Maria Sklodowska-Curie (born Maria Sklodowska; November 7, 1867 – July 4, 1934) was a physicist and chemist of Polish upbringing and, subsequently, French citizenship. She was a pioneer in the field of radioactivity, the first twice-honored Nobel laureate (and still the only one in two different sciences) and the first female professor at the University of Paris.

She was born in Warsaw, Congress Poland, Russian Empire, and lived there until she was 24. In 1891 she followed her elder sister to study in Paris, where she obtained her higher degrees and conducted her scientific work. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and Warsaw. She was the wife of fellow-Nobel-laureate Pierre Curie and the mother of a third Nobel laureate, Irène Joliot-Curie.

While an actively loyal French citizen, she never lost her sense of Polish identity. Madame Curie named the first new chemical element that she discovered polonium for her native country.

Life

Maria Sklodowska was born in Warsaw to Polish parents, Bronislawa and Wladyslaw Sklodowski, both of whom were teachers and instilled in their children a sense of the value of learning.

Maria was the youngest of five children: Zofia (born 1862), Jozef (1863), Bronislawa (1865), Helena (1866) and finally Maria (1867).

Maria's early years were marked by the death of her sister Zofia (from typhus) and, two years later, the death of her mother (tuberculosis). These events caused her to give up her Roman Catholic religion and become an agnostic.

In her youth Sklodowska showed an exceptional memory and work ethic, and was known to neglect food and even sleep in order to study. At age fifteen she graduated from high school at the top of her class.

In her youth Sklodowska showed an exceptional memory and work ethic, and was known to neglect food and even sleep in order to study. At age fifteen she graduated from high school at the top of her class.

Eventually they studied radioactive materials, particularly pitchblende, the ore from which uranium was extracted. By April 1898, Sklodowska-Curie deduced that pitchblende must contain traces of an unknown substance far more radioactive than uranium. In July 1898, Pierre and Marie together published an article announcing the existence of an element which they named polonium, in honor of her native Poland, then still partitioned among three empires. On December 26, 1898, the Curies announced the existence of a second element, which they named radium for its intense radioactivity — a word that they coined.

Over the course of several years of unceasing work in the most difficult physical conditions, they processed several tons of pitchblende, progressively concentrating the radioactive substances and eventually isolating the chloride salts (refining radium chloride on April 20, 1902). Polonium was not yet isolated at this time.

In 1903, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Pierre Curie, Marie Curie, and Henri Becquerel the Nobel Prize in Physics, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel."

Curie was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize. Eight years later, she received the 1911 Nobel Prize in 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".

In an unusual decision, Sklodowska-Curie intentionally refrained from patenting the radium-isolation process so that the scientific community could do research unhindered.

A month after accepting her 1911 Nobel Prize, she was hospitalized with depression and a kidney ailment.

Sklodowska-Curie was the first person to win or share two Nobel Prizes. She is one of only two people who have been awarded a Nobel Prize in two different fields, the other being Linus Pauling (Chemistry, Peace). She remains the only woman to have won two Nobel Prizes, and the only person to have won Nobel Prizes in two different science fields. Nevertheless, the French Academy of Sciences refused to abandon its prejudice against women, and she failed by one vote to be elected to membership. (Pierre had been elected to the Academy in 1905.)

On April 19, 1906, Pierre was killed in a street accident as he was leaving a publishers office. He had gone there to review proofs of an article, and found the business closed due to a strike. Heading back across the street in heavy rain, he was struck by a horse-drawn vehicle and fell under its wheels, fracturing his skull. While it has been speculated that he may previously have been weakened by prolonged radiation exposure, it has not been proven that this was the cause of the accident. Marie was devastated by her husband's death and may subsequently have had an affair with physicist Paul Langevin — a married man who had left his wife — which resulted in a press scandal, exploited by her academic opponents. Despite her fame as a scientist working for France, the public's attitude to the scandal tended toward xenophobia.

Langevin's grandson Michel Langevin later married Sklodowska-Curie's granddaughter, Hélène Joliot.

During World War I, Sklodowska-Curie pushed for the use of mobile radiography units, which came to be popularly known as petites Curies ("Little Curies"), for the treatment of wounded soldiers. These units were powered using tubes of radium emanation, a colorless, radioactive gas given off by radium, later identified as radon. Sklodowska-Curie personally provided the tubes, derived from the radium she purified. Also, promptly after the war started, she donated her and her husband's gold Nobel Prize medals for the war effort.

After World War I, in 1921 and again in 1929, Sklodowska-Curie toured the United States, where she was welcomed triumphantly, to raise funds for research on radium. These distractions from her scientific labors, and the attendant publicity, caused her much discomfort but provided resources for her work. Her second American tour succeeded in equipping the Warsaw Radium Institute, founded in 1925, with her sister Bronislawa as director.

In her later years, Sklodowska-Curie headed the Pasteur Institute and a radioactivity laboratory created for her by the University of Paris.

Her death near Sallanches, Savoy, in 1934 was from aplastic anemia, almost certainly due to exposure to radiation, as the damaging effects of ionising radiation were not yet known, and much of her work had been carried out in a shed with no safety measures. She had carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket and stored them in her desk drawer, remarking on the pretty blue-green light the substances gave off in the dark.

She was interred at the cemetery in Sceaux, where Pierre lay, but sixty years later, in 1995, in honor of their work, the remains of both were transferred to the Pantheon in Paris.

The Curies' elder daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie, won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935 for discovering that aluminium could be radioactive and emit neutrons when bombarded with alpha rays. The younger daughter, Eve Curie, wrote the biography, Madame Curie, after her mother's death.

Prizes

• Nobel Prize for Physics (1903)
• Davy Medal (1903)
• Matteucci Medal (1904)
• Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1911)

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