Marie Curie

Marie Skłodowska was born in Warsaw on 7 November 1867, when the city was under Russian imperial rule. Higher education for women was restricted in the Russian Empire, so in 1891 she moved to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. She completed degrees in physics and mathematics and began research in a scientific environment where women had limited access to academic positions. She married physicist Pierre Curie in 1895; they became close research collaborators as well as spouses.

Curie’s doctoral research investigated the rays that Henri Becquerel had detected from uranium. By measuring radiation from different materials, she and Pierre found that pitchblende was more active than its uranium content could explain, suggesting that it contained other radioactive substances. Their work identified polonium, named for Marie’s homeland, and then radium in 1898. Curie used the term “radioactivity” for the property of emitting such radiation. In later work she isolated radium as a pure metal and studied its compounds and properties.

In 1903 Curie shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel for research on radiation phenomena. She became the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize. After Pierre died in 1906, she continued their work and led her own research. In 1911 she received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of radium and polonium, the isolation of radium, and research on the element and its compounds. She was the first person to receive two Nobel Prizes, awarded in two different scientific fields.

During the First World War, Curie helped bring X-ray imaging closer to wounded soldiers by organizing mobile radiology services and equipping cars with X-ray apparatus. The units enabled surgeons to examine wounded soldiers near the front and locate fragments such as shrapnel more accurately. Her wartime work applied scientific knowledge to an urgent practical need and formed one part of the wider development of medical radiology.

Curie’s research helped transform the study of atomic structure and supported later scientific and medical uses of radiation. Her work was collaborative: Becquerel’s discovery prompted her investigations, and Pierre Curie was a partner in the early discoveries. The Radium Institute in Paris, founded in 1909, brought researchers and clinicians together around the study and medical potential of radioactivity. Curie’s career also challenged barriers facing women in higher education and science, although access to scientific institutions remained unequal long after her achievements.