Marie Curie
Great PeopleA Homeland Off the Map
Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw in 1867, in a Poland that had been partitioned out of existence and absorbed by Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Higher education was closed to women there, so she studied in secret through an underground 'Flying University' while working as a governess. In 1891 she left for Paris and the Sorbonne, one of the few universities in Europe that would admit her.
Paris and a Scientific Partnership
In Paris she earned degrees in physics and mathematics, often studying in poverty in a cold garret. In 1894 she met the physicist Pierre Curie; they married in 1895 and became research partners. Building on Henri Becquerel's 1896 discovery that uranium emits mysterious rays, she began the doctoral work that would define her life — and she coined the word 'radioactivity' to describe it.
Two New Elements
The Curies discovered two previously unknown radioactive elements in 1898: polonium, named for her occupied homeland, and radium. Proving radium was real meant grinding through literally tons of the mineral pitchblende — it took until 1902 for Marie to isolate a tenth of a gram of pure radium salt. Marie's crucial insight was that radioactivity is a property of atoms themselves, not of chemical reactions. It was painstaking, physical labor carried out in a leaky shed with no proper ventilation.
Two Nobels, and Honest Credit
The 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics was shared three ways — Marie, Pierre, and Becquerel — making her the first woman to win any Nobel Prize. After Pierre was killed in a street accident in 1906, she took over his professorship, becoming the Sorbonne's first female professor. Her 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was hers alone, and to this day she remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences.
Curie Goes to War
When World War I broke out, Curie turned her science toward the wounded. She designed and equipped mobile radiography vehicles — nicknamed 'petites Curies' — so surgeons near the front could locate bullets and shrapnel with X-rays. She helped outfit around 20 mobile units and some 200 fixed radiology posts; historians estimate over a million soldiers were examined using her machines.
A Radioactive Legacy
Decades of unshielded exposure took their toll: Curie died in 1934 of aplastic anemia, a blood disease widely attributed to her radiation work. The danger was so poorly understood in her time that her notebooks remain radioactive today and are stored in lead-lined boxes. In 1995 she became the first woman entombed in the Paris Panthéon on the strength of her own achievements.
Key Dates to Remember
- 1867 — Born in Warsaw, Poland
- 1891 — Moves to Paris to study
- 1898 — Discovers polonium and radium
- 1903 — Wins Nobel Prize in Physics
- 1911 — Wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- 1914 — Builds mobile WWI X-ray units
- 1934 — Dies of aplastic anemia