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Madame Curie was born Maria
Sklodowska-Curie on November 7, 1867, in Warsaw, Poland. Moving to Paris in 1891, she changed her name to Marie, and upon marrying the French physicist Pierre Curie, became Madame Curie.
Madame Curie surpassed many boundaries set for women of her time. Let us briefly look at a list of her "first" accomplishments, before exploring more carefully who Madame Curie was, and how her extraordinary character was
formed.
Five important accomplishments:
1. Madame Curie was the first woman to graduate with a degree in Physics at the Sorbonne in 1893, and received a second degree from the Sorbonne in 1894 in Mathematics.
2. In 1893, Madame Curie was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize, and the only woman Nobel laureate in science for many years until her daughter Irene Joliot-Curie won the prize for physics for producing artificial radioactivity.
3. Marie Curie was the first woman professor at the University of Sorbonne in Paris.
4. In 1911, Madame Curie received a second Nobel Prize in chemistry for the discovery and isolation of polonium and radium. No other laureate had ever received two Nobel prizes.
5. In 1922, Marie Curie was elected to the French Academy of Medicine for her contributions to radiological medicine, becoming the first woman member in the 224-year history of the Institut de
France. Marya was born the youngest of five children to Wladyslaw Sklodowski and Bronislawa
Sklodowska. Marya’s father taught physics and mathematics in secondary schools. Her father taught her to consider education a touchstone of civilization. Her family always compared the fine legacy of Polish education to the barbarism of the Russians occupying her country. Marya’s mother was the director of one of the best schools for young girls in
Warsaw.
Even though Marya was two years younger than her classmates were, she ranked first in German, French, history, and literature. When she was nine, Marya’s eldest sister died of typhus. Within two years, her mother had died of tuberculosis. It is small wonder that a brother and sister of Marya became doctors, and that Marya devoted much of her professional life after radioactivity had been discovered, to finding uses of it for medical purposes.
Marya graduated first in her class from high school with a gold medal. Women at that time were not admitted to any universities in Russian-ruled Poland. In response, there was a secretly organized "floating"
University for young Polish women. Marya and her elder sister Bronya attended, even though, she and her sister dreamed of study in Paris. In her 1923 autobiography, Marie Curie writes that she studied many subjects diligently on her own from 1885 to 1889, "finally turning towards mathematics and physics."
Working as a governess in the Polish countryside, Marya sent her savings to
Bronya, who had finally traveled to Paris to save medicine. Marya herself went to Paris to study at the Sorbonne in 1891. She was so poor that she often suffered from cold and hunger. Marie was the epitome of hard work. Receiving her degree in physics from the Sorbonne in 1893, she was not only the first woman to receive such a degree, but she graduated number one in a class of thirty. In 1894, she received her second degree in mathematics, graduating second in her class.
Marie had the good fortune to arrive at the Sorbonne to study under Gabriel
Lippmann, who would win the Nobel Prize in physics in 1908. Another professor, Henri
Poincare, was widely known as the greatest mathematician of his time. These professors accepted her brilliance, and deemed her extremely well-prepared, even though she was a female.
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That same year, Marie met Pierre Curie, a promising young French physicist, who was to become her husband. Her husband’s family, the Curies, were all doctors and scientists. Both her family in Poland, and her new in-laws, were progressive families, profoundly committed to the education of women. The collaboration between Marie and Pierre Curie was remarkably close. Scholars have concluded that neither would have made their later discoveries on his or her own. Alter other scientists discovered x-rays and radioactivity in the late 1890’s, Marie Curie decided to study radioactivity.
The Curie discovered that one needed to use the products of
radioactivity – the particles emitted – to identify what has produced it. The Curies then isolated an unknown element in uranium. They called the metal "polonium" after Marie’s beloved Poland. By the end of the year, they announced the discovery of a second radioactive element, which they named "radium". They next few years were spent measuring how much energy a gram of radium can release in an hour – enough to boil water. Many scholars believe the paper of 1903 describing their work to be the high point of their research. Marie Curie had a genius for quantification of data (such as degree of radiation and atomic weight of
elements).
Marie Curie’s contributions to physics do not explain her immense fame. In 1921, on her first visit to America, she was met by three orchestras and many thousands of people, including President Harding. As was typical of this period in history, poets wrote rapturous poetry about the formidable Madame Curie, likening her to "the sister of Prometheus".
During
World War I, she organized ambulatory x-ray machines to be carried from hospital to hospital. Her teenage daughter, Eve, was trained in x-ray diagnostics. In France, radiation treatment was called "curietheraphy". In 1921, the New York Times celebrated the "motherly-looking scientist" with a front – page headline promising "MADAME CURIE PLANS TO END ALL CANCERS".
The key-note speaker at a reception in her honor at the Waldorf-Astoria that same year noted that Madame Curie was "not welcome here as a scientist, but as a woman who has done more to comfort human beings than anyone who has made important discoveries in this generation". Radium was understood especially as a cure for women’s cancers, such as malignant tumors of the cervix, uterus, and breast. As in 1921, when a group of American women, most of them graduates of the Seven Sisters, donated a gram of radium to Madame Curie, intended for the treatment of gynecological carcinomas.
But for all the celebration of radioactivity as a "magic bullet" of healing, Madame Curie’s eyes were clouding over with cataracts, her fingers were hardening, reddening, and stiffening, and her bone marrow was being destroyed. She died in 1934 at age 67 from radiation-induced pernicious anemia. Her husband had already been crippled by radiation illness in 1906. Her daughter Irene died from exposure – linked leukemia, and her son-in-law died of liver failure related to radium toxicity.
Marie Curie was not only a scientific pioneer, but also a social pioneer. Her husband Pierre, did not help her with the children and her home. As President Harding asked, "How was it that the zeal, ambition, and answering purpose of a lofty career could not bar you from splendidly doing all the plain, but worthy tasks which fall to every woman’s lot?" Somewhere in her last years, Marie Curie remembered that, "I have frequently been questioned, especially by women, of how I could reconcile family life with a scientific career. Well, it has not been easy." Marie Curie was what we today would call a "working parent". Her exceptional dedication, courage, and endurance should be an inspiration to us
all.
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