Flávia - Biography

Marie Curie

She was born in the capital of Poland in Warsaw on November 7, 1867. When she was young, she moved to Paris with the financial help of her sister.

She graduated in first position in Mathematics and Physics at University of Paris in Sorbonne. She was the first woman to teach at this prestigious school.

She married the professor of Physics Pierre Curie in 1895 and then adopted the name of Marie Curie, and before her marriage she was called Maria Sklokowska.

In 1896, Henri Becquerel encouraged her to study the radiation emission of uranium salts. With her husband, Marie began to study the materials that produced the radiation, looking for new material with the hypothesis that it should exist in certain minerals. Indeed, in 1898 they deduced that explanation: there were certainly some components that would release more energy than uranium, then on December 26, 1898, Marie Curie announced the discovery of this new substance to the Academy of Sciences in Paris.

With Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, she received the Nobel Prize of the Physics in 1903, in recognition of extraordinary services obtained in their investigations of the radiation phenomena, three years after they identified the radioactive elements polonium and radium. She was the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize.

Pierre was appointed professor at the University of Paris in Sorbonne in 1904 and he began researching for x-rays.

In 1906, she succeeded her husband in the chair of General Physics at the University, after he died.

In 1911, she received the Nobel Prize of Chemistry. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was given her in the same year that the Academy of Sciences in Paris rejected her as a partner.

She was the first person to receive two Nobel Prizes in different fields. The only other person was Linus Pauling, but Marie Curie was the only person to win two Nobel Prizes in science.

Marie Curie died of leukemia in 1934, surely because of the massive exposure to radiation during their work. In 1995 her remains were transferred to the Pantheon in Paris, becoming the first woman to be buried at this site.

In my opinion, she was a person who left her mark on science, even in an age so full of prejudice and sexist. She showed the world that women are as able as men to perform a scientific function. Many other women do not even have a chance to study, or have the opportunity to take a scientific position. I'm sure that our planet has lost a lot because there has been prejudice in science.