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Marie Curie was born on November 7, 1867, in Warsaw, Poland. She was the youngest of 5. Her mother soon died, and her father couldn't support her, so she became a governess and continued to study and learn.

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It was 1891 when her sister offered Marie the chance to go live with her in Paris. She accepted right away and was enrolled at Sorbonne University. It was there that she studied physics and math. She fell in love with both of those subjects and that became her career.

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In Paris 1894, she also met the love of her life, Pierre Curie, a scientist. One year after they met, they were married.

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Marie Curie and her husband became research workers, and they believed they had found a new element, but other scientists doubted her when she brought it up.

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Marie and Pierre began to experiment with radioactive materials, and eventually found polonium. They soon realized, though, that there was a much more radioactive material in polonium.

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In 1898, they found enough evidence to claim there was another element, radium, but they didn't exactly have it yet. It was a long process to get to radium, but they eventually found it. Unfortunately, it took a toll on them because they were working with radioactive material.

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1898 was also the year that their first child, Irene, was born. In 1904, their second daughter, Eve, came into the world.

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She followed Pierre and became the head of the Physics Laboratory at the Sorbonne in 1903. That same year, Marie got her Doctor of Science Degree, and she got her first Nobel Prize for Physics.

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Sadly, in 1906, Pierre Curie was killed in an accident on the street. Marie was devastated, but continued to work. She succeeded her husband in his Chair as Professor at the Sorbonne.

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After Pierre's death, she became the first Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences to be a woman, in 1906. In 1911, Marie earned a second Nobel Prize in Chemistry. And in 1914, she was appointed as the Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris.

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During World War 1, Marie and her daughter, Irene, created a portable x-ray machine, to find broken bones for the soldiers in battle. She and Irene went around helping soldiers during the war, fixing their broken bones.

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On July 4, 1934, Marie Curie died in France, at the age of 66. She died of from an illness due to her long years work with radioactive material.

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1. How is this project topic relevant today?
A: This project topic is relevant today because Marie Curie's design for the mobile x-ray machine is still used to this day in 2021. Marie and Pierre Curie also discovered Polonium and Radium, two elements that are now part of the Periodic Table.
2. What did you know about your topic prior to the research project, and what new information have you learned during the research part of this assignment?
A: Eugenia: I knew absolutely nothing about Marie Curie, but she was the only women scientist on the list, so we decided to give it a shot. I learned that she discovered radium and polonium and created the first portable x-ray.
Leilani: I knew some things about Marie Curie from an achieve that I had done. I had known that Marie Curie developed the portable x-ray machine, and they had launched during World War 1. I had also known that she had died from the very thing she discovered, which was radium. I learned that she also discovered polonium, I had thought that she only discovered one element.
3. Semester 1 Reflection: How have you personally grown in science this year thus far?
A: Eugenia:  I have grown a lot, because in my elementary school, we did nothing for science. So coming into seventh grade science was a pretty big change for me. I learned a lot from atoms to physical and chemical changes. I've learned them and have been able to understand. Science has taught me a lot of things, things that I didn't think I'd learn in seventh grade.
Leilani: I have also personally grown a lot. I had gone into seventh grade knowing nothing, but wanted to learn about science. There are things that I would never had thought I would learn about. For example, balancing equations. Balancing equations is something that I found I am pretty good at, since the steps you take are pure math, which is something that I love to do. I am so glad that I have learned many things in science, because now I can use my new found skills in my everyday life.

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Thank you for reading our timeline about Marie Curie, and her life and work. :)

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https://www.mariecurie.org.uk/who/our-history/marie-curie-the-scientist

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1903/marie-curie/biographical/

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Humble beginnings

Born Maria Skłodowska on 7 November 1867 in Warsaw, Poland, she was the youngest of five children of poor school teachers.

After her mother died and her father could no longer support her she became a governess, reading and studying in her own time to quench her thirst for knowledge. She never lost this passion.

To become a teacher - the only alternative which would allow her to be independent - was never a possibility because a lack of money prevented her from a formal higher education. However, when her sister offered her lodgings in Paris with a view to going to university, she grasped the opportunity and moved to France in 1891.

She immediately entered Sorbonne University in Paris where she read physics and mathematics - she had naturally discovered a love of the subjects through her insatiable appetite for learning.

It was in Paris, in 1894, that she met Pierre Curie - a scientist working in the city - and who she married a year later. It was also around this time that she adopted the French spelling of her name - Marie. It is of course this version of her name that our charity uses, along with our hospices, Marie Curie Nursing Service and our Companion service.

Work on radioactivity and discoveries

The Curies became research workers at the School of Chemistry and Physics in Paris and there they began their pioneering work into invisible rays given off by uranium - a new phenomenon which had recently been discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel.

He had shown that the rays were able to pass through solid matter, fog and photographic film and caused air to conduct electricity.

Marie also noticed that samples of a mineral called pitchblende, which contains uranium ore, were a great deal more radioactive than the pure element uranium. Further work convinced her the very large readings she was getting could not be caused by uranium alone - there was something else in the pitchblende. Since nobody had ever found it before, it could only be present in tiny quantities, and it seemed to be very radioactive. Marie was convinced she had found a new chemical element - other scientists doubted her results.

Pierre and Marie Curie set about working to search for the unknown element. They ground up samples of pitchblende, dissolved them in acid, and began to separate the different elements present, using the standard analytical chemistry techniques of the time. Eventually, they extracted a black powder 330 times more radioactive than uranium, which they called polonium . Polonium was a new chemical element, atomic number 84.

When the Curies investigated further, they found that the liquid left behind after they had extracted polonium was still extremely radioactive. They realised that pitchblende contained another new element, far more radioactive than polonium, but present in even smaller quantities.

In 1898, the Curies published strong evidence supporting the existence of the new element - which they called radium - but they still had no sample of it. Pitchblende is an expensive mineral, because it contains valuable uranium, and Marie needed a lot of it.

She got in touch with a factory in Austria that removed the uranium from pitchblende for industrial use and bought several tonnes of the worthless waste product, which was even more radioactive than the original pitchblende, and was much cheaper. Marie set about processing the pitchblende to extract the tiny quantities of radium. This involved working on a much larger scale than before, with 20kg batches of the mineral - grinding, dissolving, filtering, precipitating, collecting, redissolving, crystallising and recrystallising.

The work was heavy and physically demanding - and involved dangers the Curies did not appreciate. During this time they began to feel sick and physically exhausted; today we can attribute their ill-health to the early symptoms of radiation sickness. At the time they persevered in ignorance of the risks, often with raw and inflamed hands because they were continually handling highly radioactive material.

In 1902 Marie eventually isolated radium (as radium chloride), determining its atomic weight as 225.93. The journey to the discovery had been long and arduous.
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In 1903 Marie and Pierre were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics jointly with Henri Becquerel for their combined, though separate, work on radioactivity.

In the same year, Marie passed her doctorate thesis in Physics.

In 1906 Marie's life was struck by tragedy when Pierre was killed in a street accident after being knocked down by a horse and cart. Her indomitable spirit, however, kept her working and she went on to succeed him in his Chair as Professor at the Sorbonne, as well as carrying on lecturing where he had left off.

Her determination and remarkable endeavours led to a second Nobel Prize in 1911, this time in chemistry for creating a means of measuring radioactivity. Not long after, Sorbonne built the first radium institute with two laboratories; one for study of radioactivity under Marie Curie's direction, and the other for biological research into the treatment of cancer.

During the First World War, Marie Curie worked to develop small, mobile X-ray units that could be used to diagnose injuries near the battlefront. As Director of the Red Cross Radiological Service, she toured Paris, asking for money, supplies and vehicles which could be converted.

In October 1914, the first machines, known as "Petits Curies", were ready, and Marie set off to the front. She worked with her daughter Irene, then aged 17, at casualty clearing stations close to the front line, X-raying wounded men to locate fractures, bullets and shrapnel.

The technology Marie Curie developed for the "Petits Curies" is similar to that used today in the fluoroscopy machine at our Hampstead hospice. A powerful X-ray machine, it allows doctors to examine moving images in the body, such as pumping action of the heart or the motion of swallowing.

After the war, Marie continued her work as a researcher, teacher and head of a laboratory and received many awards and prizes. Among them were the Ellan Richards Research Prize (1921), the Grand Prix du Marquis d'Argenteuil (1923) and the Cameron Prize from Edinburgh University (1931). She was also the recipient of many honorary degrees from universities around the world.
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Why we're named after Marie Curie

A successful name in the field of science, Marie Curie allowed her name to be used by the Marie Curie Hospital in north London. Opened in 1930, it was staffed entirely by women to treat female cancer patients using radiology. It also had research facilities.

After the Marie Curie Hospital was more or less destroyed in 1944 by a bomb, a group of people decided to re-establish the hospital as a charity under Marie Curie's name, rather than as part of the new NHS. This marked the start of the hospital's development into a charity to support cancer patients.

Now, in the 21 st century, Marie Curie is the UK's leading end of life charity in the UK. We're here to support anyone with an illness they're likely to die from, and those close to them. We provide expert hospice care, support over the phone, and push for a better end of life for all by campaigning and sharing research to change the system. In 2015, Marie Curie's granddaughter, Hélène Langevin-Joliot, visited our Hampstead hospice and talked about her grandmother's legacy.

We are proud to have this great scientist as our namesake.
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Films about Marie Curie the scientist

Marie Curie's renown has led to her being the subject of numerous films over the years.

Below are just some of the many dramatisations that have been created about her work and life. Our charity has not been involved in the production of any of any of these works.

Radioactive - 2020

British actress Rosamund Pike portrays Marie Curie in Radioactive , the most recent film about the physicist. It focuses on her career in the scientific world and the relationships she had throughout her life, including with her husband Pierre Curie.

Marie Curie: The Courage of Knowledge - 2016

Although born in Poland, Marie Curie spent much of her life living in France. As a result, she has been portrayed several times in French cinema. Marie Curie: The Courage of Knowledge , a French-language film, was screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival.

Marie Curie: More Than Meets the Eye - 1997

In this 1997 TV film Marie Curie is played by Kate Trotter. Marie Curie: More Than Meets the Eye sees two little girls notice a woman who is somehow able to enter high-security buildings during WW1. They later find out that the subject of their intrigue is none other than the famous physicist.

Madame Curie - 1943

This biographical film was released only 10 years after Marie Curie's death - a testament to the enduring recognition of her work. Madame Curie was adapted from the biography of Ève Curie, Marie Curie's daughter, and focuses on how her mother and father met while working together.
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Marie Curie quotes
"Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained." "Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood." "I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries." "I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale." "One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done." "Have no fear of perfection; you'll never reach it." "Humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit." "You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful." "I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy." "Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas."

Death and legacy

On 4 July 1934, at the Sancellemoz Sanatorium in Passy, France at the age of 66, Marie Curie died. The cause of her death was given as aplastic pernicious anaemia, a condition she developed after years of exposure to radiation through her work.

She left two daughters, Irene (born 1898) and Eve (born 1904).

Irene, like her mother, entered the field of scientific research and, with her husband Frederic Joliot, worked on the nucleus of the atom and together were awarded a Nobel Prize and credited with the discovery of artificial radiation. Irene too died of a radiation-related illness - leukaemia - in 1956. Irene's daughter and granddaugther to Marie Curie, Hélène Langevin-Joliot, herself a famous nuclear physicist, visited our Hampstead hospice in March 2015.

Eve became a journalist and writer. Irene's daughter Dr Hélène Langevin-Joliot (born 1927) also pursued a career in nuclear physics and became research emeritus of the National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris.

In 1995, Marie and Pierre Curie were reburied in the Pantheon - the Paris mausoleum reserved for France's most revered dead - on the orders of French President Mitterand.

Marie Curie was the first woman to be awarded a place in the Pantheon for her own achievements.

Marie Curie's life as a scientist was one which flourished because of her ability to observe, deduce and predict. She is also arguably the first woman to make such a significant contribution to science. Marie Curie the charity is proud to be named in honour of her.

Further information about Marie Curie
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Learn about Marie Curie's history, from our founding in 1948 to today.

Our history

How we fund, manage and invest in research.

Research strategy

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Marie Curie the scientist | Biog, facts & quotes

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Marie Curie is remembered for her discovery of radium and polonium, and her huge contribution to the fight against cancer. This work continues to inspire our charity's mission to support anyone with an illness they're likely to die from, and those close to them.