The first woman to win a Nobel Prize, French chemist Marie Curie (1867–1934) helped solve the mysteries of radiation, discovered two new elements, and blazed a trail for women entering the male-dominated fields of chemistry and physics. Curie remains the only individual to have won the Nobel Prize in two different scientific categories, a feat that testifies to her unrivaled place in scientific history.
Curie was born in Warsaw, Poland, as Maria Sklodowska and immigrated to France in 1891 to study physics at the Sorbonne. She met physicist Pierre Curie (1859–1906) in 1894; they married the next year. Marie, who had been barred from teaching in her native Poland because she was a woman, adopted French citizenship after marrying Pierre.
The Curies spent most of the next decade in the lab or on bicycle trips together in the French countryside. Their research into the new and poorly understood field of radioactivity—a term they coined—earned them the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics. In the same year, Marie Curie became the first woman in French history to be awarded a doctorate.
Tragedy befell the Curies in 1906, when Pierre was killed in a street accident. Marie was devastated by her husband’s death, but she only intensified her work in the lab. She won another Nobel Prize in 1911, this time in chemistry, for more advances in the study of radiation.
During World War I, Curie was forced to smuggle her precious radium stash—which then amounted to only a single gram—out of Paris for safekeeping. But the war also gave her an opportunity to demonstrate a practical application for radiation: the x-ray machine. The device, mounted on ambulances, allowed doctors at the front to locate bullets and shrapnel in the bodies of wounded soldiers, saving hundreds of lives.
Curie’s fame grew in the 1920s, and she toured Europe and the United States collecting accolades. (President Warren G. Harding [1865–1923] gave her a gram of radium in 1921 on behalf of the women of the United States.) A lifetime of exposure to radiation eventually took its toll on Curie, however. She developed aplastic anemia, a bone marrow disease, and died in 1934.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- During World War I, Curie offered her two Nobel Prize medals to the French government to support the war effort. Although the government was desperate for gold and silver, authorities declined her offer.
- Curie discovered two new elements, polonium—which she named after her home country, Poland—and radium.
