Pierre Curie and engaged in independent research in his laboratory at the municipal school of physics and chemistry where Pierre was director of laboratories (from 1882) and professor (from 1895).

Following A. H. Becquerel's discovery of radioactivity, Mme Curie began to investigate uranium, a radioactive element found in pitchblende. In 1898 she reported a probable new element in pitchblende, and Pierre Curie joined in her research.
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They discovered (1898) both polonium and radium, laboriously isolated one gram of radium salts from about eight tons of pitchblende, and determined the atomic weights and properties of radium and polonium.
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The Curies refused to patent their processes or otherwise to profit from the commercial exploitation of radium. For their work on radioactivity they shared with Becquerel the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics.

The Sorbonne created (1904) a special chair of physics for Pierre Curie; Marie Curie was appointed his successor after his death in a street accident.
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She also retained her professorship (assumed in 1900) at the normal school at Sèvres and continued her research. In 1910 she isolated (with André Debierne) metallic radium. As the recipient of the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry she was the first person to be awarded a second Nobel Prize.
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She was made director of the laboratory of radioactivity at the Curie Institute of Radium, established jointly by the Univ. of Paris and the Pasteur Institute, for research on radioactivity and for radium therapy.

During World War I, Mme Curie devoted her energies to providing radiological services for hospitals. In 1921 a gram of radium, a gift from American women, was presented to her by President Harding; this she accepted in behalf of the Curie Institute.
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A second gram, presented in 1929, was given by Mme Curie to the newly founded Curie Institute in Warsaw. Five years later she died from the effects of radioactivity. In 1995 Marie and Pierre Curie's ashes were enshrined in the Panthéon, Paris; she was the first woman to be honored so in her own right.

Among the numerous and valuable writings of the Curies are Marie Curie's doctoral dissertation, Radioactive Substances (1902, 2 vol.; tr. 1961); Traité de radioactivité (1910); Radioactivité (1935); and her biography of Pierre Curie (1923, tr. 1923).
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Pierre Curie's collected works appeared in 1908. A biography of Marie Curie was written by a daughter, Ève Curie (tr. 1937). See also biographies by R. W. Reid (1974), F. Giroud (tr. 1986), S. Quinn (1995), and B. Goldsmith (2004).