Marie Curie

For other uses, see Marie Curie (disambiguation).

Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Marie Curie, ca. 1920
Born	(1867-11-07)7 November 1867 Warsaw, Kingdom of Poland, then part of Russian Empire
Died	4 July 1934(1934-07-04) (aged 66) Passy, Haute-Savoie, France
Citizenship	Poland France
Alma mater	University of Paris ESPCI
Known for	Radioactivity, polonium, radium
Spouse	Pierre Curie (1859–1906)
Awards	Nobel Prize in Physics (1903) Davy Medal (1903) Matteucci Medal (1904) Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911)
Scientific career
Fields	Physics, Chemistry
Institutions	University of Paris
Doctoral advisor	Henri Becquerel
Doctoral students	André-Louis Debierne Óscar Moreno Marguerite Catherine Perey
Signature
Notes
She is the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences. She was the wife of Pierre Curie, and the mother of Irène Joliot-Curie and Ève Curie.

Marie Skłodowska-Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a French-Polish physicist and chemist, famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the only woman to date to win in two fields, and the only person to win in multiple sciences. She was also the first female professor at the University of Paris (La Sorbonne), and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris.

She was born Maria Salomea Skłodowska (pronounced [ˈmarja salɔˈmɛa skwɔˈdɔfska]) in Warsaw, in what was then the Kingdom of Poland. She studied at Warsaw's clandestine Floating University and began her practical scientific training in Warsaw. In 1891, aged 24, she followed her older sister Bronisława to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. She shared her 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie and with the physicist Henri Becquerel. Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie and son-in-law, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, would similarly share a Nobel Prize. She was the sole winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Her achievements included a theory of radioactivity (a term that she coined), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two elements, polonium and radium. Under her direction, the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms, using radioactive isotopes. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw, which remain major centres of medical research today.

While an actively loyal French citizen, Marie Skłodowska-Curie (she used both surnames) never lost her sense of Polish identity. She taught her daughters the Polish language and took them on visits to Poland. She named the first chemical element that she discovered – polonium, which she first isolated in 1898 – after her native country.^[a]

Curie died in 1934 of aplastic anemia brought on by her years of exposure to radiation.

Biography

Early years

Władysław Skłodowski with daughters (from left) Maria, Bronisława, Helena, 1890

Birthplace on ulica Freta in Warsaw's "New Town" – now home to the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Museum

Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw, in the Russian partition of Poland, on 7 November 1867, the fifth and youngest child of well-known teachers Bronisława and Władysław Skłodowski. Maria's older siblings were Zofia (born 1862), Józef (1863), Bronisława (1865) and Helena (1866).

On both the paternal and maternal sides, the family had lost their property and fortunes through patriotic involvements in Polish national uprisings aiming at the restoration of Poland's independence (most recent of which was the January Uprising). This condemned each subsequent generation, including that of Maria, her elder sisters and her brother, to a difficult struggle to get ahead in life.

Maria's paternal grandfather Józef Skłodowski had been a respected teacher in Lublin, where he taught the young Bolesław Prus. Her father Władysław Skłodowski taught mathematics and physics, subjects that Maria was to pursue, and was also director of two Warsaw gymnasia for boys. After Russian authorities eliminated laboratory instruction from the Polish schools, he brought much of the lab equipment home, and instructed his children in its use. He was eventually fired by the Russian supervisors for pro-Polish sentiments, and forced to take lower paying posts; the family also lost money on a bad investment, and eventually chose to supplement the income by lodging boys in their house. Maria's mother Bronisława operated a prestigious Warsaw boarding school for girls; she resigned from the position after Maria was born. She also suffered from tuberculosis and died when Maria was twelve. Maria's father was an atheist; her mother—a devout Catholic. Two years before the death of her mother, Maria's oldest sibling, Zofia, had died of typhus. The deaths of her mother and sister caused Maria to give up Catholicism and become agnostic.

When she was ten years old, Maria began attending the boarding school that her mother had operated while she was well; next Maria attended a gymnasium for girls, from which she graduated on 12 June 1883 with a gold medal. Due to possible depression, she spent the following year in the countryside with relatives of her father's, and the next with her father in Warsaw, where she did some tutoring. Unable to enrol in a higher education institution due to being a female, she and her sister Bronisława became involved with the Flying University, a clandestine teaching institution, teaching a pro-Polish curriculum in defiance of the Russian authorities, and also willing to admit female students.

Maria made an agreement with her sister, Bronisława, that she would give her financial assistance during Bronisława's medical studies in Paris, in exchange for similar assistance two years later. In connection with this, Maria took a position as governess: first at 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. While working for the latter family, she fell in love with their son, Kazimierz Żorawski, which was reciprocated by this future eminent mathematician. His parents rejected the idea of his marrying the penniless relative, and Kazimierz was unable to oppose them. Maria lost her position as governess. She found another with the Fuchs family in Sopot, on the Baltic Sea coast, where she spent the next year, all the while financially assisting her sister.

At the beginning of 1890, Bronisława, a few months after she married Kazimierz Dłuski, a physician and social and political activist, invited Maria to join them in Paris. Maria declined because she could not afford the university tuition; it would take year a year and a half longer to gather the necessary funds. She would be helped by her father, who was able to secure a more lucrative position again. All that time she continued to educate herself, reading books, exchanging letters, and being tutored herself. In early 1889 she returned home to her father in Warsaw. She continued working as a governess, and remained there till late 1891. She tutored, studied at the Flying University, and began her practical scientific training (1890–91) in a chemical laboratory at the Museum of Industry and Agriculture at Krakowskie Przedmieście 66, near Warsaw's Old Town. The laboratory was run by her cousin Józef Boguski, who had been assistant in Saint Petersburg to the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev. In October 1891, at her sister's insistence and after receiving a letter from Żorawski, in which he definitively broke his relationship with her, she decided to go to France after all.

Maria's loss of the relationship with Żorawski was tragic for both. He soon earned a doctorate and pursued an academic career as a mathematician, becoming a professor and rector of Kraków University. Still, as an old man and a mathematics professor at the Warsaw Polytechnic, he would sit contemplatively before the statue of Maria Skłodowska which had been erected in 1935 before the Radium Institute that she had founded in 1932.

New life in Paris

At a Warsaw lab here, in 1890–91, Skłodowska did her first scientific work.

In Paris, Maria briefly found shelter with her sister and brother-in-law before renting a garret closer to the university, in the Latin Quarter, and proceeding with her studies of physics, chemistry, and mathematics at the Sorbonne (the University of Paris), where she enrolled in the fall of 1891. She subsided on her meagre resources, suffering from cold winters and occasionally fainting from hunger.

Skłodowska studied during the day and tutored in the evenings, barely earning her keep. In 1893, she was awarded a degree in physics and began work in an industrial laboratory of professor Gabriel Lippmann. Meanwhile she continued studying at the Sorbonne, and with an aid of a fellowship, she was able to earn a second degree in 1894.^[b]

Skłodowska had begun her scientific career in Paris with an investigation of the magnetic properties of various steels, commissioned by Society for the Encouragement of National Industry (Société d'encouragement pour l'industrie nationale). That same year, Pierre Curie entered her life; it was their mutual interest in natural sciences that drew them together. Pierre was an instructor at the School of Physics and Chemistry, the École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris (ESPCI). They were introduced to one another by professor Józef Wierusz-Kowalski, who learned that Skłodowska was looking for a larger laboratory space, something that Wierusz-Kowalski thought Pierre had access to. Although Pierre did not have a large laboratory, he was able to find some space for Marie, where she was able to begin her work.

Their mutual passion for science brought them increasingly closer. The two begun to develop feelings for one another, although at first Skłodowska did not accept his marriage proposal, not wishing to stay in France; Pierre however declared that he was ready to move with her to Poland, even if he was to be reduced to a French language teacher. Marie departed for the summer of 1894 to Warsaw. She was still labouring under the illusion that she would be able to return to Poland and work in her chosen field of study, but she was denied a place at Kraków University because she was a woman. A letter from Pierre convinced her to return to Paris to pursue a PhD. Upon Marie's insistence, Pierre has written up his research on magnetism, and received his own doctorate in March 1895; he was also promoted to a professorship position in the School. A contemporary anecdote would call Marie "the biggest discovery's in Pierre's life." On 26 July that year, she and Pierre married in a civil union; neither wanted a religious service. Marie's dark blue outfit, worn instead of a bridal grown, would serve her for many years as a lab outfit. They shared two hobbies, long bicycle trips and journeys abroad, which brought them even closer. In Pierre, Maria had found a new love, a partner, and a scientific collaborator upon whom she could depend.

New elements

Pierre and Marie Curie in the laboratory

In 1895 Wilhelm Roentgen discovered the existence of X-rays, through the mechanism behind their existence was not yet understood. In 1896 Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium salts emitted rays that resembled X-rays in their penetrating power. He demonstrated that this radiation, unlike phosphorescence, did not depend on an external source of energy, but seemed to arise spontaneously from uranium itself. Marie decided to look into uranium rays as a possible field of research for a thesis. She used an innovative technique to investigate samples. Fifteen years earlier, her husband and his brother had invented the electrometer, a sensitive device for measuring electrical charge. Using Pierre's electrometer, she discovered that uranium rays caused the air around a sample to conduct electricity. Using this technique, her first result was the finding that the activity of the uranium compounds depended only on the quantity of uranium present. She had hypothesized that the radiation was not the outcome of some interaction of molecules, but must come from the atom itself. Beginning to question the claim that atoms are not indivisible was among her most important contributions to science.

In 1897 her daughter Irène was born. To support the family, Marie begun teaching at the École Normale Supérieure. The Curies did not have a dedicated laboratory; most of their research was carried in a converted shed next to the School of Physics and Chemistry. The shed, formerly a medical school dissecting room, was poorly ventilated and not even waterproof. As they were unaware of the deleterious effects of radiation exposure attendant on their chronic unprotected work with radioactive substances, Marie and her husband had no idea what price they would pay for the effect of their research upon their health. The School would not sponsor her research, she would receive some subsidies from metallurgical and mining companies, and various organizations and governments.

Marie's systematic studies had included two uranium minerals, pitchblende and torbernite (also known as chalcolite). Her electrometer showed that pitchblende was four times as active as uranium itself, and chalcolite twice as active. She concluded that, if her earlier results relating the quantity of uranium to its activity were correct, then these two minerals must contain small quantities of some other substance that was far more active than uranium itself. In her systematic search for other substances beside uranium salts that emitted radiation, by 1898, Marie had found that the element thorium likewise, was radioactive.

Pierre was increasingly intrigued by her work. By mid-1898 he was so invested in it that he decided to drop his work on crystals and to join her.

The [research] idea [writes Reid] was her own; no one helped her formulate it, and although she took it to her husband for his opinion she clearly established her ownership of it. She later recorded the fact twice in her biography of her husband to ensure there was no chance whatever of any ambiguity. It [is] likely that already at this early stage of her career [she] realized that... many scientists would find it difficult to believe that a woman could be capable of the original work in which she was involved.

Pierre, Irène, Marie Curie

She was acutely aware of the importance of promptly publishing her discoveries and thus establishing her priority. Had not Becquerel, two years earlier, presented his discovery to the Académie des Sciences the day after he made it, credit for the discovery of radioactivity, and even a Nobel Prize, would have gone to Silvanus Thompson instead. Marie chose the same rapid means of publication. Her paper, giving a brief and simple account of her work, was presented for her to the Académie on 12 April 1898 by her former professor, Gabriel Lippmann. Even so, just as Thompson had been beaten by Becquerel, so Marie was beaten in the race to tell of her discovery that thorium gives off rays in the same way as uranium. Two months earlier, Gerhard Schmidt had published his own finding in Berlin.

At that time no one else in the world of physics had noticed what Marie recorded in a sentence of her paper, describing how much greater were the activities of pitchblende and chalcolite than uranium itself: "The fact is very remarkable, and leads to the belief that these minerals may contain an element which is much more active than uranium." She later would recall how she felt "a passionate desire to verify this hypothesis as rapidly as possible." On 14 April 1898, the Curies optimistically weighed out a 100-gram sample of pitchblende and ground it with a pestle and mortar. They did not realize at the time that what they were searching for was present in such minute quantities that they would eventually have to process tons of the ore.

In July 1898, Marie and her husband published a paper together, announcing the existence of an element which they named "polonium", in honour of her native Poland, which would for another twenty years remain partitioned among three empires that claimed it a century before. On 26 December 1898, the Curies announced the existence of a second element, which they named "radium" for its intense radioactivity – a word that they coined.

To prove their discoveries beyond any doubt, the Curies had set up to isolate polonium and radium into its pure components. Pitchblende is a complex mineral. The chemical separation of its constituents was an arduous task. The discovery of polonium had been relatively easy; chemically it resembles the element bismuth, and polonium was the only bismuth-like substance in the ore. Radium, however, was more elusive. It is closely related, chemically, to barium, and pitchblende contains both elements. By 1898, the Curies had obtained traces of radium, but appreciable quantities, uncontaminated with barium, were still beyond reach. The Curies undertook the arduous task of separating out radium salt by differential crystallization. From a ton of pitchblende, one-tenth of a gram of radium chloride was separated in 1902. In 1910 Marie isolated pure radium metal. She never succeeded in isolating polonium, which has a half-life of only 138 days.

In 1900, Marie became the first women faculty member at École Normale Supérieure, and Pierre joined the Sorbonne's faculty. In 1902 she visited Poland, on the occasion of her father's death. In June 1903, under the supervision of Henri Becquerel, Marie was awarded her DSc from the University of Paris. That month she and Pierre were invited to the Royal Institution in London to give a speech on radioactivity; Marie was prevented from speaking at the forum, being female, and Pierre alone was allowed to speak. In the meantime, a new industry begun developing based on the radon discovered by the Curies. The Curies did not patent their discovery, and benefited little from this increasingly profitable venture.

Nobel Prize

1903

In December 1903 the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Pierre Curie, Marie Curie and Henri Becquerel the Nobel Prize in Physics, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel." At first, the Committee intended to honour only Pierre and Henri, but one of the committee members and an advocate of woman scientists, Swedish mathematician Magnus Goesta Mittag-Leffler, alerted Pierre to the situation, and after his complaint, Marie's name was added to the nomination. Marie was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize.

Marie and her husband declined to go to Stockholm to receive the prize in person; they were too busy with their work, and Pierre, who disliked public ceremonies, was feeling increasingly ill. As Nobel laureates were required to deliver a lecture, the Curies finally undertook the trip in 1905. The award money allowed the Curies to hire their first lab assistant. Following the award of the Nobel Prize, galvanized by the offer from the University of Geneva, the Sorbonne gave Pierre a professorship and a chair of physics, although the Curies still did not have a proper laboratory. Upon Pierre's complaint, the Sorbonne relented and agreed to furbish a new laboratory, but it would not be ready until 1906.

In December 1904 Marie gave birth to their second daughter, Ève Curie. She later hired Polish governesses to teach her daughters her native language, and sent or took them on visits to Poland.

On 19 April 1906 Pierre was killed in a street accident. Walking across the Rue Dauphine in heavy rain, he was struck by a horse-drawn vehicle and fell under its wheels; his skull was fractured. Marie was devastated by the death of her husband. On 13 May 1906, the Sorbonne physics department decided to retain the chair that had been created for Pierre and they offered it to Marie. She accepted it, hoping to create a world class laboratory as a tribute to Pierre. She became the first woman to become a professor at the Sorbonne.

1911 Nobel Prize

Marie's quest to create a new laboratory did not end with Sorbonne. In her later years Marie headed the Radium Institute (Institut du radium, now Curie Institute, Institut Curie), a radioactivity laboratory created for her by the Pasteur Institute and the University of Paris. This initiative came in 1909 from Pierre Paul Émile Roux, director of the Pasteur Institute, who became disappointed that the Sorbonne was not giving Marie a proper laboratory and suggested that she move to the Institute. Only then, with the threat of Marie leaving, Sorbonne relented, and eventually the Curie Pavilion became a joint initiative of the Sorbonne and the Pasteur Institute.

In 1910 Marie succeeded in isolating radium; she also defined an international standard for radioactive emissions that would be eventually named after her and Pierre: the curie. Nevertheless, in 1911 the French Academy of Sciences did not elect her to be a member by one or two votes Elected instead was Édouard Branly, an inventor who had helped Guglielmo Marconi develop the wireless telegraph. It would be a doctoral student of Curie, Marguerite Perey, who would become the first woman elected to membership in the Academy – over half a century later, in 1962. Despite her fame as a scientist working for France, the public's attitude tended toward xenophobia—the same that had led to the Dreyfus affair–which also fuelled false speculation that Marie was Jewish. During the French Academy of Sciences elections, she was vilified by the right wing press, who criticized her for being a foreigner and an atheist. Her daughter would later remark on the public hypocrisy; as the French press often portrayed Marie as an unworthy foreigner when she was nominated for a French honour, but would portray her as a French hero when she received a foreign one, such as her Nobel Prizes.

At First Solvay Conference (1911), Curie (seated, 2nd from right) confers with Henri Poincaré. Standing, 4th from right, is Rutherford; 2nd from right, Einstein; far right, Paul Langevin

In 1911 it was revealed that in 1910–11 Marie had conducted an affair of about a year's duration with physicist Paul Langevin, a former student of Pierre's. He was a married man who was estranged from his wife. This resulted in a press scandal that was exploited by her academic opponents. Marie was five years older than Langevin and was portrayed in the tabloids as a foreign Jewish home-wrecker. Curie was away for a conference in Belgium when the scandal broke, upon her return, she found an angry mob in front of her house, and had to seek a refuge with her daughters at a house of a friend. Later, Curie's granddaughter, Hélène Joliot, married Langevin's grandson, Michel Langevin.

Despite that, international recognition for her work grew to new heights, and in 1911 the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded her a second Nobel Prize, this time for Chemistry. This award was "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." Marie was the first person to win or share two Nobel Prizes. She is one of only two people who have been awarded a Nobel Prize in two different fields, the other person being Linus Pauling (for chemistry and for peace). A delegation of celebrated Polish men of learning, headed by novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz, encouraged her to return to Poland and continue her research in her native country. Marie's second Nobel Prize enabled her to talk the French government into supporting the Radium Institute, which was built in 1914 and at which research was conducted in chemistry, physics, and medicine. A month after accepting her 1911 Nobel Prize, she was hospitalized with depression and a kidney ailment. For most of 1912 she avoided public life, and spend some time in England with her friend and fellow physicist, Hertha Ayrton. She returned to her lab only in December, after a break of about 14 months.

In 1912 the Warsaw Scientific Society offered her the directorship of a new laboratory in Warsaw, but she declined, focusing on the developing Radium Institute, to be completed in August 1914 and a newly street named Rue Pierre-Curie. She visited Poland in 1913, welcomed in Warsaw, but with the visit being mostly ignored by the Russian authorities. The Institute's development was interrupted by the coming war, as most researchers were drafted for into the French Army, and it would fully resume its activities in 1919.

World War I

Curie in a mobile x-ray vehicle

During World War I, Marie saw a need for field radiological centres near the front lines to assist battlefield surgeons. After a quick study of radiology, anatomy and automotive mechanics she procured x-ray equipment, vehicles, auxiliary generators and developed mobile radiography units, which came to be popularly known as petites Curies ("Little Curies"). She became the Director of the Red Cross Radiology Service set up France's first military radiology centre, operational by late 1914. Assisted at first by a military doctor and her 17-year old daughter Irene, she directed the installation of twenty mobile radiological vehicles and another 200 radiological units at field hospitals in the first year of the war. Later, she began training other women as aides.

In 1915 Marie produced hollow needles containing 'radium emanation', a colourless, radioactive gas given off by radium, later identified as radon to be used for sterilizing infected tissue. Marie provided the radium, from her own one gram supply. It is estimated that over one million wounded soldiers were treated with her x-ray units. Busy with this work, she carried out next to no scientific research during that period. Despite all her efforts, Curie never received any formal recognition from the French government for her contribution during wartime.

Also, promptly after the war started, she attempted to donate her gold Nobel Prize medals to the war effort but the French National Bank refused to accept them. She did buy war bonds, using her Nobel Prize money. She was also active member in committees of Polish Polonia in France dedicated to the Polish cause. During World War I she became a member of the Committee for a Free Poland (Komitet Wolnej Polski). After the war she summarized her war time experiences in a book Radiology in War (1919).

Post-war years

In 1920, for the 25th anniversary of the discovery of radium, the French government established a stipend for her; the previous person to receive it was Pasteur. In 1921 Marie was welcomed triumphantly when she toured the United States to raise funds for research on radium. Mrs. William Brown Meloney, after interviewing Marie, created a Marie Curie Radum Fund and raised money to buy 1 gram of radium, publicized her trip. In 1921 US President Warren G. Harding received her at the White House. The French government attempted to award her a Legion of Honour, but she refused. In 1922 she became a fellow of the French Academy of Medicine. She also travelled to other countries, appearing publicly and giving lectures in places such as Belgium, Brazil, Spain, and Czechoslovakia.

Led by Curie, the Institute became a crucible of Nobel Prize winners, producing four more, including her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie and her son-in-law, Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Eventually it became one of four major radioactivity-research laboratories, the others being the Cavendish Laboratory, with Ernest Rutherford; the Institute for Radium Research, Vienna, with Stefan Meyer; and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, with Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner.

In August 1922, Marie Curie became a member of the newly created International Commission for Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations. In 1923 she wrote a biography of Pierre, entitled simply Pierre Curie. In 1925 she visited Poland, to participate in the ceremony that laid foundations for the Radium Institute in Warsaw. Her second American tour, in 1929, succeeded in equipping the Warsaw Radium Institute with radium; it was opened in 1932 and her sister Bronisława became its director.

These distractions from her scientific labours and the attendant publicity caused her much discomfort but provided resources needed for her work.

Death

1935 statue, facing the Radium Institute, Warsaw

Marie visited Poland for the last time in early 1934. Only a few months later, on 4 July 1934, Marie died at the Sancellemoz Sanatorium in Passy, in Haute-Savoie, eastern France, from aplastic anemia contracted from her long-term exposure to radiation. The damaging effects of ionizing radiation were not then known, and much of her work had been carried out in a shed, without the safety measures that were later developed. She had carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket and stored them in her desk drawer, remarking on the faint light that the substances gave off in the dark. Marie was also exposed to x-rays from unshielded equipment while serving as a radiologist in field hospitals during the war.

She was interred at the cemetery in Sceaux, alongside her husband Pierre. Sixty years later, in 1995, in honour of their achievements, the remains of both were transferred to the Panthéon, Paris. She became the first – and so far the only – woman to be honoured with interment in the Panthéon on her own merits.

Because of their levels of radioactivity, her papers from the 1890s are considered too dangerous to handle. Even her cookbook is highly radioactive. Her papers are kept in lead-lined boxes, and those who wish to consult them must wear protective clothing.

In her last year she worked on a book Radioactivity, which was eventually published posthumously, in 1935.

Legacy

Statue, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin, Poland

The physical and societal aspects of the work of the Curies contributed substantially to shaping the world of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Cornell University professor L. Pearce Williams observes:

The result of the Curies' work was epoch-making. Radium's radioactivity was so great that it could not be ignored. It seemed to contradict the principle of the conservation of energy and therefore forced a reconsideration of the foundations of physics. On the experimental level the discovery of radium provided men like Ernest Rutherford with sources of radioactivity with which they could probe the structure of the atom. As a result of Rutherford's experiments with alpha radiation, the nuclear atom was first postulated. In medicine, the radioactivity of radium appeared to offer a means by which cancer could be successfully attacked.

If the work of Marie Curie helped overturn established ideas in physics and chemistry, it has had an equally profound effect in the societal sphere. To attain her scientific achievements, she had to overcome barriers that were placed in her way because she was a woman, in both her native and her adoptive country. This aspect of her life and career is highlighted in Françoise Giroud's Marie Curie: A Life, which emphasizes Marie's role as a feminist precursor. She was ahead of her time, emancipated and independent.

She was also known for her honesty and moderate life style. Having received a small scholarship in 1893, she returned it in 1897 as soon as she begun earning her keep. Much of her first Noble Prize money was given away to friends, family, students and research associates. In an unusual decision, Marie intentionally refrained from patenting the radium-isolation process, so that the scientific community could do research unhindered. She insisted that monetary gifts and awards are given to the scientific institutions she was affiliated with, rather than herself. She and her husband often refused awards and medals. Albert Einstein is reported to have remarked that she was probably the only person who was not corrupted by the fame that she had won.

Awards, honours and tributes

Tomb of Pierre and Marie Curie

As one of the most famous female scientists to date, Marie Curie has become an icon in the scientific world and has received tributes from across the globe, even in the realm of pop culture. In a 2009 poll carried out by New Scientist, Marie Curie was voted the "most inspirational woman in science". Curie received 25.1 per cent of all votes cast, nearly twice as many as second-place Rosalind Franklin (14.2 per cent).

Poland and France declared 2011 the Year of Marie Curie, and the United Nations declared that this would be the International Year of Chemistry. An artistic installation celebrating "Madame Curie" filled the Jacobs Gallery at San Diego's Museum of Contemporary Art. On 7 November, Google celebrated her birthday with a special Google Doodle. On 10 December, the New York Academy of Sciences celebrated the centenary of Marie Curie's second Nobel prize in the presence of Princess Madeleine of Sweden.

Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel prize and the first person to win two Nobel Prizes. Some of the awards she accepted during her life include:

• Nobel Prize in Physics (1903)
• Davy Medal (1903, with Pierre)
• Matteucci Medal (1904; with Pierre)
• Elliott Cresson Medal (1909)
• Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911)
• Franklin Medal of the American Philosophical Society (1921)

In 1995, she became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon, Paris.

The curie (symbol Ci), a unit of radioactivity, is named in honour of her and Pierre (although the commission which agreed on the name never clearly stated whether the standard was named after Pierre, Marie or both of them). The element with atomic number 96 was named curium. Three radioactive minerals are also named after the Curies: curite, sklodowskite, and cuprosklodowskite. She received numerous honorary degrees from universities across the world. In Poland, she had received honorary doctorates from the Lwów Polytechnic (1912), Poznań University (1922), Kraków's Jagiellonian University (1924), and the Warsaw Polytechnic (1926).

Soviet postage stamp

Numerous locations around the world are named after her. In 2007 a metro station in Paris was renamed to honour both of the Curies. Polish nuclear research reactor Maria is named after her. Outside Earth, the 7000 Curie asteroid is also named after her. A KLM McDonnell Douglas MD-11 (registration PH-KCC) is named in her honour.

Similarly, a number of institutions bear her name, starting with the two Curie institutes - the Maria Skłodowska–Curie Institute of Oncology, in Warsaw and the Institut Curie in Paris. She is the patron of the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, in Lublin, founded in 1944; and Pierre and Marie Curie University, in Paris, established in 1971. There are two museums dedicated to Marie Curie. In 1967 a museum devoted to Curie was established in Warsaw's "New Town", at her birthplace on ulica Freta (Freta Street). Her laboratory is preserved at the Musée Curie in Paris, and has been open to public since 1992..

Several works of art bear her likeness, or are dedicated to her. Michalina Mościcka, wife of Polish President Ignacy Mościcki, unveiled a 1935 statue of Marie Curie before Warsaw's Radium Institute. Within a decade, during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, the monument suffered damage from gunfire. After the war, when maintenance was done, it was decided to leave the bullet marks on the statue and its pedestal. In 1955 Jozef Mazur created a stained glass panel of her, the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Medallion, featured in the University at Buffalo Polish Room.

Books dedicated to her include Madame Curie (1938), written by her daughter, Ève. In 1987 Françoise Giroud wrote a biography, Marie Curie: A Life. In 2005, Barbara Goldsmith wrote Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie. In 2011, another book appeared, the Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, a Tale of Love and Fallout , by Lauren Redniss.

Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon starred in the 1943 U.S. Oscar-nominated film, Madame Curie, based on her life. More recently, in 1997, a French film about Pierre and Marie Curie was released, Les Palmes de M. Schutz. It was adapted from a play of the same name. In the film, Marie Curie was played by Isabelle Huppert.

Curie's likeness also has appeared on bills, stamps and coins around the world. She was featured on the Polish late-1980s 20,000-złoty banknote as well as on the last French 500-franc note, before the franc was replaced by the euro.

Notes

a. ^{^} Poland had been partitioned in the 18th century among Russia, Prussia and Austria, and it was Skłodowska–Curie's hope that naming the element after her native country would bring world attention to its lack of independence. Polonium may have been the first chemical element named to highlight a political question.

b. ^{^} Sources tend to vary with regards to the field of her second degree. Tadeusz Estreicher in his 1938 entry in the Polish Biographical Dictionary writes that while many sources state she earned a degree in mathematics, this is incorrect, and her second degree was in chemistry.

Bibliography

• Robert William Reid (1974). Marie Curie. New American Library. Retrieved 2 August 2012.
• Wojciech A. Wierzewski, "Mazowieckie korzenie Marii" ("Maria's Mazowsze Roots"), Gwiazda Polarna (Pole Star), a Polish-American biweekly, vol. 100, no. 13 (21 June 2008), pp. 16–17. Online version
• L. Pearce Williams, "Curie, Pierre and Marie", Encyclopedia Americana, Danbury, Connecticut, Grolier, Inc., 1986, vol. 8, pp. 331–32.
• Barbara Goldsmith (2005). Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-05137-7. Retrieved 2 August 2012.

Further reading

Non-fiction

• Teresa Kaczorowska (2011). Córka mazowieckich równin, czyli, Maria Skłodowska-Curie z Mazowsza (in Polish). Związek Literatów Polskich, Oddz. w Ciechanowie. Retrieved 2 August 2012. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |transt_title= ignored (help)
• Naomi Pasachoff (1 August 1996). Marie Curie:And the Science of Radioactivity: And the Science of Radioactivity. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-509214-1. Retrieved 2 August 2012.
• Eve Curie (2 April 2001). Madame Curie: A Biography. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-306-81038-1. Retrieved 2 August 2012.
• Susan Quinn (10 April 1996). Marie Curie: A Life. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-201-88794-5. Retrieved 2 August 2012.
• Françoise Giroud (March 1986). Marie Curie, a life. Holmes & Meier. ISBN 978-0-8419-0977-9. Retrieved 2 August 2012., translated by Lydia Davis
• Lauren Redniss (21 December 2010). Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-135132-7. Retrieved 2 August 2012.

Fiction

• Olov Enquist, Per (2006). The Book about Blanche and Marie. New York: Overlook. ISBN 1-58567-668-3. A 2004 novel by Per Olov Enquist featuring Maria Skłodowska-Curie, neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, and his Salpêtrière patient "Blanche" (Marie Wittman). The English translation was published in 2006.

See also

• List of female Nobel laureates
• Marie Curie Cancer Care

External links

• Out of the Shadows-A study of women physicists
• Pierre Curie and Marie Sklodowska : The First Century of Their Impact on Human Knowledge
• The official web page of Maria Curie Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland in English.
• Detailed Biography at Science in Poland website; with quotes, photographs, links etc.
• European Marie Curie Fellowships
• Marie Curie Fellowship Association
• Marie Curie Cancer Care, UK
• Marie Sklodowska Curie: Her Life as a Media Compendium
• Marie and Pierre Curie and the Discovery of Polonium and Radium Chronology from nobelprize.org
• Annotated bibliography of Marie Curie from the Alsos Digital Library
• Obituary, New York Times, 5 July 1934 Mme. Curie Is Dead; Martyr to Science
• Some places and memories related to Marie Curie
• Marie Curie on the 500 French Franc and 20000 old Polish zloty banknotes.
• Marie Curie at IMDb  – Animated biography of Marie Curie on DVD from an animated series of world and American history – Animated Hero Classics distributed by Nest Learning.
• Marie Curie – More than Meets the Eye at IMDb  – Live Action portrayal of Marie Curie on DVD from the Inventors Series produced by Devine Entertainment.
• Marie Curie at IMDb  – Portrayal of Marie Curie in a television mini series produced by the BBC
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• 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics and 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry – Nobel committee page; presentation speech, her award lecture etc.
• "Marie Curie and the Study of Radioactivity" at American Institute of Physics website. (Site also has a short version for kids entitled "Her story in brief!".)
• "Marie Curie Walking Tour of Paris". Hypatia. Retrieved 7 November 2011.