Described as “almost pathologically shy” by the Smithsonian Magazine, an inveterate researcher, and a two-time Nobel Laureate, Marie Curie delineated radioactivity, and her works transformed cancer treatment.
Born in November 1867 in Warsaw, Poland, Marie was 10 when her mother died, and her father’s penury stymied her college studies. Till 24, Marie worked as a governess, saved up to buy a ticket to Paris, and enrolled at the Sorbonne. She earned a degree in physics in 1893, and another in maths the next year. In 1895, Marie married Pierre, a year after meeting the 35-year-old physicists at a French technical college.
Marie observed that a mineral pitchblende containing uranium ore was highly radioactive and gave large readings. It cannot be caused by uranium alone, she was convinced. Eventually, the scientist couple extracted a black powder, 330 times more radioactive than uranium. She christened it Polonium, after her homeland. A liquid left behind after polonium extraction, Marie noticed, was extremely radioactive.
In 1898, the Curies published materials with ample evidence about the existence of a new element. In 1902 through arduous research, Marie isolated Radium (as radium chloride) and determined its atomic weight. Next year, the couple shared the Nobel Prize with French physicist Henri Becquerel, Marie was the first woman to be a Nobel-ian.
While at the acme of their achievements, Pierre walked into traffic and was killed by a carriage on April 19, 1906. Marie refused a widow’s pension and became the first woman to teach at Sorbonne. For developing a method to measure radioactivity, she received her second Nobel in 1911.
When Curie died aged 66 in 1934, the New York Times called her “a martyr to science…who contributed more to the general welfare of mankind” as a “modest self-effacing woman”. After a life of tenacious research at her Paris lab, outside which she refused to step out, her body was so radioactive that she had to be laid to rest inside a lead-lined coffin.
It came to light in 1995 when the French authorities wanted to move the Curies to the national mausoleum, the Pantheon.