Marie Curie, née Maria Sklodowska, was born in Warsaw
on November 7, 1867, the daughter of a secondary-school teacher. She received
a general education in local schools and some scientific training from
her father. She became involved in a students' revolutionary organization
and found it prudent to leave Warsaw, then in the part of Poland dominated
by Russia, for Cracow, which at that time was under Austrian rule. In
1891, she went to Paris to continue her studies at the Sorbonne where
she obtained Licenciateships in Physics and the Mathematical Sciences.
She met Pierre Curie, Professor in the School of Physics in 1894 and in
the following year they were married. She succeeded her husband as Head
of the Physics Laboratory at the Sorbonne, gained her Doctor of Science
degree in 1903, and following the tragic death of Pierre Curie in 1906,
she took his place as Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences,
the first time a woman had held this position. She was also appointed
Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University
of Paris, founded in 1914.
Her early researches, together with her husband, were often performed
under difficult conditions, laboratory arrangements were poor and both
had to undertake much teaching to earn a livelihood. The discovery of
radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896 inspired the Curies in their
brilliant researches and analyses which led to the isolation of polonium,
named after the country of Marie's birth, and radium. Mme. Curie developed
methods for the separation of radium from radioactive residues in sufficient
quantities to allow for its characterization and the careful study of
its properties, therapeutic properties in particular.
Mme. Curie throughout her life actively promoted the use of radium to
alleviate suffering and during World War I, assisted by her daughter,
Irene, she personally devoted herself to this remedial work. She retained
her enthusiasm for science throughout her life and did much to establish
a radioactivity laboratory in her native city - in 1929 President Hoover
of the United States presented her with a gift of $ 50,000, donated by
American friends of science, to purchase radium for use in the laboratory
in Warsaw.
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. Her work is recorded in numerous papers in scientific
journals and she is the author of Recherches sur les Substances Radioactives
(1904), L'Isotopie et les Éléments Isotopes and the
classic Traité' de Radioactivité (1910).
The importance of Mme. Curie's work is reflected in the numerous awards
bestowed on her. She received many honorary science, medicine and law
degrees and honorary memberships of learned societies throughout the world.
Together with her husband, she was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for
Physics in 1903, for their study into the spontaneous radiation discovered
by Becquerel, who was awarded the other half of the Prize. In 1911 she
received a second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry, in recognition
of her work in radioactivity. She also received, jointly with her husband,
the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in 1903 and, in 1921, President Harding
of the United States, on behalf of the women of America, presented her
with one gram of radium in recognition of her service to science.
For further details, cf. Biography of Pierre Curie. Mme. Curie died in Savoy, France, after a short illness, on July 4, 1934.
From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967
This autobiography/biography was first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1903