Marie Curie Family

Marie Curie was born in Warsaw, in Congress Poland in the Russian Empire, on 7 November 1867, the fifth and youngest child of well-known teachers Bronisława, née Boguska, and Władysław Skłodowski.

On both the paternal and maternal sides, the family had lost their property and fortunes through patriotic involvements in Polish national uprisings aimed at restoring Poland’s independence.

Marie Curie Image
Marie Curie Image

This condemned the subsequent generation, including Maria and her elder siblings, to a difficult struggle to get ahead in life.

Marie Curie Education

Władysław Skłodowski taught mathematics and physics, subjects that Marie Curie was to pursue, and was also director of two Warsaw gymnasia for boys.

When she was ten years old, Marie Curie began attending the boarding school of J. Sikorska; next she attended a gymnasium for girls, from which she graduated on 12 June 1883 with a gold medal.

After a collapse, possibly due to depression, she spent the following year in the countryside with relatives of her father, and the next year with her father in Warsaw, where she did some tutoring.

Unable to enroll in a regular institution of higher education because she was a woman. She and her sister Bronisława became involved with the clandestine Flying University (sometimes translated as Floating University). A Polish patriotic institution of higher learning that admitted women students.

She tutored, studied at the Flying University, and began her practical scientific training (1890–91) in a chemical laboratory at the Museum of Industry and Agriculture at Krakowskie Przedmieście 66, near Warsaw’s Old Town.

Marie Curie Inventions

In 1896, Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium salts emitted rays that resembled X-rays in their penetrating power. Curie decided to look into uranium rays as a possible field of research for a thesis.

Marie Curie’s systematic studies included two uranium minerals, pitchblende and torbernite (also known as chalcolite). Her electrometer showed that pitchblende was four times as active as uranium itself, and chalcolite twice as active.

She began a systematic search for additional substances that emit radiation, and by 1898 she discovered that the element thorium was also radioactive. Pierre Curie was increasingly intrigued by her work.

By mid-1898, he became so invested in it that he decided to drop his work on crystals and to join her.

In July 1898, Curie and her husband published a joint paper announcing the existence of an element which they named “polonium”, in honour of her native Poland.

On 26 December 1898, the Curies announced the existence of a second element, which they named “radium”, from the Latin word for “ray”. In the course of their research, they also coined the word “radioactivity”.

Between 1898 and 1902, the Marie Curie published, jointly or separately, a total of 32 scientific papers, including one that announced that, when exposed to radium, diseased, tumor-forming cells were destroyed faster than healthy cells.

In December 1903, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Pierre Curie, Marie Curie, and Henri Becquerel the Nobel Prize in Physics. The Academy recognize the extraordinary services that they have rendered on the radiation phenomena.

Marie Curie Fellowship

The Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions support researchers at all stages of their careers, regardless of age and nationality. Researchers working across all disciplines are eligible for funding.

The MSCA also support cooperation between industry and academia and innovative training to enhance employability and career development.

Marie Curie Quotes

Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.
We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something.
You must never be fearful of what you are doing when it is right.
It is my earnest desire that some of you should carry on this scientific work and keep for your ambition the determination to make a permanent contribution to science.”

Marie Curie 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 anemia believed to have been contracted from her long-term exposure to radiation.

Marie Curie Discovered

Her achievements included the development of the theory of radioactivity (a term that she coined), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two elements, polonium and radium.

Under her direction, the world’s first studies into the treatment of neoplasms were conducted using radioactive isotopes. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw, which remain major centres of medical research today.

During World War I she developed mobile radiography units to provide X-ray services to field hospitals.

Marie Curie Husband

Physicist Józef Wierusz-Kowalski introduced Pierre Curie to Maria Skłodowska. Curie took her into his laboratory as his student. His admiration for her grew when he realized that she would not inhibit his research.

He began to regard Skłodowska as his muse. She refused his initial proposal, but finally agreed to marry him on 26 July 1895.

Marie Curie Children

In 1897, her daughter Irène was born. In December 1904, Marie Curie gave birth to their second daughter, Ève. She hired Polish governesses to teach her daughters her native language, and sent or took them on visits to Poland

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