Marie Curie (1867 to 1934)

In 1885 Marie became a governess in a lawyer's family and financed with her salary the studies of her older sister Bronia in Paris. Since women of that time were not admitted to study in Warsaw, Marie Curie spent her free time reading literature on anatomy, physics and physiology in preparation for an academic education abroad. After three years as an educator in the Zorawski family home, Marie Curie returned to Warsaw and lived with her father until 1891. Through a cousin she gained access to a laboratory where she could conduct experiments. This strengthened her desire to study physics. 

In 1891, she followed her sister Bronia to Paris and, now financially supported by her sister, began studying physics at the Sorbonne. She completed her studies with distinction and received her doctorate in 1903 from her physics professor Henri Becquerel.

During her doctoral studies Maria Sklodowska met Pierre Curie, whom she married in July 1895 and became the father of her two daughters. The couple moved into a simple laboratory in Paris and began to conduct physics experiments under lousy working conditions. 

Pierre Curie financed the life of the family and the laboratory by taking a job as a teacher at the Paris School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry. After her professor Henri Becquerel was able to prove the radiation of uranium in 1896, Marie Curie became convinced that other elements must also possess this radiation. 

The Curies' family life took place mainly in the common laboratory and was limited to scientific work. The two daughters Irène and Ève, who were looked after by governesses and grandparents, suffered considerably from the physical distance from their mother. Nevertheless Irène Curie followed in her parents' footsteps and became a physicist as well. She too was later honored with your Nobel Prize and worked with her mother in the mobile X-ray station during World War I.

After her mother's death in 1934, Ève wrote her biography in which she described Marie Curie's career. The book was translated into numerous languages after its publication in the fall of 1937 and was filmed in Hollywood in 1943 as Madame Curie with Greer Garson. Later she was very successful as a journalist and correspondent. 

Together with Pierre Curie, she began feverishly researching in her own laboratory. By working on the mineral rock uraninite or pitchblende, the Curies succeeded in isolating two previously unknown, naturally radiating elements, which Marie Curie, inspired by her homeland, called "polonium" and "radium". The term "radioactive", which defines the radiation of the elements, can also be traced back to their name. In 1900, Pierre Curie began working as a physics professor at the Sorbonne and gave lectures on radioactivity discovered with his wife, which met with great respect in specialist circles.

In the year of their doctorates, Marie and Pierre Curie and Antoine Henri Becquerel were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their groundbreaking discoveries in radioactivity, which had been awarded for the first time only two years earlier. She received a 25% share of the prize.

She was the first and youngest woman ever to receive a Nobel Prize. In 1903 she was additionally honored for her services with the Davy Medal of the British Royal Society. In the same year Marie Curie published her dissertation under the title "Studies on Radioactive Substances".

In April 1906 Pierre Curie was hit by a horse-drawn carriage and died on the scene of the accident. Marie Curie, out of grief, threw herself even more into her work and continued her research feverishly. A few weeks after her husband's death, she became his successor and the first woman in France to be appointed professor at the university.

In 1910 she published the work "Traité de Radioactivité" and was awarded a second Nobel Prize the following year, this time in chemistry. In 1912, the many years of work with radioactive material, which Marie Curie had carried out without adequate protective measures, became apparent for the first time in the form of serious health problems. She had to undergo a complicated kidney operation, from which she fortunately recovered quickly.

After the death of her beloved husband, Marie Curie temporarily entered into a love affair with Paul Langevin, a former student of Pierre Curie. This was a scandal and was exploited by the press as the "Langevin affair". Marie Curie was forced to give up her relationship with the younger and married man in order not to damage her reputation as a scientist.

With the outbreak of the First World War, she turned to radiology and began working with X-ray machines in hospitals and initiated the founding of the French Radium Institute in 1914.

She had X-ray machines equipped with mobile devices to help wounded soldiers despite the lack of personnel in the medical facilities. She personally trained several radiologists. After the war, she traveled to the United States, Brazil and some European countries, where she gave lectures and collected donations for the Radium Institute, which she gradually developed into a center for nuclear physics.

On the initiative of the President of the League of Nations, Léon Bourgeois, the Assembly of the League of Nations called upon the Council on September 21, 1921, to create a commission to promote cooperation. The formation of the International Commission for Spiritual Cooperation was officially decided by the League of Nations Council on January 14, 1922. It was to consist of twelve members elected on the basis of their scientific reputation and without regard to nationality. Among the scientists selected from a list of 60 candidates whose nomination on May 15, 1922, was Marie Curie.

During her twelve years of service for the commission, at times as vice-president, she advocated the establishment of an international bibliography of scientific publications. She endeavored to develop guidelines for the international awarding of research grants.

Already in the early twenties, visual and hearing disorders became noticeable as a result of her work. 

Marie Curie fell ill with leukemia, a consequence of her handling of the radioactive substances, the dangers of which were still unknown at the time. On July 4, 1934, Marie Curie died in a sanatorium in the Swiss spa town of Sancellemoz as a result of her leukemia.

Like her mother, Irène Joliot-Curie became a physicist and chemist.  She and her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 for the discovery of artificial radioactivity.