Marie Curie

Marie Skłodowska Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win the Nobel Prize in two scientific fields, and the only woman to be a professor at the University of Paris. She named the first chemical element she discovered polonium, after her native country. She died in 1934, aged 66, of aplastic anaemia from exposure to radiation in the course of her scientific research and during World War I.

About Marie Curie in brief

Marie Skłodowska Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win the Nobel Prize in two scientific fields, and the only woman to be a professor at the University of Paris. She named the first chemical element she discovered polonium, after her native country. Marie Curie died in 1934, aged 66, of aplastic anaemia from exposure to radiation in the course of her scientific research and during World War I. In 1995, she became the first women to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris. Maria Curie was the fifth and youngest child of well-known teachers Bronisława, née Boguska, and Władysław Skilodowski. She studied at Warsaw’s clandestine Flying University and began her practical scientific training in Warsaw. In 1891, aged 24, she followed her elder sister Bronisilawa to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw, which remain major centres of medical research today. During World War II, she developed mobile radiography units to provide X-ray services to field hospitals. While a French citizen, she never lost her sense of Polish identity. She taught her daughters the Polish language and took them on visits to Poland. The deaths of Maria’s mother and sister caused her to give up Catholicism and become agnostic.

When she was ten years old, Maria began attending a gymnasium for girls, which she attended from which she graduated on 12 June 1883 with a gold medal. After a collapse, possibly due to depression, she spent the following year in the countryside with her father and her sister. She became involved with the Flying University, a Polish institution of higher learning that admitted women. She and her father, who was a patriotic woman, made an agreement that she would not enroll in a regular higher education institution because she was a woman. She died of tuberculosis in May 1878, when Maria was 10 years old. On both the paternal and maternal sides, the family had lost their property and fortunes through patriotic involvements in Polish national uprisings aimed at restoring Poland’s independence. Maria’s paternal grandfather had been principal of the Lublin primary school attended by Bolesław Prus, who became a leading figure in Polish literature. After Russian authorities eliminated laboratory instruction from the Polish schools, he brought much of the laboratory equipment home and instructed his children in its use. He was eventually fired by his Russian supervisors for pro-Polish sentiments and forced to take lower-paying posts; the family also chose to supplement their income by lodging boys in the house. He resigned from the position after Maria was born. Maria was to pursue physics, mathematics and physics, and was also director of two Warsaw gymnasia for boys.

Related posts:

Nobel Prize Nobel Peace Prize Nobel Prize in Chemistry Nobel Prize in Physics