Marie Curie

Who is Marie Curie?

Marie Curie, born Maria Skłodowska in Warsaw, was a physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity, a term she coined. Unable to pursue higher education in partitioned Poland, she moved to Paris and studied at the Sorbonne. Together with her husband Pierre Curie, she discovered the elements polonium, which she named after her homeland Poland, and radium. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, sharing the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, and in 1911 she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, becoming the first person and only woman to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences. During the First World War she developed mobile radiography units to help battlefield surgeons. She founded research institutes in Paris and Warsaw. She died from aplastic anaemia, likely caused by long-term exposure to radiation.

Sources: Eve Curie, 'Madame Curie: A Biography', 1937 · Susan Quinn, 'Marie Curie: A Life', 1995