About Marie Curie

An exceptionally gifted woman

Marie Curie, originally named Maria Sklodowska, was born in Warsaw, Poland on November 7, 1867. 

Her father was a professor of mathematics and physics. Her mother, a teacher, died of tuberculosis when Marie was only 12 years old. 

Despite her family’s poverty and the limited access she had to scientific education, combined with the fact that she was a woman, Marie overcome many obstacles to pursue her passion and her scientific career. 

Road to the nobel prize
Marie Curie Legacy

Marie Curie’s Road to the Nobel Prize

Marie moved to France in 1891 to study physics and mathematics at the Sorbonne. She took math classes and was taught by two highly regarded mathematicians, Paul Painlevé and Paul Apell, and by the physicist Gabriel Lippmann. The latter, a Nobel prize winner in physics in 1908, welcomed the young woman to his laboratory in 1893 after she had obtained her degree in physics. In 1894, impressed by her various qualities, Lippmann gave her full authority over a project to study steel magnetization.
But the young researcher lacked knowledge on matters of magnetism which led her to seek advice from one of the best specialists of her time: Pierre Curie. Thus began one of the most famous scientific relationships in history. Pierre and Marie married on July 26, 1895, in Sceaux, France. In 1897, Marie gave birth to a girl, Irene, and in 1904 to another girl, named Eve. Irene, like her mother, was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry.
In 1895, Marie began to do someher research on a new phenomenon that had recently been discovered by Henri Becquerel: it. This new phenomenon was named radioactivity. She was soon joined by her husband, who gave up his own research to focus on hers. For months, the two physicists carried out grueling research focusing on pitchblende, a uranium filled ore. That same year, they announced that they had succeeded in extracting two new radioactive elements from this ore: , radium and polonium. This discovery, which they refused to patent as they felt it belonged to humanity, won them and Henri Becquerel the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics.
On April 19, 1906, Pierre Curie was killed in a street accident. Marie was devastated by her husband's death. On May 13, 1906 the physics department of the University of Paris decided to retain the chair position that had been created for her late husband and offered it to Marie. She accepted it, hoping to create a world-class laboratory as a tribute to her husband. She was the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris.

Marie Curie, Two-Time Nobel Prize Winner

By 1911, international recognition for her work had been growing to new heights, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences honored her a second time, with the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awarded for her work isolating metallic radium and determining its atomic mass.

Marie Curie’s Legacy

Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the first person and the only woman to win the Nobel Prize twice (in 1903 and in 1911). She is the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields. 

She was part of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. Beyond her Nobel Prize achievements, she was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris. In 1995, she became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris.

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