-
Born
Maria Salomea Skłodowska va ser una física i química polonesa, pionera en els primers temps de l’estudi de les radiacions. Va rebre el Premi Nobel de Física el 1903, juntament amb el seu marit, Pierre Curie, i Henri Becquerel, pels seus descobriments en el camp de la radioactivitat. L'any 1911 va rebre el Premi Nobel de Química per l'aïllament del radi pur. [3] Va ser la primera a emprar el terme radioactivitat. -
Life in Paris
She left Poland for France. In Paris, Maria briefly found shelter with her sister and brother-in-law before renting a garret closer to the university, in the Latin Quarter, and proceeding with her studies of physics, chemistry, and mathematics at the University of Paris, where she enrolled in late 1891. She subsisted on her meagre resources, keeping herself warm during cold winters by wearing all the clothes she had. She focused so hard on her studies that she sometimes forgot to eat. -
Children
Marie and Pierre had a daughter born on September 12, 1897 named Irène and another, Eve, born in December 1904. Years later, on November 1, 1914, Irene began assisting her in research. -
Married
When she was denied a place at the University of Krakow simply because she was a woman she returned to Paris. Almost a year later, on July 26, 1895, Marie married Pierre Curie, in a simple ceremony in which they received some money from friends and family. With these gifts, the bride and groom bought two bicycles and spent the whole summer traveling around France, staying in inns and eating little.
The marriage would last, until the tragic death of Pierre, a total of eleven years. -
The doctorate and the new elements
In 1896, Becquerel discovered that uranium salts emit X-rays that resemble X-rays in their penetrating power.He showed that this radiation,unlike phosphorescence, does not depend on an external source of energy, but seemed to arise spontaneously from uranium itself.This work was related to the recent discovery of X-rays by physicist Wilhelm Röntgen. she became interested in this work and, with the help of her husband, decided to investigate the nature of the radiation produced by uranium salts. -
Nobel Prizes
In December 1903, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Pierre Curie, Marie Curie, and Henri Becquerel the Nobel Prize in Physics, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel." -
Study of radioactivity
With her husband, they studied radioactive materials and in particular uraninite, which had the curious property of being more radioactive than the uranium extracted from it. After several years of constant work, with the concentration of various classes of uraninite, they isolated two new chemical elements. The first they decided to call polonium, in reference to their native country, and the other, radium, because of its intense radioactivity. -
World War I
In 1915, Curie produced hollow needles containing "radium emanation", a colourless, radioactive gas given off by radium, later identified as radon, to be used for sterilizing infected tissue. She provided the radium from her own one-gram supply. It is estimated that over a million wounded soldiers were treated with her X-ray units. -
Postwar years
In 1920, for the 25th anniversary of the discovery of radium, the French government established a stipend for her; its previous recipient was Louis Pasteur (1822–95). In 1921, she was welcomed triumphantly when she toured the United States to raise funds for research on radium. Mrs. William Brown Meloney, after interviewing Curie, created a Marie Curie Radium Fund and raised money to buy radium, publicising her trip. -
Death
Curie visited Poland for the last time in early 1934. A few months later, on 4 July 1934, she died at the Sancellemoz sanatorium in Passy, Haute-Savoie, from aplastic anaemia believed to have been contracted from her long-term exposure to radiation.
