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Marie Sklodowska Curie
Poland: 1867 - 1934
1903 Nobel Prize in Physics1911 Nobel Prize in ChemistryDiscovered Element RadiumCoined Term "Radioactivity"
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| Because a
university education was not available to women in the
Russian-controlled Poland of her birth, Marie Curie went to the
University of Paris to obtain her advanced degrees. It was there
that she met her future husband, Pierre Curie, who was already an
authority on crystals and magnetic materials.
Adopting the study of Henri Becquerel's discovery of radiation in uranium as her thesis topic, Marie began the systematic study of other elements to see if there were others that also emitted this strange energy. Within days she discovered that Therium also emitted radiation, and further, that the amount of radiation depended upon the amount of element present in the compound. Thus, she deduced that radioactivity does not depend on how atoms are arranged into molecules, but rather that it originates within the atoms themselves. This discovery is perhaps her most important scientific contribution. For their joint research into radioactivity, Marie and Pierre Curie were awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics. As a team, the Curies would go on to even greater scientific discoveries. In 1898, they announced the discovery of two new elements, radium and polonium. Isolating pure samples of these elements was exhausting work for Marie. It took four years of back-breaking effort to extract 1 decigram of radium chloride from several tons of raw ore. In 1906, Pierre was killed in a traffic accident. Marie carried on their research and was appointed to fill Pierre's position at the Sorbonne, thus becoming the first woman in France to achieve professorial rank. In 1911, Marie won her second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry, for isolating pure radium. Marie Curie died in 1934 of radiation induced leukemia. In 1995, her remains were transferred to the French National Mausoleum, the first woman accorded that honor on her own merit.
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