Marie Curie

Marie Curie
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Name	Marie Curie
Caption	Curie c. 1920s
Birth name	Maria Salomea Skłodowska
Birth date	7 November 1867
Birth place	Warsaw, Congress Poland
Death date	4 July 1934 (aged 66)
Death place	Passy, Haute-Savoie, France
Nationality	Polish
Citizenship	Poland (by birth), France (by marriage)
Fields	Physics, chemistry
Workplaces	University of Paris, Institut du Radium, Curie Institute
Alma mater	University of Paris, Flying University
Doctoral advisor	Gabriel Lippmann
Doctoral students	André-Louis Debierne, Óscar Moreno, Marguerite Perey
Known for	Radioactivity, Polonium, Radium
Prizes	Nobel Prize in Physics (1903), Davy Medal (1903), Matteucci Medal (1904), Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911), Willard Gibbs Award (1921)
Spouse	Pierre Curie, 1895, 1906
Children	Irène Joliot-Curie, Ève Curie

Marie Curie. A pioneering physicist and chemist, she conducted groundbreaking research on radioactivity, a term she coined. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win the award twice, and remains the only person to have won Nobel Prizes in two different scientific fields. Her discoveries of the elements polonium and radium revolutionized science and medicine.

Early life and education

Born Maria Skłodowska in Warsaw, then part of the Russian Empire, she was the youngest of five children to educators Bronisława Skłodowska and Władysław Skłodowski. After graduating from a Russian lyceum, she faced barriers to higher education for women in Congress Poland and became involved with the clandestine Flying University. To fund her sister Bronisława Dłuska's medical studies in Paris, she worked as a governess for several years. In 1891, she followed her sister to France, enrolling at the University of Paris, where she studied physics, chemistry, and mathematics, living frugally in the Latin Quarter. She earned her degree in physics in 1893, finishing first in her class, and obtained a degree in mathematics the following year.

Scientific career and research

In 1894, she began her scientific career in Paris, investigating the magnetic properties of various steels for the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry. That same year, she met professor Pierre Curie, and their shared passion for science led to both a professional partnership and marriage. Inspired by the work of Henri Becquerel on uranium rays, she chose this new phenomenon as the subject of her doctoral thesis. Using innovative techniques and an electrometer built by Pierre and his brother Jacques Curie, she discovered that the activity of the minerals pitchblende and torbernite was far greater than that of pure uranium, leading her to hypothesize the existence of new, highly radioactive elements. This work laid the foundation for the new field of radioactivity.

Nobel Prizes

In 1903, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics jointly to Henri Becquerel, Pierre Curie, and Marie Curie "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel." She was the first woman to receive this honor. In 1911, she received her second Nobel, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, "in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element." This made her the first person ever to receive two Nobel Prizes.

Legacy and honors

Her legacy is profound, shaping both theoretical science and practical applications in medicine. She founded the Curie Institute in Paris, which remains a major cancer research center, and helped establish the Maria Skłodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology in Warsaw. During World War I, she developed mobile radiography units, known as "Little Curies," to assist battlefield surgeons. Her honors include the Davy Medal from the Royal Society and the Benjamin Franklin Medal. The curie, a unit of radioactivity, is named for her and Pierre, and the chemical element curium was named in their honor. Numerous institutes, universities, and awards, like the Marie Curie Actions fellowship program, bear her name.

Personal life

She married Pierre Curie in 1895 in a simple civil ceremony in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine. They had two daughters: Irène Joliot-Curie, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 with her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie, and Ève Curie, who became a writer and biographer. The couple's life was dedicated to their work, with little regard for personal comfort or safety from radiation. Pierre's tragic death in 1906, after being struck by a horse-drawn cart in Paris, left her a widow. She had a well-publicized personal relationship with physicist Paul Langevin after Pierre's death. Her decades of exposure to radiation ultimately caused her death from aplastic anemia in 1934. She was interred alongside Pierre at the cemetery in Sceaux until 1995, when both their remains were enshrined in the Panthéon in Paris, making her the first woman honored on her own merits in the national mausoleum.

Category:Marie Curie Category:Polish scientists Category:Nobel laureates in Physics Category:Nobel laureates in Chemistry