Marie Curie

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
"Madame Curie" redirects here. For the 1943 biographical film about her, see Madame Curie
(film).
This article is about the chemist and physicist. For the schools named after her, see cole
lmentaire Marie-Curie and Marie Curie High School.
Marie SkodowskaCurie

Alma mater
University of Paris
ESPCI
Doctoral advisor
Henri Becquerel
Doctoral students
Andr-Louis Debierne
scar Moreno
Marguerite Catherine Perey
Known for
radioactivity, polonium, radium
Notable awards
Nobel Prize in Physics (1903)
Davy Medal (1903)
Matteucci Medal (1904)
Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911)
Religious stance
Agnostic
Notes
She is the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two sciences.
She was the wife of Pierre Curie, and the mother of Irene Joliot-Curie and
ve Curie.
Marie Skodowska Curie (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 person honored with two Nobel Prizes,
[1]
and the first female professor at
the University of Paris.
She was born Maria Skodowska in Warsaw (then Vistula Country, Russian Empire; now
Poland) and lived there until she was 24. In 1891 she followed her elder sister Bronisawa to
study in Paris, where she obtained her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific
work. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and Warsaw. Her husband Pierre Curie was a
Nobel co-laureate of hers, and her daughter Irne Joliot-Curie and son-in-law Frdric Joliot-
Curie also received Nobel prizes.
Her achievements include the creation of a theory of radioactivity (a term coined by her
[2]
),
techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two new elements, polonium
and radium. It was also under her personal direction that the world's first studies were conducted
into the treatment of neoplasms (cancers), using radioactive isotopes.
While an actively loyal French citizen, she never lost her sense of Polish identity. She named the
first new chemical element that she discovered (1898) polonium for her native country,
[3]
and in
1932 she founded a Radium Institute (now the Maria SkodowskaCurie Institute of Oncology)
in her home town Warsaw, headed by her physician-sister Bronisawa.




Early life

Maria Skodowska's birthplace on ulica Freta in Warsaw's "New Town"

Wadysaw Skodowski with daughters (from left) Maria, Bronisawa, Helena
Maria Skodowska was born in Warsaw, Poland, on November 7, 1867, the fifth and youngest
child of well-known teachers Bronisawa and Wadysaw Skodowski. Maria's older siblings
were Zofia (born 1862), Jzef (1863), Bronisawa (1865) and Helena (1866).
Maria's grandfather Jzef Skodowski had been a respected teacher in Lublin, where he had
taught the young Bolesaw Prus.
[4]
Her father Wadysaw Skodowski taught mathematics and
physics, subjects that Maria was to pursue, and was director successively of two Warsaw
gymnasia for boys, in addition to lodging boys in the family home. Her mother, Bronisawa,
operated a prestigious Warsaw girls' boarding school; she suffered from tuberculosis and died
when Maria was twelve. Maria's father was an atheist, and her mother a devout Catholic.
[5]

Two years earlier, Maria's oldest sibling, Zofia, had died of typhus. The deaths of her mother and
sister, according to Robert William Reid, caused Maria to give up Catholicism and become
agnostic.
[6]