Marie Curie

Biography

Marie Skłodowska Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a Polish-French physicist and chemist who was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different scientific fields. Born Maria Salomea Skłodowska in Warsaw, in what was then the Russian-controlled Kingdom of Poland, she overcame major social and political barriers to become one of history's most important scientists. She shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie and physicist Henri Becquerel for their research into radioactivity, a term she coined. In 1911, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering and isolating the elements radium and polonium.

Curie studied at Warsaw's clandestine Flying University before moving to Paris in 1891 at the age of 24. She earned degrees from the University of Paris and became, in 1906, the first woman to hold a professorship there, following her husband Pierre's death in a street accident that year. Her role directly continued Pierre's work, allowing her to push forward research into radioactivity and atomic science.

Her scientific efforts went beyond the lab. She led the first studies into treating tumors with radioactive isotopes. During World War I, she developed mobile radiography units — known as petites Curies — to provide X-ray imaging to field hospitals and trained medical staff to use them. She founded the Curie Institute in Paris in 1920 and the Curie Institute in Warsaw in 1932, both of which are still active research centers today.

Curie received many honors, including the Davy Medal (1903), the Matteucci Medal (1904), the Actonian Prize (1907), the Albert Medal (1910), the Elliott Cresson Medal (1909), the Willard Gibbs Award (1921), and the John Scott Award (1921). She also received an honorary doctorate from the Jagiellonian University of Krakow. Her major written work, the Treatise on Radioactivity, is still a key text in the field.

Marie Curie died on 4 July 1934 in Sancellemoz, France, from aplastic anemia, a condition linked to her long exposure to radiation during her research. She kept her Polish identity throughout her life, naming the element polonium after her homeland. Her legacy lives on through the institutions she founded, the scientists she mentored, and the fields of nuclear physics and cancer treatment that her work helped build.