Maria (Marie Fr.) Sklodowska-Curie (born in Warsaw, Poland, on November 7, 1867) was one of the first woman scientists to win worldwide fame, and indeed, one of the great scientists of this century. She had degrees in mathematics and physics. Winner of two Nobel Prizes, for Physics in 1903 and for Chemistry in 1911, she performed pioneering studies with radium and polonium and contributed profoundly to the understanding of radioactivity.
Maria Sklodowska-Curie
1867-1934
Perhaps the most famous of all women scientists, Maria Sklodowska-Curie is notable for her many firsts: She received 15 gold medals, 19 degrees, and other honors.
- She was the first to use the term radioactivity for this phenomenon.
- She was the first woman in Europe to receive her doctorate of science.
- In 1903, she became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize for Physics. The award, jointly awarded to Curie, her husband Pierre, and Henri Becquerel, was for the discovery of radioactivity.
- She was also the first female lecturer, professor and head of Laboratory at the Sorbonne University in Paris (1906).
- In 1911, she won an unprecedented second Nobel Prize (this time in chemistry) for her discovery and isolation of pure radium and radium components. She was the first person ever to receive two Nobel Prizes.
- She was the first mother-Nobel Prize Laureate of daughter-Nobel Prize Laureate. Her oldest daughter Irene Joliot-Curie also won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1935).
- She is the first woman which has been laid to rest under the famous dome of the Pantheon in Paris for her own merits.
A truly remarkable figure
in the history of science !
Maria Sklodowska-Curie
became the first Pole
to receive a Nobel Prize.
Maria Sklodowska was born as the fifth and youngest
child of Bronislawa Boguska, a pianist, singer, and teacher, and
Wladyslaw Sklodowski, a professor of mathematics and physics.
When she was little and living in Poland, her nickname was Manya.
From childhood she was remarkable for her prodigious memory,
and at the age of 16 she won a gold medal on completion of her
secondary education at the Russian lycée. Because her
father, a teacher of mathematics and physics, lost his savings
through bad investment, she had to take work as a teacher and,
at the same time, took part clandestinely in the nationalist
"free university," reading in Polish to women workers. At the
age of 18 she took a post as governess, where she suffered an
unhappy love affair. From her earnings she was able to finance
her sister Bronia's medical studies in Paris, on the understanding
that Bronia would in turn later help her to get an education.
In 1891 Maria Sklodowska went to Paris and began to follow the lectures of Paul Appel, Gabriel Lippmann, and Edmond Bouty at the Sorbonne. There she met physicists who were already well known--Jean Perrin, Charles Maurain, and Aimé Cotton. Sklodowska worked far into the night in her students'-quarter garret and virtually lived on bread and butter and tea. She came first in the licence of physical sciences in 1893. She began to work in Lippmann's research laboratory and in 1894 was placed second in the licence of mathematical sciences. It was in the spring of this year that she met Pierre Curie.
Maria Sklodowska is daughter of a Polish freethinker but reared by a Catholic mother. She abandoned the Church before she was 20 and her marriage with Pierre Curie was a purely civil ceremony because she says in her memoir of him, Pierre belonged to no religion and I did not practice any.
Their marriage (July 25, 1895) marked the start of a partnership
that was soon to achieve results of world significance, in particular
the discovery of polonium (so called by Maria in honour of Poland)
in the summer of 1898, and that of
radium a few months later. Following Henri Becquerel's discovery
(1896) of a new phenomenon (which she later called "radioactivity"),
Maria Curie, looking for a subject for a thesis, decided to
find out if the property discovered in uranium was to be found
in other matter. She discovered that this was true for thorium
at the same time as G.C. Schmidt did.
Turning to minerals, her attention was drawn to pitchblende, a mineral whose activity, superior to that of pure uranium, could only be explained by the presence in the ore of small quantities of an unknown substance of very high activity. Pierre Curie then joined her in the work that she had undertaken to resolve this problem and that led to the discovery of the new elements, polonium and radium. While Pierre Curie devoted himself chiefly to the physical study of the new radiations, Maria Curie struggled to obtain pure radium in the metallic state--achieved with the help of the chemist A. Debierne, one of Pierre Curie's pupils. On the results of this research Maria Curie received her doctorate of science in June 1903 and, with Pierre, was awarded the Davy Medal of the Royal Society. Also in 1903 they shared with Becquerel the Nobel Prize for Physics for the discovery of radioactivity.
The birth of her two daughters, Irene and Eve,
in 1897 and 1904 did not interrupt Maria's intensive scientific
work. She was appointed lecturer in physics at the École
Normale Supérieure for girls in Sévres (1900)
and introduced there a method of teaching based on experimental
demonstrations. In December 1904 she was appointed chief assistant
in the laboratory directed by Pierre Curie.
The sudden death of Pierre Curie (April 19, 1906) was a bitter blow to Maria Curie, but it was also a decisive turning point in her career: henceforth she was to devote all her energy to completing alone the scientific work that they had undertaken. On May 13, 1906, she was appointed to the professorship that had been left vacant on her husband's death; she was the first woman to teach in the Sorbonne. In 1908 she became titular professor, and in 1910 her fundamental treatise on radioactivity was published. In 1911 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, for the isolation of pure radium. In 1914 she saw the completion of the building of the laboratories of the Radium Institute (Institut du Radium) at the University of Paris.
Throughout World War I, Maria Curie, with the help of her daughter
Irène, devoted herself to the development of the use
of X-radiography. In 1918 the Radium Institute, the staff of
which Irène had joined, began to operate in earnest,
and it was to become a universal centre for nuclear physics
and chemistry. Maria Curie, now at the highest point of her
fame, and, from 1922, a member of the Academy of Medicine, devoted
her researches to the study of the chemistry of radioactive
substances and the medical applications of these substances.
In 1921, accompanied by her two daughters, Maria Curie made a triumphant journey to the United States, where President Warren G. Harding presented her with a gram of radium bought as the result of a collection among American women. She gave lectures, especially in Belgium, Brazil, Spain, and Czechoslovakia. She was made a member of the International Commission on Intellectual Co-operation by the Council of the League of Nations. In addition, she had the satisfaction of seeing the Curie Foundation in Paris develop and the inauguration in 1932 in Warsaw of the Radium Institute, of which her sister Bronia became director.
On July 4, 1934, near Sallanches (France), Maria Sklodowska-Curie died of leukaemia, which has a number of standard consequences, one of which can be aplastic anaemia caused by her exposure to the radium that made her famous.
Recognizing Maria Sklodowska-Curie with perhaps its highest posthumous honor in 1995, the French Government transferred her ashes, together with those of Pierre, to the Panthéon in Paris, making her the only woman (she is the first woman, again) to be recognized in this way for her own achievements.
One of Maria Sklodowska-Curie's outstanding achievements was to have understood
the need to accumulate intense radioactive sources, not only
for the treatment of illness but also to maintain an abundant
supply for research in nuclear physics; the resultant stockpile
was an unrivaled instrument until the appearance after 1930
of particle accelerators. The existence in Paris at the Radium
Institute of a stock of 1.5 grams of radium in which, over a
period of several years, radium D and polonium had accumulated,
made a decisive contribution to the success of the experiments
undertaken in the years around 1930 and in particular of those
performed by Irene Curie in conjunction with Frederic
Joliot, whom she had married in 1926. This work prepared the
way for the discovery of the neutron
by Sir James Chadwick and above all the discovery in 1934 by
Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie of artificial
radioactivity. A few months after this discovery Maria Curie
died as a result of leukemia caused by the action of radiation.
Her contribution to physics had been immense, not only in her
own work, the importance of which had been demonstrated by the
award to her of two Nobel Prizes, but because of her influence
on subsequent generations of nuclear physicists and chemists.
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"My mother was 37 years old when I was born. When I was big enough to know her, she was already an aging woman who had reached the summit of renown. And yet it is the 'celebrated scientist' who is strangest to me - probably because the idea that she was a 'celebrated scientist' did not occupy the mind of Marie Curie. It seems to me rather, that I have always lived near the poor student, haunted by dreams, who was Marie Sklodowska long before I came into the world."
Eve Curie, biographer of her mother |
 Albert Einstein once said of her:"Marie Curie is, of all celebrated beings, the one whom fame has not corrupted." Source: Madame Curie by Irene Curie, DaCapo Press 1937 |
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Citation from The Graduate Student Cookbook:
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| Quotes of Maria Sklodowska-Curie: |
| HONORARY DEGREE AWARDED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ID: | 000050
| Name:
| Marie Sklodowska Curie
| Degree:
| Doctor of Science
| Date:
| June 14, 1921, the One Hundred Twentieth Convocation
| Title:
| Professor of Radiology, University of Warsaw, Poland; Professor of Science, University of Paris, France
| Citation:
| Scientist, discoverer, and author of international reputation, significant figure in
the development of the new science of radioactivity, Nobel laureate both in 1903
and 1911, discoverer of the new elements polonium and radium; for these services
and especially for the new insight which your discoveries have given into the
nature of matter, and the new stimulus which they have been to the development
of human thought.
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Related links
| Craters of Maria Sklodowska-Curie | NASA: Current plans are to send the Marie Curie Rover to Mars on the 2001 lander. |
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 on the Moon Lat: 18.2S, Long: 95.5E Diameter: 127 km (from Clementine mission) |
 on the Mars Lat: 2.8W, Long: 33.8N Diameter: 116 km (from Viking Orbiter mission) |
 This rover is very similar to the Pathfinder Sojourner Rover, 1997. |
| Coin of Maria Sklodowska-Curie, 10 Polish zloty, 1967 | 100 years of Polonium and Radium 20 & 2 Polish zloty, 17.06.1998 |
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 Reverse |
  Obverse |
  Reverse |
| New 500 French francs honoring the Curie's research on radioactivity |
Stamps of Curie's, Polish Post Office | |||
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 Obverse |
 Reverse |
 3.05.1992 |
 18.09.1998 |
 
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NOTE:
I receive many letters with question: "I have to do a bibliography ...". So: Zb.Zwolinski, (Ed.). Maria Sklodowska-Curie, 1867-1934. <On-line: http://www.pl-nobel.prv.pl>. |
