Women Scientists

Marie Curie 1867-1934

At a glance:

universally famous scientist who won two Nobel prizes for her work on radioactivity

Marie Curie was born in Poland but enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1891, graduating first in her class for physics. She then took a maths degree. She began research and met her husband Pierre whom she married in 1895. She believed there to be an unknown radioactive element and together they worked to isolate it from pitchblende, a uranium ore, discovering first polonium and later radium. Her 1903 dissertation became the first doctorate in science awarded to a woman in Europe. The Curies, together with Henri Becquerel were jointly awarded a Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903. Pierre was killed in an accident in 1906. Marie was denied election to the French Academy of Sciences in 1911, the same year that she was awarded a second Nobel Prize, but this time for Chemistry. Thereafter she refused to have her name resubmitted. She was a global celebrity but scandal erupted when news of her affair with a married scientist, Paul Langevin emerged in the press, prompting angry mobs outside her home and deeply unpleasant newspaper coverage. During World War I Curie and her daughter Irene, fitted ambulances with portable X ray equipment, driving vehicles to the front line. She was dogged by constant ill health induced by exposure to radioactivity. Her notebooks are still too radioactive to be handled without specialist equipment.
Marie Curie

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Comments

Here is what people are saying about Marie Curie:

from the person answering celeste's (18:49 14/03/2010)
if you would read, she discovered polonium, radium, AND artificial radioactivity

from Jim Clark (1:24 12/11/2009)
Hi Seems unlikely that anyone else on the list belongs up there with Galileo, Darwin, Einstein, and other great scientists? Jim

from phenotype (1:21 12/11/2009)
So she won two nobel prizes.... in different fields, and her notes are radioactive. What more do you need? I can't answer that. Ask the French National Academy.

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