SCIENTIFIC BIOGRAPHY

MARIE CURIE

1867-1934

“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.”

Marie Sklodowski-Curie was a perseverant, creative and an incredible woman. She got success and fame because of her personality and her perspective to life. She was born in Warsaw, on November 7, 1867. She was the fifth and youngest child of Bronislawa Boguska and Wladyslaw Sklodowski, they were school teachers. During her childhood, her nickname was Manya. She had a difficult childhood because her mother was sick of Tuberculosis and almost never was taking care of her. Her father had a good job, but he was fired because he was loyal to Poland, and at that moment the country was under the Russian Empire. Then her good life’s conditions changed, and her mother died of Tuberculosis when she was only nine years old, and then her sister Zosia died of Typhus. Her father was sick and was spending his time at the church. It was a terrible moment for Marie that she left the religion because she thought God took every person that she loved.

She worked as a teacher and at the same time she was attending the “free university” clandestinely because women were not allowed to study at that moment, this was caused by the Russian Empire. Then she moved to Paris and worked as a governess for paying her studies at the Sobornne, and she had an unhappy love affair with the son of the family she was working with. After she finished her studies, she met Pierre and married him one year later. Their marriage was on July 25, 1895, and was the beginning of an excellent partnership in which they made several discoveries of world significance. They had two daughters: Irene in1897 and Eve in 1904, they were gifted as their parents were. Marie became pregnant again but she suffered a miscarry, probably due to high levels of radiation in her lab.  In April 1906, Pierre died because of the exposure to the radioactivity. Marie was devastated because the dead of her husband and she turned to Paul Langevin, a Pierre’s friend. They have a love affair, and because of that Marie was in the line of fire. Most of the people who admired her then criticized her, they thought that she was being unfaithful to Pierre.

She was a gifted girl, she was the best of her class. She studied at local schools and her father gave her some scientific training. When she finished high school, at the age of 16, she won a gold medal on completion at the Russian Lycée. Then she worked as a teacher and studied in the nationalist “free university”. In 1891, Marie, at the age of 24, arrived in Paris, and she was one of the 23 women out of 1825 students in the School of Science, the Sobornne. She got a license of Physical sciences in 1893. Then in 1894, she got a second license of Mathematical sciences.

She was the first woman who won worldwide fame, and indeed, one of the great scientists of the history. She performed pioneering studies with radium and polonium and contributed profoundly to the understanding of radioactivity. Also she was the first to use the term radioactivity to this phenomenon. She was the first woman who received her doctorate of science. She worked hard together with Pierre in this phenomenon, they tried to discover how it was and its properties. In 1903 they and Henri Becquerel won a Nobel a Prize for Physics because of the discovery of radioactivity.

She was also the first female lecturer, professor and head of Laboratory at the Sobornne University in Paris. She wrote the “Recherches sur les Substaces Radioactives” (1904), “L’lstopie et les Éñéments Isotopes and the Classic Traité’ de Radioactivité” (1910). She gave lectures, especially in Bekgium, Brazil, Spain, and Czechoslovakia.

In 1911 she won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry, for the isolation of pure radium, and she was asked to be a member of the Counseil de Physique Solvay. She promoted the use of radium to alleviate suffering. During World War I, assisted by her daughter Irene, she devoted herself to the development of the use of X-radiography. In 1918 the Radium Institute became a universal center for nuclear physics and chemistry. In 1921, accompanied by her two daughters, she made a triumphant journey to the United States, where the president Warren G. Harding gave her as a gift a gram of radium bought as the result of a collection among American women.

In 1922 she was made a member of the Committee of Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations. And in 1929 she went to a second trip to the United States, the president Hoover gave her a gift of $50,000, donated by American friends of Science, to purchase radium for use in the laboratory in Warsaw. She inaugurated the Radium Institute of Warsaw in 1932.

She died of Leukemia in 1934, in Paris. This Leukemia was caused by her exposure to the radium that made her famous. And in 1995 the French Government transferred her ashes, together with those of Pierre, to the Panthéon in Paris. This was in recognition for her success and everything she made for France.

Marie Curie was an extraordinary woman with several successes in her life, whom is a good example to follow, with her perseverance she shown that everything is possible if we fight for everything we want in life. To never give up is the key of success. She accomplished a lot of important things in her life even when she had some troubles since she was a child, but she fought for her dreams, nothing is impossible if we find the way to accomplish what we want, sometimes things can be against us but we have to look for the positive things in problems and to take advantage of them. Marie is a clear example of that because of her admirable spirit of fighter.

By Katerin Aurora Padilla Turcios.