Marie Curie

Marie Skłodowska Curie

Born : 7 November 1867 Warsaw, Congress Poland, Russian Empire

Died : 4 July 1934 (aged 66) Passy, Haute-Savoie, Third French Republic

Cause of death : Aplastic anemia from exposure to radiation

Residence : Poland, France

Citizenship :

1. Poland (by birth)
2. France (by marriage)

Alma mater : 

University of Paris

ESPCI

Known for : 

• Radioactivity
• Polonium
• Radium

Awards

• Nobel Prize in Physics (1903)
• Davy Medal (1903)
• Matteucci Medal (1904)
• Elliott Cresson Medal (1909)
• Albert Medal (1910)
• Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911)
• Willard Gibbs Award (1921)

Scientific career

Fields :

• Physics,
• chemistry

Institutions :

• University of Paris
• Institut du Radium
• École Normale Supérieure
• French Academy of Medicine
• International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation

Thesis : Recherches sur les substances radioactives (Research on Radioactive Substances)

Marie Skłodowska Curie was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win twice, the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences, and was part of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris.

She was born in Warsaw, in what was then the Kingdom of Poland, part of the Russian Empire. She studied at Warsaw's clandestine Flying University and began her practical scientific training in Warsaw. In 1891, aged 24, she followed her older sister Bronisława to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. She shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie and with physicist Henri Becquerel. She won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Quotes

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.

One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.

A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician: he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales.

I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.

All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child.

There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.

I have frequently been questioned, especially by women, of how I could reconcile family life with a scientific career. Well, it has not been easy.

I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries.

In science, we must be interested in things, not in persons.