Born: 7 November 1867, Poland
Died: 4 July 1934
Country most active: France
Also known as: Maria Salomea Skłodowska, Marya or Manya Sklodowska or Sklodovska
The following is republished with permission from the Science History Intitute.
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.
This biography, written by Marine Desage-El Murr, has been republished with permission from the Dangerous Women Project, created by the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh.
Marie Skłodowska was born in Warsaw in 1867 and emigrated to France in 1891. Her early outstanding scholarly accomplishments in physics and chemistry led her to pioneering results in the field of radioactivity. Her research was at the forefront of the scientific community of her time and granted her several awards, prizes and medals. Marie Curie is the first woman to receive a Nobel prize and still as of today the only woman to have achieved the incredible feat of receiving two Nobel prizes, the first one in Physics for the study of radiations and a second one in Chemistry for the discovery and study of the chemical elements radium and polonium.
In a famous picture taken on the occasion of the 1911 Solvay congress held in Brussels, she appears as the only woman among an areopagus of famous scientists, and quite strikingly, she is not even looking up to the photographer. Absorbed in a conversation with her neighbor mathematician Henri Poincaré and peering over what seems to be a notebook, she seems blissfully oblivious of the historicity of the moment, she just is truly in the moment. Her down-to-earth approach to the practical applications of her works was embodied in the fabrication of the “Little Curies”, a popular nickname for vehicles having built-in radiographic equipment which were used on the battlefields during World War I, allowing quicker and better treatment of the injured soldiers. Marie Curie even learned to drive a car so that she could be part of the action.
Still, despite all her achievements, she suffered discrimination in a male-dominated scientific field. Her name was not on the original proposition made to the Swedish Nobel committee and it was not before her husband intervened that she was finally listed as co-recipient of the prize. She failed to be elected at the Académie des Sciences in 1910, just a year before being awarded her second Nobel prize. Nevertheless, she led an incredibly active scientific life and specifically came to terms with the gender-based discrimination that she knew all too well by hiring many other women in the various research laboratories or institutes that she directed.
The surrounding streets of the Panthéon, famously dedicated to the great men of the nation, and where she quite ironically lies for eternity, abound with testimonies of her legacy: the nearby Institut Curie, together with the Institut du Radium, is devoted to treating cancer patients, and the Musée Curie is a keepsake perpetuating the legend.
The following is excerpted from Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women, written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company.
Marie Skladowska Curie, a Polish-French physicist and chemist, born in Warsaw, where her father was a professor of physics in the University. She completed a course of study in Warsaw, and in 1891 went to Paris, taking a degree in physical and chemical sciences there two years later.
In 1895 she married Pierre Curie, and to the researches on radio-active substances and radio-activity which have made her name and that of her husband famous, she contributed at least an equal share. The honors and prizes for the discover of the radio-active elements were awarded jointly to her and her husband, including part of the Nobel prize for physics in 1903.
On her husband’s death, in 1906, she succeeded him as professor of physics and director of the physical laboratory at the Sorbonne, where she continued her researches, and later became professor also in the Normal School at Sèvres. In 1910 she was awarded the Albert medal of the Royal Society of Arts, and in 1911 she received the Nobel prize for chemistry. She visited the United States in 1921, and was everywhere received with honors.
The value and importance of Mme. Curie’s discovery, places her name among the greatest and most distinguished in the world of science.
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