Marie Curie is one of the most well-known scientists in the world. She is seen as an icon in the world of modern science and her works proved to be tremendously impactful in the fields of chemistry and radiation. However, Marie endured a lot to get to become the person she is known as today.
Born Maria Salomea Skłodowska in Warsaw, Poland on November 7, 1867, Maria was the youngest of 5 siblings. Her parents were well renowned teachers, but a few years into her life her family experienced roadblocks. At the time Poland was under the Russian Empire, and Maria’s parents (as well as both the maternal and paternal sides of the family), were supportive of Polish independence. This caused Maria’s father to be forced into a low-income job, plunging them into poverty. A bad investment later on also affected them deeply, not helpful when Maria’s mother and oldest sister passed away a few years later.
Fast forward a couple of years and Maria had graduated from a boarding school and a secondary school, and then began attending the Flying University, a Polish patriotic school for those who wanted higher learning. Because she was a woman, Maria wasn’t allowed to attend higher level school, so both her and her sister Bronya attended the Flying University because it gave them more opportunities and allowed women to attend.
Later on, Maria worked as a tutor and governess for a few years, before moving to Paris and living with her sister, now married, and her husband. She secured a spot in the University of Paris, continuing her studies in the day and tutoring in the evenings, barely making money. She rigorously pushed herself, sometimes forgetting to eat, resulting in fatigue and fainting. Her hard work earned her a degree in physics, and she later earned another degree soon after.
A while after, she met Pierre Curie, a teacher at chemistry and physics universities, while she was investigating magnetic properties of steels. They both shared the same scientific interests, bringing them closer to one another, and soon enough they developed feelings for one another. Pierre proposed, but Maria, now going by Marie since she had moved to France, had wanted to go back to Poland, so she declined. She was under the impression that maybe the sexism had changed, but was still denied a place at Krakow University because she was a woman. A letter from Pierre convinced her back to Paris, and they got married soon after.
They continued research at a small place they used as a “lab”, shifting to focus on x-rays and uranium. During this time period Marie made many discoveries, such as discovering polonium and radium. Her and Pierre’s work, joint with physicist Henri Becquerel earned them each a Nobel Prize. However, at first Marie was yet again overlooked because she was a woman. She became the first woman ever to win a Nobel Prize, and later the first to get 2 Nobel Prizes and the first to get them for 2 different subjects (chemistry and radiation).
During World War 1, Marie helped millions with her cars that provided medical service to soldiers using x-rays. Sadly, in 1906 Pierre passed away due to an accident, leaving Marie devastated. She took on his previous spot as a professor, hoping to lead his legacy on. She went on to establish 2 institutes, and was acknowledged as a female professor at the University of Paris.
Through the time after her husband’s death, Curie was accused of being Jewish (due to xenophobia) and was also caught having an affair. She faced a lot of public anger but it died down, and she gained popularity after she grew in fame outside of Europe, getting invited to meet with the President of the United States at the time, Warren G. Harding. She visited other countries as well, visiting Poland for the last time she would see it in 1934.
On July 4, Marie Skłodowska-Curie died of aplastic anemia at the age of 66. The sickness was due to the one thing she was familiar with the most, radioactivity. Her constant exposure to it apparently caused damage to her bone marrow, and she couldn’t be treated as the effects and safety precautions were unknown at the time.
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