Marie Curie

Marie Curie was born Maria Salomea Skłodowska in Warsaw, then part of the Russian Empire, on November 7, 1867. She was the youngest of five children of teachers who instilled in her a love of learning. Denied admission to the all-male University of Warsaw, she participated in the clandestine 'Flying University' and worked as a governess to fund her sister's medical studies in Paris. In 1891, she moved to Paris and enrolled at the Sorbonne, where she earned degrees in physics and mathematics, graduating first in her class in 1893.¹

In 1895, Marie married Pierre Curie, a physicist whose work on piezoelectricity complemented her own. Inspired by Henri Becquerel's discovery of uranium rays, Marie began investigating the phenomenon, which she later named 'radioactivity.' She developed methods to measure radiation using an electrometer, and discovered that thorium also emitted rays. Her systematic study of uranium ores led to the startling conclusion that the ore contained a substance far more radioactive than uranium itself.²

In 1898, the Curies announced the discovery of two new elements: polonium, named after Marie's native Poland, and radium, named for its intense radioactivity. Isolating these elements required processing tons of pitchblende ore in a crude shed, a physically demanding task that Marie undertook largely alone. By 1902, she had extracted one-tenth of a gram of radium chloride, proving the existence of the new element. This work earned her the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, making her the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize.³

After Pierre's tragic death in 1906, Marie took over his professorship at the Sorbonne, becoming its first female professor. She continued her research, isolating pure radium metal in 1910 and defining the international standard for radioactive emissions. In 1911, she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of polonium and radium, becoming the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences. During World War I, she developed mobile X-ray units, known as 'petites Curies,' to aid battlefield surgeons, and she later established the Curie Institute in Paris, a major center for cancer research.⁴

Beyond her famous discoveries, Curie's life was marked by lesser-known struggles and contributions. She faced intense sexism and xenophobia in France, including a scandal in 1911 that nearly derailed her career. She never patented her radium extraction process, believing that scientific knowledge should be freely shared. During World War I, she personally trained 150 women as X-ray technicians and drove to the front lines herself. She also wrote a biography of her husband and raised two daughters, one of whom, Irène Joliot-Curie, would also win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Curie's notebooks remain radioactive and are stored in lead-lined boxes at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

Radioactivity

The spontaneous emission of radiation from the nucleus of an unstable atom.

Polonium

A radioactive chemical element with symbol Po and atomic number 84, discovered by Marie Curie in 1898.

Radium

A radioactive chemical element with symbol Ra and atomic number 88, discovered by the Curies in 1898.

Pitchblende

A uranium-rich mineral ore from which radium and polonium were first extracted.