Who was Marie Curie?
Marie Curie was a Polish-French physicist and chemist who pioneered research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences.
Born Maria Skłodowska in Warsaw in 1867, she moved to Paris to study, because women could not attend university in Russian-ruled Poland. She married physicist Pierre Curie, and together they discovered two new elements, polonium, named after Poland, and radium. She coined the term radioactivity.
In 1903, she shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel. In 1911, she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. She became the first female professor at the University of Paris. During World War I, she developed mobile X-ray units, nicknamed little Curies, to help treat wounded soldiers.
Her legacy
Curie died in 1934 from aplastic anemia, likely caused by long exposure to radiation. Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie also won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 1995, Marie Curie became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris.
Did You Know?
The element curium, number 96, is named after Marie and Pierre Curie.