Marie Skłodowska Curie, 1867 - 1934
Circa 1920
Born: 7 November 1867, Warsaw, Vistula Country, Russian Empire
Died: 4 July 1934, Passy, Haute-Savoie, France
Marie Skłodowska was born at Warsaw, the youngest child of well-known teachers. Her older sister died when Marie was ten, and her devout Catholic mother two years later, at which point she became an atheist like her father. While her mother lived, Marie attended the school her mother ran, and then entered a female gymnasium, graduating in 1883. She made a bargain with her older sister to work for two years to help pay for the sister's education at Paris in exchange for repayment in kind after the sister's graduation. When the elder sister invited her to Paris Marie declined, expecting to marry, but the young gentleman's parents forbid the match and Marie moved to Paris in 1891, entering the Sorbonne. While tutoring at nights to pay her tuition, Marie earned a degree in physics in 1893, then a degree in mathematics the following year. Her physics work had been in the area of magnetism, which brought her into close contact with Pierre Curie. She intended to continue her education in her home country and returned to Warsaw only to be denied entry at Krakow University because she was a woman. She returned to Paris and married Pierre a year later. After Henri Becquerel discovered radiation in uranium, Marie began investigating the phenomenon and coined the term radioactivity. She determined that thorium also emitted radiation and, more significantly, that two uranium ores emitted more radioactivity than uranium itself, leading her to isolate and name the element polonium, and shortly afterwards, radium. Polonium was named for her homeland, although there was no Poland at the time. Marie and Pierre, along with Becquerel, won the Nobel Prize in Physics, and the Sorbonne created a professorship in Physics for Pierre with its own laboratory, where Marie was director of research. Despondent after Pierre's death in a 1906 traffic accident, the Sorbonne elevated her to a full professorship, the first woman to hold that rank, which provided the challenge to return to work. She received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911 for the discovery of the two new elements and the isolation of radium. The damaging effects of radiation was not known at the time, and Marie had casually worked with so much radioactive material that her papers, including her cookbook, are radioactive and stored in lead vaults and can only be read wearing protective clothing. While she provided radium to treat cancer in others, she contracted aplastic anemia, almost certainly from radiation, and died at the Sancellemoz Sanatorium.
Biography from Wikipedia and NNDB
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Marie Curie quotes:
Quotes found : 24 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 2) 1 2 Next
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- After all, science is essentially international, and it is only through lack of the historical sense that national qualities have been attributed to it. permalink
Marie Curie - All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child. permalink
Marie Curie - Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas. permalink
Marie Curie - Humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. Without doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research. permalink
Marie Curie - Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. permalink
Marie Curie - I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. permalink
Marie Curie - I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries. permalink
Marie Curie - I believe international work is a heavy task, but that it is nevertheless indispensable to go through an apprenticeship in it, at the cost of many efforts and also of a real spirit of sacrifice: however imperfect it may be, the work of Geneva has a grandeur that deserves our support. permalink
Marie Curie - 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. permalink
Marie Curie - I have no dress except the one I wear every day. If you are going to be kind enough to give me one, please let it be practical and dark so that I can put it on afterwards to go to the laboratory. permalink
Marie Curie - I was taught that the way of progress is neither swift nor easy. permalink
Marie Curie - It is my earnest desire that some of you should carry on this scientific work and keep for your ambition the determination to make a permanent contribution to science. permalink
Marie Curie - It was like a new world opened to me, the world of science, which I was at last permitted to know in all liberty. permalink
Marie Curie - Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained. permalink
Marie Curie - Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. permalink
Marie Curie
Quotes found : 24 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 2) 1 2 Next
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