Burt Masters and Marie Curie

I think a hero is someone who stands out among others in some good way. A hero is not defined by his or her race, nor his or her religious beliefs. I believe a hero is not defined by his or her friends, or if the hero’s ideas carry on after the hero’s death. I think a hero is defined by his or her thoughts, actions, and ideas. I believe you may not be able to pick a hero out of a crowd, but you will know a hero if you learn about their thoughts, actions, and ideas.

I believe that my grandfather, Burt Masters, is a hero because he is kind, generous, caring, and immune to ill thoughts of others. His wife (my grandmother) passed away so he shares his love with all around him. He is a hero because of his love of life, thoughts of others, and many ideas of good things and how to complete them. He is also a hero to me because as a chemist he researched the atom, which I am only beginning to partly understand. He used the ions of atoms to create silicon chips for IBM. This man helped add to the vast store of knowledge we have today of the atom. If I were to categorize him, I would put him in the category of good-willed chemist.

My other hero is Marie Curie. She is a chemist who did many things for science and modern health & medicine. She researched radiation and found the element Radium. She was very interested at the possibility and researched it further. She added to our store of knowledge of the atom and started a new one, of radioactive atoms. She helped develop the use of radiation as a cure to many diseases. Also very important was the work she put into the X-ray, a unit to help diagnose and treat many different injuries. This was very important to medicine then and it still is now. Marie Curie died an earlier death than most almost certainly due to prolonged exposure to radiation.

Both of these people are heroes to me for some of the same reasons and some different ones. Both worked in very tedious and boring situations. One researched radiation and the other used that knowledge to protect himself from it. Burt Masters had only two major projects and Marie Curie had many different ones. They both used the atom for their work. And most importantly, they both tried to pass on their knowledge through teaching. I think that both were important chemists, even though one was famous and won two Nobel prizes and the other wasn’t nearly so well known.

Sources: Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia 1996, Steve Masters, Burt Masters, Dylan Masters.