Introduction of Marie Curie:
Marie Curie, née Maria Sklodowska, was born in Warsaw on November 7, 1867, the
daughter of a secondary-school teacher. She received a general education in local schools and
some scientific training from her father. She became involved in a students’ revolutionary
organization and found it prudent to leave Warsaw, then in the part of Poland dominated by
Russia, for Cracow, which at that time was under Austrian rule. In 1891, she went to Paris to
continue her studies at the Sorbonne where she obtained Licenciateships in Physics and the
Mathematical Sciences. She met Pierre Curie, Professor in the School of Physics in 1894 and
in the following year they were married. She succeeded her husband as Head of the Physics
Laboratory at the Sorbonne, gained her Doctor of Science degree in 1903, and following the
tragic death of Pierre Curie in 1906, she took his place as Professor of General Physics in the
Faculty of Sciences, the first time a woman had held this position. She was also appointed
Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris, founded
in 1914.
Early Life :
She was the fifth and youngest child of well-known teachers Bronisława and
Władysław Skłodowski.
The elder siblings of Maria were Zofia, Józef, Bronisława and Helena.
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. This condemned the subsequent
generation, including Maria and her elder siblings, to a difficult struggle to get
ahead in life.
Władysław Skłodowski taught mathematics and physics, subjects that Maria
was to pursue, and was also director of two Warsaw gymnasia (secondary
schools) for boys. the family also lost money on a bad investment and
eventually chose to supplement their income by lodging boys in the house.
Marie’s mother Bronisława operated a prestigious Warsaw boarding school for
girls; she resigned from the position after Maria was born. She died of
tuberculosis in May 1878, when Maria was ten years old.
Less than three years earlier, Marie’s oldest sibling, Zofia, had died of
typhus contracted from a boarder.
When she was ten years old, Maria began attending the boarding school of J.
Sikorska.
She attended a gymnasium for girls, from which she graduated on 12 June
1883 with a gold medal. After collapsing probably due to depression, she
spent the following year in the countryside with relatives of her father, and the
next year with her father in Warsaw, where she did some tutoring.
Unable to enroll in a regular institution of higher education because she was a
woman, she and her sister Bronisława became involved with the
clandestine Flying University , a Polish patriotic institution of higher learning
that admitted women students.
Maria took a position first as a home tutor in Warsaw, then for two years as
a governess in Szczuki with a landed family, the Żorawskis, who were
relatives of her father.
She found the Radium Institute in 1932.
Personal life:
At the age of 27 Marie had a civil wedding ceremony in Sceaux with Pierre who was 36 years
old on 26 July 1895 , he died early at the age of 46 on 19 April 1906 due to a car accident.At
the age of 29 Marie gave birth to her first daughter Irene Curie on 12 September 1897 . At the
age of 34 she gave birth to her second daughter on 6 December 1904.Marie Curie played a
major role in World War 1 by developing a network of radiological stations on the battlefield.
After her husband's early demise, she worked with Andre Debierne to further their studies on
Polonium. She also became a close friend to Albert Einstein, Robert Millikan, J.J. Thompson,
and Louis de Broglier.She immediately entered Sorbonne University in Paris where she read
physics and mathematics , she completed her master's degree in physics in 1893 and earned
another degree in mathematics the following year.
Scientific Achievements:
Marie Curie is remembered for her discovery of radium and polonium, and her huge
contribution to finding treatments for cancer. She also invented the portable x-ray machine
which advanced science medicine. Marie attempted an experiment in which she tested all
the known elements in order to determine if other elements or minerals would make air
conduct electricity better, or if uranium alone could do this. In this task she was assisted by a
number of chemists who donated a variety of mineral samples, including some containing
very rare elements. In 1903, Curie won the Nobel Prize in Physics for her research of
radiation phenomena. She was also the first woman in France to attain a PhD in Physics,
and the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne. In 1911, she won a second Nobel Prize in
chemistry for the discovery of polonium and radium. She was the first woman to win a Nobel
Prize, and is the only woman to win the award in two different fields.
Death:
Marie Curie died in 1934, aged 66, at the Sancellemoz sanatorium in Passy (Haute-Savoie),
France, of aplastic anemia likely from exposure to radiation in the course of her scientific
research and in the course of her radiological work at field hospitals during World War I.
Aplastic Anemia is a rare condition in which the body stops producing enough new blood
cells.
Aplastic anemia develops as a result of bone marrow damage. The damage may be present at
birth or occur after exposure to radiation, chemotherapy, toxic chemicals, some drugs, or
infections including Covid.
Madame Curie's last words were"Was it done with radium or with mesothorium?"
She was buried twice, first on July 6, 1934, she was laid in the same cemetery in Sceaux
where her in-laws and Pierre lay. Over 60 years later the remains of Pierre and Marie Curie
were re-interred in France's national mausoleum, the Panthéon, in Paris.