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Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie (Polish: [ˈmarja salɔˈmɛa skwɔˈdɔfska kʲiˈri] ⓘ; née Skłodowska; 7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934), known simply as Marie Curie (/ ˈ k j ʊər i / KURE-ee, French: [maʁi kyʁi]), was a Polish and naturalised-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity.
The inspiring story of the famous female scientist who discovered radium and radioactivity. Find out more with BBC Bitesize KS1 History.
- Overview
- Early life
- Move to Paris, Pierre Curie, and first Nobel Prize
Working with her husband, Pierre Curie, Marie Curie discovered polonium and radium in 1898. In 1903 they won the Nobel Prize for Physics for discovering radioactivity. In 1911 she won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for isolating pure radium. Following work on X-rays during World War I, she studied radioactive substances and their medical applications.
What awards did Marie Curie win?
With Henri Becquerel and her husband, Pierre Curie, Marie Curie was awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics. She was the sole winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to win the award in two different fields.
Why was Marie Curie important?
Marie Curie’s contributions to physics were immense, not only in her own work, as indicated by her two Nobel Prizes, but also through her influence on subsequent generations of nuclear physicists and chemists. Her work paved the way for the discovery of the neutron and artificial radioactivity.
Marie Curie (born November 7, 1867, Warsaw, Congress Kingdom of Poland, Russian Empire—died July 4, 1934, near Sallanches, France) Polish-born French physicist, famous for her work on radioactivity and twice a winner of the Nobel Prize. With Henri Becquerel and her husband, Pierre Curie, she was awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics. She was the sole winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and she is the only woman to win the award in two different fields.
From childhood she was remarkable for her prodigious memory, and at the age of 16 she won a gold medal on completion of her secondary education at the Russian lycée. Because her father, a teacher of mathematics and physics, lost his savings through bad investment, she had to take work as a teacher and, at the same time, took part clandestinely in t...
In 1891 Skłodowska went to Paris and, now using the name Marie, began to follow the lectures of Paul Appell, Gabriel Lippmann, and Edmond Bouty at the Sorbonne. There she met physicists who were already well known—Jean Perrin, Charles Maurain, and Aimé Cotton. Skłodowska worked far into the night in her student-quarters garret and virtually lived on bread and butter and tea. She came first in the licence of physical sciences in 1893. She began to work in Lippmann’s research laboratory and in 1894 was placed second in the licence of mathematical sciences. It was in the spring of that year that she met Pierre Curie.
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Faces of Science
Their marriage (July 25, 1895) marked the start of a partnership that was soon to achieve results of world significance, in particular the discovery of polonium (so called by Marie in honour of her native land) in the summer of 1898 and that of radium a few months later. Following Henri Becquerel’s discovery (1896) of a new phenomenon (which she later called “radioactivity”), Marie Curie, looking for a subject for a thesis, decided to find out if the property discovered in uranium was to be found in other matter. She discovered that this was true for thorium at the same time as G.C. Schmidt did.
Turning her attention to minerals, she found her interest drawn to pitchblende, a mineral whose activity, superior to that of pure uranium, could be explained only by the presence in the ore of small quantities of an unknown substance of very high activity. Pierre Curie then joined her in the work that she had undertaken to resolve this problem and that led to the discovery of the new elements, polonium and radium. While Pierre Curie devoted himself chiefly to the physical study of the new radiations, Marie Curie struggled to obtain pure radium in the metallic state—achieved with the help of the chemist André-Louis Debierne, one of Pierre Curie’s pupils. On the results of this research, Marie Curie received her doctorate of science in June 1903 and, with Pierre, was awarded the Davy Medal of the Royal Society. Also in 1903 they shared with Becquerel the Nobel Prize for Physics for the discovery of radioactivity.
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- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
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.
Mar 5, 2024 · Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, in Physics, and with her later win, in Chemistry, she became the first person to claim Nobel honors twice.
Mme. Curie, quiet, dignified and unassuming, was held in high esteem and admiration by scientists throughout the world. She was a member of the Conseil du Physique Solvay from 1911 until her death and since 1922 she had been a member of the Committee of Intellectual Co-operation of the League of Nations.
