marie curie short biography

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Marie Curie (1867 - 1934)

Marie Sklodowska was born in Warsaw on 7 November 1867, the daughter of a teacher. In 1891, she went to Paris to study physics and mathematics at the Sorbonne where she met Pierre Curie, professor of the School of Physics. They were married in 1895.

The Curies worked together investigating radioactivity, building on the work of the German physicist Roentgen and the French physicist Becquerel. In July 1898, the Curies announced the discovery of a new chemical element, polonium. At the end of the year, they announced the discovery of another, radium. The Curies, along with Becquerel, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903.

Pierre's life was cut short in 1906 when he was knocked down and killed by a carriage. Marie took over his teaching post, becoming the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne, and devoted herself to continuing the work that they had begun together. She received a second Nobel Prize, for Chemistry, in 1911.

The Curie's research was crucial in the development of x-rays in surgery. During World War One Curie helped to equip ambulances with x-ray equipment, which she herself drove to the front lines. The International Red Cross made her head of its radiological service and she held training courses for medical orderlies and doctors in the new techniques.

Despite her success, Marie continued to face great opposition from male scientists in France, and she never received significant financial benefits from her work. By the late 1920s her health was beginning to deteriorate. She died on 4 July 1934 from leukaemia, caused by exposure to high-energy radiation from her research. The Curies' eldest daughter Irene was herself a scientist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

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Biography Online

Marie Curie Biography

“Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit.”

– Marie Curie

Short Bio Marie Curie

Marya Sklodowska was born on 7 November 1867, Warsaw Poland. She was the youngest of five children and was brought up in a poor but well-educated family. Marya excelled in her studies and won many prizes. At an early age she became committed to the ideal of Polish independence from Russia – who at the time were ruling Poland with an iron fist, and in particular, making life difficult for intellectuals. She yearned to be able to teach fellow Polish woman who were mostly condemned to zero education.

Unusually for women at that time, Marya took an interest in Chemistry and Biology. Since opportunities in Poland for further study was limited, Marya went to Paris, where after working as a governess she was able to study at the Sorbonne, Paris. Struggling to learn in French, Marya threw herself into her studies, leading an ascetic life dedicated to education and improving her scientific knowledge. She went on to get a degree in Physics and finished top in her school. She later got a degree in Maths, finishing second in her school year. Curie had a remarkable willingness for hard work.

“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.”

Pierre and Marie Currie

It was in Paris that she met Pierre Curie, who was then chief of the laboratory at the School of Physics and Chemistry. He was a renowned Chemist, who had conducted many experiments on crystals and electronics. Pierre was smitten with the young Marya and asked her to marry him. Marya initially refused but, after persistence from Pierre, she relented. Until Pierre’s untimely death in 1906, the two become inseparable. In addition to co-operation on work, they spent much leisure time bicycling and travelling around Europe together.

Marie Curie work on Radioactivity

Marie pursued studies in radioactivity. In 1898, this led to the discovery of two new elements. One of which she named polonium after her home country.

There then followed four years of extensive study into the properties of radium. Using dumped uranium tailings from a nearby mine, very slowly, and with painstaking effort, they were able to extract a decigram of radium.

Radium was discovered to have remarkable impacts. In testing the product, Marie suffered burns from the rays. It was from this discovery of radium and its properties that the science of radiation was able to develop. It was found that radium had the power to burn away diseased cells in the body. Initially, this early form of radiotherapy was called ‘curietherapy.

The Curries agreed to give away their secret freely; they did not wish to patent such a valuable element. The element was soon in high demand, and it began industrial scale production.

For their discovery, they were awarded the Davy Medal (Britain) and the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903. Marie Curie was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize.

In 1906, Pierre was killed in a road accident, leaving Marie to look after the laboratory and her two children. Her two children were Irène Joliot-Curie (1897–1956) and Ève Curie (1904–2007). Irene won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935, jointly with her husband.

In 1911, she was awarded a second Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of actinium and further studies on radium and polonium.

The success of Marie Curie also brought considerable hostility, criticism and suspicion from a male-dominated science world. She suffered from the malicious rumours and accusations that were spread amongst jealous colleagues.

Marie Curie at International Conference. Einstein is second on the right.

At the end of the First World War, she returned to the Institute of Radium in Paris. She also published a book – Radiology in War (1919) which encompassed her great ideas on science. Curie was also proud to participate in the newly formed League of Nations, through joining the  International Commission for Intellectual Cooperation in August 1922.

“I believe international work is a heavy task, but that it is nevertheless indispensable to go through an apprenticeship in it, at the cost of many efforts and also of a real spirit of sacrifice: however imperfect it may be, the work of Geneva has a grandeur that deserves our support.”

Letter to Eve Curie (July 1929)

Marie Curie was known for her modest and frugal lifestyle. She asked any financial prizes to be given to research bodies rather than herself. During the First World War, she offered her Nobel Prizes to the French Treasury.

Marie Curie died in 1934 from Cancer. It was an unfortunate side effect of her own ground-breaking studies into radiation which were to help so many people.

Marie Curie pushed back many frontiers in science, and at the same time set a new bar for female academic and scientific achievement.

Her discovery of radium enabled Ernest Rutherford to investigate the structure of the atom, and it provided the framework for Radiotherapy for cancer.

Curie also played a leading role in redefining women’s role in society and science.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “ Biography of Marie Curie” , Oxford, UK – www.biographyonline.net . Published 15th June 2012. Last updated 13th Feb 2018.

The Inner World of Marie Curie

The Inner World of Marie Curie at Amazon.com

External links

• Marie Curie at Nobel Prize.org
• Marie Curie short biography

• Scientific Biographies

Marie Sklodowska Curie

One of the most recognizable figures in science, “Madame Curie” has captured the public imagination for more than 100 years and inspired generations of women scientists.

A two-time Nobel laureate, Marie Curie is best known for her pioneering studies of radioactivity.

Marie Sklodowska Curie (1867–1934) was the first person ever to receive two Nobel Prizes: the first in 1903 in physics, shared with Pierre Curie (her husband) and Henri Becquerel for the discovery of the phenomenon of radioactivity, and the second in 1911 in chemistry for the discovery of the radioactive elements polonium and radium.

From Poland to Paris and the Radioactive

The daughter of impoverished Polish schoolteachers, Marie Sklodowska worked as a governess in Poland to support her older sister in Paris, whom she eventually joined there. Already entranced with chemistry, she took advanced scientific degrees at the Sorbonne, where she met and married Pierre Curie, a physicist who had achieved fame for his work on the piezoelectric effect.

For her thesis she chose to work in a field just opened up by Wilhelm Roentgen’s discovery of X-rays and Becquerel’s observation of the mysterious power of samples of uranium salts to expose photographic film. Curie soon convinced her husband to join in the endeavor of isolating the “radioactive” substance—a word she coined.

Polonium and Radium

In 1898, after laboriously isolating various substances by successive chemical reactions and crystallizations of the products, which they then tested for their ability to ionize air, the Curies announced the discovery of polonium and then of radium salts weighing about 0.1 gram that had been derived from tons of uranium ore.

After Pierre’s death in 1906, when he was accidentally struck by a horse-drawn wagon, Marie achieved their objective of producing a pure specimen of radium.

Just before World War I, radium institutes were established for her in France and in Poland to pursue the scientific and medical uses of radioactivity. During the war Curie organized a field system of portable X-ray machines to help in treating wounded French soldiers.

A Tragic End

In the midst of her busy scientific career, Curie raised two daughters—in part with the help of her father-in-law. Her elder daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie , became a Nobel Prize–winning chemist, also with her husband, Frédéric Joliot . Mother and daughter both eventually died of leukemia induced by their long exposure to radioactive materials.

Featured image: Edgar Fahs Smith Collection, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania .

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Marie Curie: Mother of Modern Physics, Researcher of Radioactivity

First Truly Famous Woman Scientist

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Marie Curie was the first truly famous woman scientist in the modern world. She was known as the "Mother of Modern Physics" for her pioneer work in research about radioactivity , a word she coined. She was the first woman awarded a Ph.D. in research science in Europe and the first woman professor at the Sorbonne.

Curie discovered and isolated polonium and radium, and established the nature of radiation and beta rays. She won Nobel Prizes in 1903 (Physics) and 1911 (Chemistry) and was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize, and the first person to win Nobel Prizes in two different scientific disciplines.

Fast Facts: Marie Curie

• Known For: Research in radioactivity and discovery of polonium and radium. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize (Physics in 1903), and the first person to win a second Nobel Prize (Chemistry in 1911)
• Also Known As: Maria Sklodowska
• Born: November 7, 1867 in Warsaw, Poland
• Died: July 4, 1934 in Passy, France
• Spouse: Pierre Curie (m. 1896-1906)
• Children: Irène and Ève
• Interesting Fact: Marie Curie's daughter, Irène, also won a Nobel Prize (Chemistry in 1935)

Early Life and Education

Marie Curie was born in Warsaw, the youngest of five children. Her father was a physics teacher, her mother, who died when Curie was 11, was also an educator.

After graduating with high honors in her early schooling, Marie Curie found herself, as a woman, without options in Poland for higher education. She spent some time as a governess, and in 1891 followed her sister, already a gynecologist, to Paris.

In Paris, Marie Curie enrolled at the Sorbonne. She graduated in first place in physics (1893), then, on a scholarship, returned for a degree in mathematics in which she took second place (1894). Her plan was to return to teach in Poland.

Research and Marriage

She began to work as a researcher in Paris . Through her work, she met a French scientist, Pierre Curie, in 1894 when he was 35. They were married on July 26, 1895, in a civil marriage.

Their first child, Irène, was born in 1897. Marie Curie continued to work on her research and began work as a physics lecturer at a girls' school.

Radioactivity

Inspired by work on radioactivity in uranium by Henri Becquerel, Marie Curie began research on "Becquerel rays" to see if other elements also had this quality. First, she discovered radioactivity in thorium , then demonstrated that the radioactivity is not a property of an interaction between elements but is an atomic property, a property of the interior of the atom rather than how it is arranged in a molecule.

On April 12, 1898, she published her hypothesis of a still-unknown radioactive element, and worked with pitchblende and chalcocite, both uranium ores, to isolate this element. Pierre joined her in this research.

Marie Curie and Pierre Curie thus discovered first polonium (named for her native Poland) and then radium. They announced these elements in 1898. Polonium and radium were present in very small amounts in pitchblende, along with larger quantities of uranium. Isolating the very small amounts of the new elements took years of work.

On January 12, 1902, Marie Curie isolated pure radium, and her 1903 dissertation resulted in the first advanced scientific research degree to be awarded to a woman in France—the first doctorate in science awarded to a woman in all of Europe.

In 1903, for their work, Marie Curie, her husband Pierre, and Henry Becquerel, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. The Nobel Prize committee reportedly first considered giving the award to Pierre Curie and Henry Becquerel, and Pierre worked behind the scenes to ensure that Marie Curie won appropriate recognition by being included.

It was also in 1903 that Marie and Pierre lost a child, born prematurely.

Radiation poisoning from working with radioactive substances had begun to take a toll, though the Curies did not know it or were in denial of that. They were both too sickly to attend the 1903 Nobel ceremony in Stockholm.

In 1904, Pierre was given a professorship at the Sorbonne for his work. The professorship established more financial security for the Curie family—Pierre's father had moved in to help care for the children. Marie was given a small salary and a title as Chief of the Laboratory.

That same year, the Curies established the use of radiation therapy for cancer and lupus, and their second daughter, Ève, was born. Ève would later write a biography of her mother.

In 1905, the Curies finally traveled to Stockholm, and Pierre gave the Nobel Lecture. Marie was annoyed by the attention to their romance rather than to their scientific work.

From Wife to Professor

But security was short-lived, as Pierre was killed suddenly in 1906 when he was run over by a horse-drawn carriage on a Paris street. This left Marie Curie a widow with responsibility for raising her two young daughters.

Marie Curie was offered a national pension, but turned it down. A month after Pierre's death, she was offered his chair at the Sorbonne, and she accepted. Two years later she was elected a full professor—the first woman to hold a chair at the Sorbonne.

Further Work

Marie Curie spent the next years organizing her research, supervising the research of others, and raising funds. Her Treatise on Radioactivity was published in 1910.

Early in 1911, Marie Curie was denied election to the French Academy of Sciences by one vote. Emile Hilaire Amagat said of the vote, "Women cannot be part of the Institute of France." Marie Curie refused to have her name resubmitted for nomination and refused to allow the Academy to publish any of her work for ten years. The press attacked her for her candidacy.

Nevertheless, that same year she was appointed director of the Marie Curie Laboratory , part of the Radium Institute of the University of Paris, and of the Institute for Radioactivity in Warsaw, and she was awarded a second Nobel Prize.

Tempering her successes that year was a scandal: a newspaper editor alleged an affair between Marie Curie and a married scientist. He denied the charges, and the controversy ended when the editor and scientist arranged a duel, but neither fired. Years later, Marie and Pierre's granddaughter married the grandson of the scientist which whom she may have had the affair.

During World War I, Marie Curie chose to support the French war effort actively. She put her prize winnings into war bonds and fitted ambulances with portable x-ray equipment for medical purposes, driving the vehicles to the front lines. She established two hundred permanent x-ray installations in France and Belgium.

After the war, her daughter Irene joined Marie Curie as an assistant at the laboratory. The Curie Foundation was established in 1920 to work on medical applications for radium. Marie Curie took an important trip to the United States in 1921 to accept the generous gift of a gram of pure radium for research. In 1924, she published her biography of her husband.

Illness and Death

The work of Marie Curie, her husband, and colleagues with radioactivity was done in ignorance of its effect on human health. Marie Curie and her daughter Irene contracted leukemia, apparently induced by exposure to high levels of radioactivity. The notebooks of Marie Curie are still so radioactive that they cannot be handled. Marie Curie's health was declining seriously by the end of the 1920s. Cataracts contributed to failing vision. Marie Curie retired to a sanatorium, with her daughter Eve as her companion. She died of pernicious anemia, also most likely an effect of the radioactivity in her work, in 1934.

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Marie Curie: Facts and biography

Marie Curie was a physicist and chemist and a pioneer in the study of radiation.

Meeting Pierre Curie

Radioactive discoveries, later years, additional resources.

Marie Curie was a physicist, chemist and pioneer in the study of radiation. She discovered the elements polonium and radium with her husband, Pierre. They were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903, along with Henri Becquerel, and Marie received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911. She worked extensively with radium throughout her lifetime, characterizing its various properties and investigating its therapeutic potential. However, her work with radioactive materials ultimately killed her and he died of a blood disease in 1934. 

Marie Curie was born Marya (Manya) Salomee Sklodowska on Nov. 7, 1867, in Warsaw, Poland. The youngest of five children, she had three older sisters and a brother. Her parents — father, Wladislaw, and mother, Bronislava — were educators who ensured that their girls were educated as well as their son.

Curie's mother succumbed to tuberculosis in 1878. In Barbara Goldsmith's book " Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie ," (W. W. Norton, 2005) she notes that Curie's mother's death had a profound impact on Curie, fueling a life-long battle with depression and shaping her views on religion. Curie would never again "believe in the benevolence of god," Goldsmith wrote.

In 1883, at the age of 15, Curie completed her secondary education, graduating first in her class. Curie and her older sister, Bronya, both wished to pursue a higher education, but the University of Warsaw did not accept women. To get the education they desired, they had to leave the country. At the age of 17, Curie became a governess to help pay for her sister's attendance at medical school in Paris. Curie continued studying on her own and eventually set off for Paris in November 1891.

When Curie registered at the Sorbonne in Paris, she signed her name as "Marie" to seem more French. Curie was a focused and diligent student, and was at the top of her class. In recognition of her talents, she was awarded the Alexandrovitch Scholarship for Polish students studying abroad. The scholarship helped Curie pay for the classes needed to complete her licentiateships, or degrees, in physics and mathematical sciences in 1894.

One of Curie's professors arranged a research grant for her to study the magnetic properties and chemical composition of steel. That research project put her in touch with Pierre Curie, who was also an accomplished researcher. The two were married in the summer of 1895.

Pierre studied the field of crystallography and discovered the piezoelectric effect, which is when electric charges are produced by squeezing, or applying mechanical stress to certain crystals. He also designed several instruments for measuring magnetic fields and electricity. 

Curie was intrigued by the reports of German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen's discovery of X-rays and by French physicist Henri Becquerel's report of similar "Becquerel rays" emitted by uranium salts. According to Goldsmith, Curie coated one of two metal plates with a thin layer of uranium salts. Then she measured the strength of the rays produced by the uranium using instruments designed by her husband. The instruments detected the faint electrical currents generated when the air between two metal plates was bombarded with uranium rays. She found that uranium compounds also emitted similar rays. In addition, the strength of the rays remained the same, regardless of whether the compounds were in solid or liquid state .

Curie continued to test more uranium compounds. She experimented with a uranium-rich ore called pitchblende and found that even with the uranium removed, pitchblende emitted rays that were stronger than those emitted by pure uranium. She suspected that this suggested the presence of an undiscovered element.

In March 1898, Curie documented her findings in a seminal paper, where she coined the term "radioactivity." Curie made two revolutionary observations in this paper, Goldsmith notes. Curie stated that measuring radioactivity would allow for the discovery of new elements. And, that radioactivity was a property of the atom .

The Curies worked together to examine loads of pitchblende. The couple devised new protocols for separating the pitchblende into its chemical components. Marie Curie often worked late into the night stirring huge cauldrons with an iron rod nearly as tall as she was. 

The Curies found that two of the chemical components — one that was similar to bismuth and the other like barium — were radioactive. In July 1898, the Curies published their conclusion: the bismuth-like compound contained a previously undiscovered radioactive element, which they named polonium , after Marie Curie's native country, Poland. By the end of that year, they had isolated a second radioactive element, which they called radium , derived from "radius," the Latin word for rays. In 1902, the Curies announced their success in extracting purified radium.

In June 1903, Marie Curie was the first woman in France to defend her doctoral thesis. In November of that year the Curies, together with Henri Becquerel, were named winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics for their contributions to the understanding of "radiation phenomena." The nominating committee initially objected to including a woman as a Nobel laureate , but Pierre Curie insisted that the original research was his wife's.

In 1906, Pierre Curie died in a tragic accident when he stepped into the street at the same time as a horse-drawn wagon. Marie Curie subsequently filled his faculty position of professor of general physics in the faculty of sciences at the Sorbonne and was the first woman to serve in that role.

In 1911, Marie was awarded a second Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of the elements polonium and radium. In honor of the 100-year anniversary of her Nobel award, 2011 was declared the " International Year of Chemistry ."

As her research into radioactivity intensified, Curie's labs became inadequate. The Austrian government seized the opportunity to recruit Curie and offered to create a cutting edge lab for her, according to Goldsmith. Curie negotiated with the Pasteur Institute to build a radioactivity research lab. By July of 1914, the Radium Institute ("Institut du Radium," at the Pasteur Institute, now the Curie Institute ) was almost complete. When World War I broke out in 1914, Curie suspended her research and organized a fleet of mobile X-ray machines for doctors on the front.

After the war, she worked hard to raise money for her Radium Institute. However,by 1920, she was suffering from health issues, most likely because of her exposure to radioactive materials. On July 4, 1934, Curie died of aplastic anemia — a condition that occurs when the bone marrow fails to produce new blood cells. Curie’s doctor concluded that her “bone marrow could not react probably because it had been injured by a long accumulation of radiations,” according to historian Craig Nelson in his book “ The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era ” (Scribner, 2014). 

Curie was buried next to her husband in Sceaux, a commune in southern Paris. But in 1995, their remains were moved and interred in the Pantheon in Paris alongside France's greatest citizens. The Curies received another honor in 1944 when the 96th element on the periodic table of elements was discovered and named " curium ."

• Want to learn more about this fascinating scientist? Check out " Madame Curie " (Doubleday, 2013), a biography by Curie's youngest daughter, Eve.
• Find out more about Institut Curie (formerly Institut du Radium).
• Read about the Curies' still-radioactive lab notebooks . 

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Jessica is a former staff writer for History of Royals and All About History magazines. She has both a Bachelor and Master's degree in History from the University of Winchester , with dissertations on 'The Power of Dress' in the French court between the mid-sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and 'Abdicating Queens': an analysis of the contemporary and modern images of Juana la Loca, Mary, Queen of Scots and Christina, Queen of Sweden.'

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Marie Curie: Facts About the Pioneering Chemist

By: History.com Staff

Updated: February 22, 2021 | Original: November 7, 2011

• Curie was born Maria Sklodowska in Warsaw, Poland, to schoolteacher parents of modest means who encouraged their children’s educational aspirations. Determined to pursue a scientific career, Marie struck a deal with her sister Bronya, agreeing to fund Bronya’s medical degree in France by working as a governess. Bronya later helped Marie move to Paris and enroll at the prestigious Sorbonne, where she studied chemistry, math and physics.

• Curie met her future husband, Pierre, while doing postgraduate research at the lab he supervised. The pair immediately bonded over their mutual interest in magnetism and fondness for cycling, and a year later they were married in Sceaux, France. They used the money they had received as a wedding present to purchase bicycles for the many long rides they took together.

• In 1896, intrigued by the physicist Henri Becquerel’s accidental discovery of radioactivity, Curie began studying uranium rays; Pierre soon joined her in her research. Two years later, the Curies discovered polonium—named after Marie’s homeland—and radium. In 1903 they shared the Nobel Prize in physics with Becquerel for their groundbreaking work on radioactivity.

• The first woman to be granted a Nobel Prize, Curie later became the first person to earn a second one. In 1911 she received the prestigious award—in chemistry this time—for her isolation of radium and other accomplishments. S

• After Pierre’s tragic death in a 1906 accident, Marie was appointed to his seat at the Sorbonne, becoming the university’s first female professor. (Just three years earlier, she had been the first woman in France to earn a doctorate.) Today, France’s leading scientific and medical complex bears the name of both Curies.

• During World War I, Curie used her radiography expertise to set up dozens of mobile and permanent X-ray stations, which helped doctors diagnose and treat battlefield injuries. They became known as “petites Curies” for their famous creator.

• Decades of handling radioactive materials—the effects of which were poorly understood at the time—ultimately took a toll on Curie. By the 1920s she had developed muscle aches, anemia, cataracts and a host of other symptoms. She died on July 4, 1934, of leukemia caused by exposure to radiation.

• Curie’s daughter Irène followed in her mother’s footsteps, earning a doctorate in physics and conducting important research on synthesized radioactive elements. In 1935 she and her husband, Frédéric Joliot, shared the Noble Prize in chemistry for their discovery of artificial radioactivity.

• In 1995 the remains of Curie and her husband were enshrined in Paris’ Pantheon, a mausoleum reserved for distinguished French thinkers. She became the second woman to receive this honor and the first to earn it through her own achievements. Among her writing, Curie left behind this thought: "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."

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• Articles / Historical Figures Article

Short Summary of Marie Curie (1867-1934)

• By Siobhan Wood
• May 20th, 2020

Marie Curie is one of the most influential scientists in history. Credited with the discovery of radium and polonium, she was the first person to receive two Nobel prizes, dedicating years of her life to the study of radioactivity. 

With an insatiable thirst for knowledge, her studies were her passion. Coming from a poor family in Poland, she could not have funded university alone, so she joined her sister in Paris in 1891 to read mathematics and physics at Sorbonne University.

She married fellow physicist Pierre Curie. The pair dedicated years to the study of radioactivity, identifying and isolating both radium and polonium through years of physically demanding work processing minerals. 

In 1903 she and Pierre received the Nobel Prize for Physics for their work on radioactivity. After Pierre died in 1906, Marie succeeded him to become the first female Professor at the Sorbonne. Her second Nobel Prize was awarded in 1911, for creating a means of measuring radioactivity. 

During the war, Marie developed mobile X-ray units to diagnose and treat wounded soldiers. She received prizes and honorary degrees from universities around the world. Marie died in 1934 from radiation-related illness.

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Marie Curie: 7 Facts About the Groundbreaking Scientist

Curie became the first woman to receive a Ph.D. from a French university, as well as the first woman to be employed as a professor at the University of Paris. Not only was she the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, but also the first person (man or woman) ever to win the award twice and for achievements in two distinct scientific fields.

While Curie’s major accomplishments may be well known, here are several surprising facts about her personal and professional life that may not be.

She worked out of a shack

It may come as a surprise to know that Curie and Pierre conducted the bulk of the research and experimentation which led to the discovery of the elements Radium and Polonium in what was described by the respected German chemist, Wilhelm Ostwald, as “a cross between a stable and a potato shed.” In fact, when he was first shown the premises, he assumed that it was “a practical joke.” Even after the couple had won the Nobel Prize for their discoveries, Pierre died never having set foot in the new laboratory that the University of Paris had promised to build them.

Nonetheless, Curie would fondly recall their time together in the leaky, drafty shack despite the fact that, in order to extract and isolate the radioactive elements, she often spent entire days stirring boiling cauldrons of uranium-rich pitchblende until “broken with fatigue”. By the time she and Pierre eventually submitted their discoveries for professional consideration, Curie had personally gone through multiple tons of uranium-rich slag in this manner.

She was originally ignored by the Nobel Prize nominating committee

In 1903, members of the French Academy of Sciences wrote a letter to the Swedish Academy in which they nominated the collective discoveries in the field of radioactivity made by Marie and Pierre Curie, as well as their contemporary Henri Becquerel, for the Nobel Prize in Physics. Yet, in a sign of the times and its prevailing sexist attitudes, no recognition of Curie's contributions was offered, nor was there even any mention of her name. Thankfully, a sympathetic member of the nominating committee, a professor of mathematics at Stockholm University College named Gösta Mittage-Leffler, wrote a letter to Pierre warning him of the glaring omission. Pierre, in turn, wrote the committee insisting that he and Curie be “considered together . . . with respect to our research on radioactive bodies.”

Eventually, the wording of the official nomination was amended. Later that year, thanks to a combination of her accomplishments and the combined efforts of her husband and Mittage-Leffler, Curie became the first woman in history to receive the Nobel Prize.

She refused to cash in on her discoveries

After discovering Radium in 1898, Curie and Pierre balked at the opportunity to pursue a patent for it and to profit from its production, despite the fact that they had barely enough money to procure the uranium slag they needed in order to extract the element. On the contrary, the Curies generously shared the isolated product of Marie's difficult labors with fellow researchers and openly distributed the secrets of the process needed for its production with interested industrial parties.

During the ‘Radium Boom’ that followed, factories sprang up in the United States dedicated to supplying the element not only to the scientific community but also to the curious and gullible public. Though not yet fully understood, the glowing green material captivated consumers and found its way into everything from toothpaste to sexual enhancement products. By the 1920s, the price of a single gram of the element reached $100,000 and Curie could not afford to buy enough of the very thing she, herself, had discovered in order to continue her research.

Nonetheless, she had no regrets. “Radium is an element, it belongs to the people,” she told American journalist Missy Maloney during a trip to the United States in 1921. “Radium was not to enrich anyone.”

Einstein encouraged her during one of the worst years of her life

Albert Einstein and Curie first met in Brussels at the prestigious Solvay Conference in 1911. This invite-only event brought together the world’s leading scientists in the field of physics, and Curie was the only woman out of its 24 members. Einstein was so impressed by Curie, that he came to her defense later that year when she became embroiled in controversy and the media frenzy that surrounded it.

By this time, France had reached the peak of its rising sexism, xenophobia, and anti-semitism that defined the years preceding the First World War. Curie’s nomination to the French Academy of Sciences was rejected, and many suspected that biases against her gender and immigrant roots were to blame. Furthermore, it came to light that she had been involved in a romantic relationship with her married colleague, Paul Langevin, though he was estranged from his wife at the time.

Curie was labeled a traitor and a homewrecker and was accused of riding the coattails of her deceased husband (Pierre had died in 1906 from a road accident) rather than having accomplished anything based on her own merits. Though she had just been awarded a second Nobel Prize, the nominating committee now sought to discourage Curie from traveling to Stockholm to accept it so as to avoid a scandal. With her personal and professional life in disarray, she sank into a deep depression and retreated (as best she could) from the public eye.

Around this time, Curie received a letter from Einstein in which he described his admiration for her, as well as offered his heart-felt advice on how to handle the events as they unfolded. “I am impelled to tell you how much I have come to admire your intellect, your drive, and your honesty,” he wrote, “and that I consider myself lucky to have made your personal acquaintance . . .” As for the frenzy of newspaper articles attacking her, Einstein encouraged Curie “to simply not read that hogwash, but rather leave it to the reptile for whom it has been fabricated.”

There is little doubt that the kindness shown by her respected colleague was encouraging. Soon enough, she recovered, reemerged and, despite the discouragement, courageously went to Stockholm to accept her second Nobel Prize.

READ MORE: Albert Einstein Once Wrote Marie Curie a Letter Advising Her to Ignore the Critics

She personally provided medical aid to French soldiers during World War I

When World War I broke out in 1914, Curie was forced to put her research and the opening of her new Radium institute on hold due to the threat of a possible German occupation of Paris. After personally delivering her stash of the valuable element to the safety of a bank vault in Bordeaux, she set about using her expertise in the field of radioactivity in order to aid the French war effort.

Over the course of the next four years, Curie helped equip and operate more than twenty ambulances (known as “Little Curies”) and hundreds of field hospitals with primitive x-ray machines so as to assist surgeons with the location and removal of shrapnel and bullets from the bodies of wounded soldiers. Not only did she personally instruct and supervise young women in the operation of the equipment, but she even drove and operated one such ambulance herself, despite the danger of venturing too close to the fighting on the front lines.

By the end of the war, it was estimated that Curie’s x-ray equipment, as well as the Radon gas syringes she designed to sterilize wounds, may have saved the lives of a million soldiers. Yet, when the French government later sought to award her the country’s most distinguished honor, la Légion d'honneur , she declined. In another display of selflessness at the outset of the conflict, Curie had even tried to donate her gold Nobel Prize medals to the French National Bank, but they refused.

She had no idea of the dangers of radioactivity

Today, more than 100 years after the Curies’ discovery of Radium, even the public is kept well aware of the potential dangers associated with the exposure of the human body to radioactive elements. Yet, from the very first years during which the scientists and their contemporaries were pioneering the study of radioactivity until the mid-1940s, little was concretely understood about both short and long-term health effects.

Pierre liked to keep a sample in his pocket so he could demonstrate its glowing and heating properties to the curious, and even once strapped a vial of the stuff to his bare arm for ten hours in order to study the curious way it painlessly burned his skin. Curie, in turn, kept a sample at home next to her bed as a nightlight. Diligent researchers, the Curies spent nearly every day in the confines of their improvised laboratory, with various radioactive materials strewn about their workspaces. After regularly handling Radium samples, both were said to have had developed unsteady hands, as well as cracked and scarred fingers.

Though the life of Pierre was tragically cut short in 1906, at the time of his death he was suffering from constant pain and fatigue. Curie, too, complained of similar symptoms until succumbing to advanced leukemia in 1934. At no point did either consider the possibility that their very discovery was the cause of their pain and Curie's eventual death. In fact, all the couple's laboratory notes and many of their personal belongings are still so radioactive today that they cannot safely be viewed or studied.

Her daughter also won the Nobel Prize

In the case of Marie and Pierre Curie’s eldest daughter, Irène, it can safely be said that the apple did not fall far from the tree. Following in her parents’ sizable footsteps, Irène enrolled at the Faculty of Science in Paris. However, the outbreak of the First World War interrupted her studies. She joined her mother and began working as a nurse radiographer, operating x-ray machines to assist with the treatment of soldiers wounded on the battlefield.

By 1925, Irène had received her doctorate, having joined her mother in the field of the study of radioactivity. Ten years later, she and her husband, Frédéric Joliot, were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the breakthroughs they had made in the synthesis of new radioactive elements. Though it had been Curie's pleasure to have witnessed her daughter and son-in-law’s successful research, she did not live to see them win the award.

The Curie family legacy is both poignant and appropriately accomplished. Irène and Frédéric Joliot had two children of their own, named Helene and Pierre, in honor of their incredible grandparents whose deaths were tragically premature. In turn, Curie's grandchildren would both go on to distinguish themselves in the field of science as well. Helene became a nuclear physicist and, at 88 years old, still maintains a seat on the advisory board to the French government. Pierre would go on to become a preeminent biologist.

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Marie curie.

How this female scientist used physics to save lives

If you’ve ever seen your insides on an x-ray, you can thank Marie Curie’s understanding of radioactivity for being able to see them so clearly.

Born Maria Sklodowska in Poland on November 7, 1867, to a father who taught math and physics, she developed a talent for science early. But the University of Warsaw, in the city where she lived, did not allow women students. Determined to become a scientist and work on her experiments, she moved to Paris, France , to study physics at a university called the Sorbonne.

In 1895, she married Pierre Curie. Together they discovered two new elements, or the smallest pieces of chemical substances: polonium (which she named after her home country) and radium. In 1903 they shared (along with another scientist whose work they built on) the Nobel Prize in physics for their work on radiation, which is energy given off as waves or high-speed particles. She was the first woman to win any kind of Nobel Prize.

Curie continued to rack up impressive achievements for women in science. In 1906, she became the first woman physics professor at the Sorbonne. In 1909, she was given her own lab at the University of Paris . Then in 1911, she won a Nobel Prize in chemistry. She’s still the only person—man or woman—to win the Nobel Prize in two different sciences.

Curie soon started using her work to save lives. Her discoveries of radium and polonium were important because the elements were radioactive, which meant that when their atoms broke down, they gave off invisible rays that could pass through solid matter and conduct electricity. She used her groundbreaking understanding of radioactivity to help the x-ray take stronger and more accurate pictures inside the human body.

In 1914, during World War I, she created mobile x-ray units that could be driven to battlefield hospitals in France. Known as Little Curies, the units were often operated by women who Curie helped train so that doctors could see broken bones and bullets inside wounded soldiers’ bodies.

After the war ended in 1918, Curie returned to her lab to continue working with radioactive elements. But those can be dangerous in very large doses, and on July 4, 1934, Curie died of a disease caused by radiation. By that time, though, she’d proven that women could make breakthroughs in science, and today she continues to inspire scientists to use their work to help other people.

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Women's history month, the women's suffrage movement, african american heroes.

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Marie Curie (1867 - 1934)

Marie Sklodowska was born in Warsaw, Poland, on November 7, 1867. Her early years were sorrowful. As a child, she suffered the deaths of her sister and, four years later, her mother. She received a general education in local schools and some scientific training from her father. She was notable for her diligent work ethic, neglecting even food and sleep to study. After graduating from high school, she suffered a mental breakdown for a year. Due to her gender, she was not allowed admission into any Russian or Polish universities so she worked as a governess for several years.

Sklodowska eventually left Warsaw, then in the part of Poland dominated by Russia, for Cracow, which at that time was under Austrian rule. In 1891, with the monetary assistance of her elder sister, she moved to Paris and studied chemistry and physics at the Sorbonne, where she became the first woman to teach, after obtaining her Licenciateships in Physics and the Mathematical Sciences. There she met Pierre Curie, Professor in the School of Physics, in 1894, and in the following year they were married.

Together, the Curies studied radioactive materials, particularly the uranium ore pitchblende, which had the curious property of being more radioactive than the uranium extracted from it. By 1898, they deduced a logical explanation: the pitchblende contained traces of some unknown radioactive component that was far more radioactive than uranium. Thus, on December 26 of that year, Marie Curie announced the existence of this new substance. In 1902, the pair isolated the chloride salts and then two new chemical elements; the first they named polonium after Marie's native country, and the second was named radium from its intense radioactivity.

Together with her husband and Henri Becquerel, Marie was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903. She was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize.

Following the tragic death of Pierre Curie, who was killed in a traffic accident in 1906, Marie carried on their research and took his place as Professor of General Physics at the Sorbonne, the first time a woman had held this position. She was also appointed Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris. In 1911, Marie won her second Nobel Prize , this time in chemistry, for isolating pure radium.

Marie Curie died on July 4, 1934 of leukemia, believed to have been brought on by her extensive exposure to the high levels of radiation involved in her studies. In 1995, her remains were transferred to the French National Mausoleum; she was the first woman accorded that honor on her own merit. Element 96 was named curium (Cm) in the honor of Pierre and Marie Curie.