Marie Curie was born Maria Sklodowska on November 7, 1867, in Warsaw, Poland, which was then under the control of the Russian Empire. She was the youngest of five children in a family that valued education deeply. Her father was a math and physics teacher, and her mother ran a boarding school. Even as a young girl, Maria had an excellent memory and a passion for learning. Life was difficult for the family, and they struggled with money after her father lost his savings.
At the time, Polish universities did not admit women, so Maria could not continue her education at home. She spent years working as a governess and attending secret underground classes before she saved enough money to move to Paris at age 24. In 1891, she enrolled at the Sorbonne, one of the most famous universities in the world, where she studied physics and mathematics. She lived in a tiny attic apartment and sometimes had so little money that she barely ate. Despite these hardships, she graduated first in her physics degree program in 1893.
In 1894, Maria met the French physicist Pierre Curie, and the two fell in love over their shared passion for science. They married in 1895 and became one of the most famous scientific partnerships in history. Together, they worked in a small, cramped laboratory that had once been a medical school storeroom. Marie became the first woman to earn a PhD in physics in France, completing her doctoral research on mysterious rays given off by uranium. Pierre recognized Marie’s brilliance and devoted himself to supporting her groundbreaking research.
In 1898, Marie and Pierre Curie announced the discovery of two new chemical elements. The first element they named polonium, after Marie’s homeland of Poland, to draw attention to Poland’s struggle for independence. The second element they named radium because of the intense rays it gave off. To prove radium existed, Marie had to process tons of a mineral called pitchblende by hand, boiling and stirring it in huge vats for years. She eventually isolated one-tenth of a gram of pure radium chloride from several tons of ore. Marie coined the term “radioactivity” to describe the powerful invisible rays these elements produced.
In 1903, Marie Curie, Pierre Curie, and Henri Becquerel were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their research on radioactivity. Marie was the first woman ever to receive a Nobel Prize. Tragically, Pierre was killed in a street accident in 1906, leaving Marie devastated but determined to continue their work. In 1911, she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of polonium and radium. This made her the first person in history to win two Nobel Prizes, and she remains the only person ever to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences.
After Pierre’s death, Marie was appointed to his teaching position at the Sorbonne in Paris, making her the first female professor at that university. Her first lecture drew huge crowds of students, journalists, and curious members of the public. She continued to run her laboratory and train a new generation of scientists who would go on to make their own important discoveries. Marie worked tirelessly to establish radioactivity as a major field of scientific study. She insisted that her research should benefit all of humanity and refused to patent her methods for isolating radium.
When World War I broke out in 1914, Marie found a practical way to use her scientific knowledge to save lives. She developed mobile X-ray units, which soldiers nicknamed “petites Curies” (little Curies), that could be driven right to the battlefield. These portable machines helped surgeons locate bullets, shrapnel, and broken bones inside wounded soldiers so they could be treated more quickly. Marie trained about 150 women to operate the X-ray equipment and even drove one of the vehicles to the front lines herself. It is estimated that over a million wounded soldiers were X-rayed using her mobile units during the war.
Marie Curie continued her research throughout the 1920s, but years of handling radioactive materials without protection took a terrible toll on her health. She died on July 4, 1934, of aplastic anemia, a blood disease caused by decades of radiation exposure. Her personal notebooks from the 1890s are still so radioactive today that they must be stored in lead-lined boxes, and anyone who wants to read them must wear protective clothing. In 1995, Marie and Pierre Curie’s remains were moved to the Pantheon in Paris, making her the first woman honored there for her own achievements. Marie Curie’s courage, determination, and brilliant mind reshaped modern science and opened doors for women in research around the world.
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