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Marie Curie was a Polish-French scientist who specialised in physics and chemistry.

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Marie Curie was a Polish-French scientist who specialised in physics and chemistry.

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If you've ever seen your insides on an x-ray, you can thank Marie Curie's understanding of radioactivity for being able to see them so clearly.

Born Maria Sklodowska in Poland on November 7, 1867, to a father who taught math and physics, she developed a talent for science early. But the University of Warsaw, in the city where she lived, did not allow women students. Determined to become a scientist and work on her experiments, she moved to Paris, France, to study physics at a university called the Sorbonne.

In 1895, she married Pierre Curie. Together they discovered two new elements, or the smallest pieces of chemical substances: polonium (which she named after her home country) and radium. In 1903 they shared (along with another scientist whose work they built on) the Nobel Prize in physics for their work on radiation, which is energy given off as waves or high-speed particles. She was the first woman to win any kind of Nobel Prize.

Curie continued to rack up impressive achievements for women in science. In 1906, she became the first woman physics professor at the Sorbonne. In 1909, she was given her own lab at the University of Paris. Then in 1911, she won a Nobel Prize in chemistry. She's still the only person-man or woman-to win the Nobel Prize in two different sciences.

Curie soon started using her work to save lives. Her discoveries of radium and polonium were important because the elements were radioactive, which meant that when their atoms broke down, they gave off invisible rays that could pass through solid matter and conduct electricity. She used her groundbreaking understanding of radioactivity to help the x-ray take stronger and more accurate pictures inside the human body.

In 1914, during World War I, she created mobile x-ray units that could be driven to battlefield hospitals in France. Known as Little Curies, the units were often operated by women who Curie helped train so that doctors could see broken bones and bullets inside wounded soldiers' bodies.

After the war ended in 1918, Curie returned to her lab to continue working with radioactive elements. But those can be dangerous in very large doses, and on July 4, 1934, Curie died of a disease caused by radiation. By that time, though, she'd proven that women could make breakthroughs in science, and today she continues to inspire scientists to use their work to help other people.

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How this female scientist used physics to save lives

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Marie Curie was the first woman to ever win a Nobel Prize. She was the first ever person to win a Nobel Prie twice

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Marie Curie was the first woman to ever win a Nobel Prize. She was the first ever person to win a Nobel Prie twice

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M arie Curie, née Maria Sklodowska, was born in Warsaw on November 7, 1867, the daughter of a secondary-school teacher. She received a general education in local schools and some scientific training from her father. She became involved in a students' revolutionary organization and found it prudent to leave Warsaw, then in the part of Poland dominated by Russia, for Cracow, which at that time was under Austrian rule. In 1891, she went to Paris to continue her studies at the Sorbonne where she obtained Licenciateships in Physics and the Mathematical Sciences. She met Pierre Curie, Professor in the School of Physics in 1894 and in the following year they were married. She succeeded her husband as Head of the Physics Laboratory at the Sorbonne, gained her Doctor of Science degree in 1903, and following the tragic death of Pierre Curie in 1906, she took his place as Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences, the first time a woman had held this position. She was also appointed Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris, founded in 1914.

Her early researches, together with her husband, were often performed under difficult conditions, laboratory arrangements were poor and both had to undertake much teaching to earn a livelihood. The discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896 inspired the Curies in their brilliant researches and analyses which led to the isolation of polonium, named after the country of Marie's birth, and radium. Mme. Curie developed methods for the separation of radium from radioactive residues in sufficient quantities to allow for its characterization and the careful study of its properties, therapeutic properties in particular.

Mme. Curie throughout her life actively promoted the use of radium to alleviate suffering and during World War I, assisted by her daughter, Irene, she personally devoted herself to this remedial work. She retained her enthusiasm for science throughout her life and did much to establish a radioactivity laboratory in her native city - in 1929 President Hoover of the United States presented her with a gift of $ 50,000, donated by American friends of science, to purchase radium for use in the laboratory in Warsaw.

Mme. Curie, quiet, dignified and unassuming, was held in high esteem and admiration by scientists throughout the world. She was a member of the Conseil du Physique Solvay from 1911 until her death and since 1922 she had been a member of the Committee of Intellectual Co-operation of the League of Nations. Her work is recorded in numerous papers in scientific journals and she is the author of Recherches sur les Substances Radioactives (1904), L'Isotopie et les Éléments Isotopes and the classic Traité' de Radioactivité (1910).

The importance of Mme. Curie's work is reflected in the numerous awards bestowed on her. She received many honorary science, medicine and law degrees and honorary memberships of learned societies throughout the world. Together with her husband, she was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903, for their study into the spontaneous radiation discovered by Becquerel, who was awarded the other half of the Prize. In 1911 she received a second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry, in recognition of her work in radioactivity. She also received, jointly with her husband, the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in 1903 and, in 1921, President Harding of the United States, on behalf of the women of America, presented her with one gram of radium in recognition of her service to science.

For further details, cf. Biography of Pierre Curie. Mme. Curie died in Savoy, France, after a short illness, on July 4, 1934.

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished inNobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

To cite this section
MLA style: Marie Curie - Biographical. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Wed. 9 Aug 2023. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1903/marie-curie/biographical/>

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The Nobel Prize in Physics 1903 was divided, one half awarded to Antoine Henri Becquerel "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity", the other half jointly to Pierre Curie and Marie Curie, née Sklodowska "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel"

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Marie Curie discovered radium and polonium, two elements used helped the medical field to understand radioactivty

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Marie Curie discovered radium and polonium, two elements used helped the medical field to understand radioactivty

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What did Marie Curie accomplish?

Why was Marie Curie important?

Marie Curie, née Maria Salomea Skłodowska, (born November 7, 1867, Warsaw, Congress Kingdom of Poland, Russian Empire-died July 4, 1934, near Sallanches, France), Polish-born French physicist, famous for her work on radioactivity and twice a winner of the Nobel Prize. With Henri Becquerel and her husband, Pierre Curie, she was awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics. She was the sole winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and she is the only woman to win the award in two different fields.
(Read Marie Curie's 1926 Britannica essay on radium.)

Early life

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 Bronisława's medical studies in Paris, with the understanding that Bronisława would in turn later help her to get an education.

Move to Paris, Pierre Curie, and first Nobel Prize

In 1891 Skłodowska went to Paris and, now using the name Marie, began to follow the lectures of Paul Appell, Gabriel Lippmann, and Edmond Bouty at the Sorbonne. There she met physicists who were already well known- Jean Perrin, Charles Maurain, and Aimé Cotton. Skłodowska worked far into the night in her student-quarters 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 that year that she met Pierre Curie.

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 Marie in honour of her native land) 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"), Marie 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 her attention to minerals, she found her interest drawn to pitchblende, a mineral whose activity, superior to that of pure uranium, could be explained only 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, Marie Curie struggled to obtain pure radium in the metallic state-achieved with the help of the chemist André-Louis Debierne, one of Pierre Curie's pupils. On the results of this research, Marie 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, Irène and Ève, in 1897 and 1904, did not interrupt Marie's intensive scientific work. She was appointed lecturer in physics at the École Normale Supérieure for girls in Sèvres (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.

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Marie Curie | Biography, Nobel Prize, Accomplishments, & Facts

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Marie Curie, Polish-born French physicist, famous for her work on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and she is the only woman to win the award in two different fields (Physics, 1903; Chemistry, 1911). Learn more about Marie Curie in this article.

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Marie Curie's work helped greatly during World War I. She developed mobile radiography units (known as "Petites Curies") to provide X-ray services to wounded soldiers on the front lines.

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Marie Curie's work helped greatly during World War I. She developed mobile radiography units (known as "Petites Curies") to provide X-ray services to wounded soldiers on the front lines.

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Marie Curie was a Polish-French scientist who won two Nobel prizes. Her work focused on radioactivity, which is a property of some chemical elements. (Radioactive elements...

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Marie Curie's discoveries helped the medical field with the invention of the x-ray and radiotherapy to help to treat cancer. 

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Marie Curie's discoveries helped the medical field with the invention of the x-ray and radiotherapy to help to treat cancer. 

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There was a time when people didn't think that women were clever enough to work in science.

We know today this is nonsense, but not then.

One woman, Marie Curie, helped change the lives of people all over the world and showed that girls are as good at science as boys!

When Marie lived in Poland girls were not allowed to go to university, so her parents had to send her in secret.

She later moved to Paris to study.

Marie married another scientist, Pierre. They worked together to find out about the tiny parts, called elements, that make up everything in our Universe.

They discovered a new element that gave off rays of heat and light - they called this radium. They studied the light and heat it gave off and called this radioactivity.

They were given the most important prize in the world for science: the Nobel Prize. Marie was the first woman ever to receive this!

Marie and Pierre found that radium could help the body fight cancer cells.

Sadly Pierre died when he was just 46. Marie took over his teaching job at the University of Paris - she was so good they made her a professor. The first woman professor the university ever had!

A few years later, Marie won another Nobel Prize and the university built her a laboratory.

Marie worked hard to find a cure for cancer - nobody knew that working with radium was dangerous. But it was and because of this Marie became very ill and died.

Marie Curie inspired others to continue her work.

Over time, this has saved the lives of many people all over the world and, of course, showed people that women are just as able to study science as men!

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The inspiring story of the famous female scientist who discovered radium and radioactivity. Find out more with BBC Bitesize KS1 History.

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Marie Curie died from leukemia, a type of cancer. Working very closely with these harmful metals caused this disease yet she died doing something that she was passionate about and contributed greatly to the world's discoveries.

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‘Unthinkable’: Marie Curie’s Paris lab saved from the bulldozers … for now

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‘Unthinkable’: Marie Curie’s Paris lab saved from the bulldozers … for now

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France's culture ministry has stepped in at the last minute to suspend the demolition of a symbol of France's scientific medical heritage, but campaigners say the fight goes on.

Bulldozers were due to move in to No 26 rue d'Ulm in Paris's Latin Quarter on Monday to knock down the Pavillon des Sources, one of three buildings that made up Marie Curie 's Paris laboratory.

The building was scheduled for demolition as part of a development project that also threatens lime and plane trees planted by the double Nobel prize-winning scientist.

The eleventh-hour intervention came after a petition and appeals to the country's president, Emmanuel Macron, and government ministers.

On Friday afternoon, France's culture minister, Rima Abdul Malak, said the demolition was being "suspended" after consultation with the Curie Institute that owns the property to "allow time to examine ... any possible alternatives".

Baptiste Gianeselli, who led the campaign to stave off the bulldozers, said the last-minute news was "fantastic" but the campaign would go on.

"The demolition due to happen on Monday has been blocked but the threat is not completely gone as long as the building is not classified as a historic monument. So we have to keep up the pressure."

Campaigners had earlier warned of the outrage if the demolition went ahead. "If Emmanuel Macron doesn't understand that it's not just a historic building but one of the last symbols of Marie Curie, the most illustrious woman of our era, it would be a very serious mistake," said Gianeselli.

"It's unthinkable. The whole site should be classified as historic. Buildings linked to Louis Pasteur were listed in 1981, but not those linked to Marie Curie. The whole site should be protected."

Claudine Monteil, a women's rights specialist, historian and a former French diplomat who has written books on Marie Curie, agreed. She said Curie was a "worldwide icon ... an inspiration for women everywhere".

"This battle is not completely over. Now we have to negotiate to ensure that it will never be destroyed. It needs to have a heritage listing, and that doesn't happen in a day. So it's really important the fight goes on.

"This is world heritage. I think they don't realise what it means symbolically. Marie Curie is the most famous woman scientist in the world and is a reference and inspiration. The Curie Institute does not need to destroy these historic buildings. It has space elsewhere."

The Pavillon des Sources, part of the former laboratory of Marie Curie. Photograph: Christophe Petit-Tesson/EPA-EFE

Curie, born Maria Skłodowska in Warsaw in 1867, was the youngest of a family of five children whose parents were struggling school teachers. She moved to France aged 24 and studied at the Sorbonne, reading physics, chemistry and mathematics, and would later become the first female professor at the university.

She and her scientist husband, Pierre, were the first to separate polonium and radium from uranium, a discovery for which both received the Nobel prize for physics along with Henri Becquerel in 1903. Pierre Curie died in a road accident in 1906; five years later, Marie won her second Nobel prize, this time for chemistry.

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In 1909, the Pasteur Institute and the University of Paris went into partnership to build a research laboratory for Marie Curie. The brick and stone Pavillon des Sources was used by Curie to prepare radioactive materials for her research. It was one of three buildings that made up the Radium Institute (now known as the Curie Institute); the others were the Curie Pavilion, where she had her laboratory, which is now a museum, and the Pasteur Pavilion, which housed the biology laboratory.

Curie was director of the physics and chemistry laboratory in the Curie Pavilion until her death in 1934. The institute became a world-leading centre for research into radioactive bodies and helped develop the use of radiation in the fight against cancer. During the first world war, Curie developed mobile X-ray units used to diagnose injuries from the battlefront. She died of leukaemia aged 66, almost certainly due to years of exposure to radiation and X-rays.

In March last year, Paris's City Hall approved the institute's application to demolish the pavilion, designed by Henri-Paul Nénot in 1914, decontaminate the site and construct a five-storey structure to enlarge the campus. An art deco building from the 1930s is also to be destroyed. Critics say the plans also pose a risk to the trees.

Stéphane Bern, a French journalist who specialises in royalty, and whom Macron tasked in 2017 with drawing up a list of little known gems of the country's monuments and buildings, wants to save the pavilion, the destruction of which he said "would be a serious error".

Bern has criticised Paris city council for "washing its hands of the matter like Pontius Pilate". But at City Hall, the deputy mayor, Emmanuel Grégoire, defended the planned demolition, saying Curie had "never, never worked" in the Pavillon des Sources, which campaigners say is untrue.

The Curie Institute did not respond to requests for a comment. It has said the pavilion was used to store rubbish and is "polluted and unusable". However, its own website states that "Marie Curie directed physics-chemistry research in the Curie Pavilion and the Pavillon des Sources".

Monteil added: "Ask people around the world to name famous French women and they come up with Joan of Arc and Marie Curie. What would the reaction be if they were proposing to do this to somewhere linked to a man as famous as Marie Curie?"

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'Unthinkable': Marie Curie's Paris lab saved from the bulldozers ... for now

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Last-minute reprieve keeps Nobel scientist's legacy standing. Now campaigners want the building to be listed

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'Have no fear of perfection. You'll never reach it' - Marie Curie