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Marie Curie (1867–1934)

1903 Physics, 1911 Chemistry

In recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element.

Marie Curie, the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize as well as the first person to win a second one, was born Maria Sklodowska in Warsaw, Poland. A healthy, intelligent child with a formidable memory, her first contact with the world of science came from her encouraging father. While still a youth, she became involved in a revolutionary student organization and decided to leave her native Poland for vibrant Paris, France.

Although it took successive proposals, in 1895 Marie finally accepted the scientist Pierre Curie’s hand in marriage. The two rejected the traditional religious ceremony, however, as Pierre was agnostic and Marie, despite a catholic upbringing, was anticlerical at the time of their wedding. The couple settled in Paris, had two daughters and Marie, despite her dedication to research, showed herself to be a concerned and zealous mother.

Only nine years after completing her studies at the Sorbonne, Curie won her first Nobel Prize, which she shared with her husband and Henri Becquerel, for the couple’s research into Becquerel’s discovery of the phenomenon of spontaneous radioactivity. The Curies’ research was arduously performed with primitive equipment as they had very little financial or logistical support available to them at the time.

In 1906 the couple’s happiness unfortunately ended with the accidental death of Pierre. After this, Marie accepted an invitation to lecture at the Sorbonne, taking over from her husband and becoming the first woman to lecture at the prestigious institution. The 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was given to Marie Curie in her own right, for her discovery of radium and polonium. Although in 1903, due to illness, neither Curie could travel to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics, on the occasion of her second award, Marie, accompanied by her daughter Irène and her sister, was proudly present at the ceremony.

After receiving the second Nobel Prize, Marie Curie focused her attentions on the medical uses of radium to treat cancer. In this task she was aided by her daughter Irène and son-in-law Frédéric Joliot both of whom would be laureates in 1935 for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Marie Currie died in France, from cancer caused by prolonged exposure to radiation, a risk she understood during the research to perfect its beneficial use.