Marie Salomea Skłodowska Curie's relentless resolve and insatiable curiosity made her an icon in the
world of modern science. Indefatigable despite a career of physically demanding and ultimately fatal
work, she discovered polonium and radium, championed the use of radiation in medicine and fundamentally
changed our understanding of radioactivity.
Here's a time line of Marie Salomea Skłodowska Curie's:
Curie was born Marya Skłodowska in 1867 in Warsaw. Her family struggled under a repressive Tsarist
regime, which was trying to stamp out vestiges of Polish culture.
As a teenager, Curie made a pact with her sister Bronya: she would support Bronya while she was in
medical school in Paris, and then Bronya would pay Curie's way. From the age of 17, for six years,
Curie worked as a governess and tutor, while attempting to study in her spare time.
Finally, at age 24, she enrolled at the Sorbonne University. She could not attend the University of
Warsaw, as her brother had: the Russian government prohibited women from attending university
anywhere in its empire. In Paris, she felt unprepared but exhilarated.
For her research in “radiation phenomena,” Curie became, in 1903, the first woman to receive a Nobel
Prize. French academics originally proposed only her husband and Henri Becquerel, but Pierre Curie
insisted that his wife share the honour.
"It was like a new world opened to me, the world of science, which I was at last permitted to
know in all liberty."
-- Marie Salomea Skłodowska Curie
Curie decided to do her thesis on radiation, recently discovered in uranium by Henri Becquerel. She
found that an ore containing uranium was far more radioactive than could be explained by its uranium
content. This led her and her husband, Pierre, to the discovery of a new element that was 400 times
more radioactive than uranium. In 1898 it was added to the Periodic Table as polonium, named after
Curie's birth country.
Pierre Curie was the love of Curie's life and her partner in science. They met in 1894 when Marie Curie
worked in Pierre Curie's lab. They were married the following year.
"[Pierre] had dedicated his life to his dream of science: he felt the need of a companion who
could live his dream with him."
-- Marie Salomea Skłodowska Curie
The couple had two daughters, Irène and Eve, and a few years after they married, Pierre Curie
abandoned his own research to join his wife’s study of radioactivity. The Curies’ affair of the
heart and mind ended tragically not long after Eve was born. In 1906, Pierre Curie was run over by a
horse and carriage and killed.
During World War I, Curie promoted the use of X-rays; she developed radiological cars - which later
became known as “petites Curies” - to allow battlefield surgeons to X-ray wounded soldiers and
operate more accurately.
Both Curies were constantly ill from radiation sickness, and Marie Curie’s death from aplastic
anemia in 1934, at age 66, was likely caused by radiation exposure. A few of her books and papers
are still so radioactive that they are stored in lead boxes. It seems fitting that Curie left a
scientific legacy that is literally untouchable.
If you have time, you should read more about this incredible woman.
Click this link!
