Empowering Woman: Marie Curie

Marie Sklodowska-Curie (1867-1934), a Polish by birth, was a physicist and a chemist.She was born in Warsaw on November 7, 1867, the daughter of a secondary-school teacher. She received a general education in local schools and some scientific training from her father. She became involved in a students' revolutionary organization and found it prudent to leave Warsaw. In 1891,Marie Curie obtained her higher degree in Paris. She did her studies at the Sorbonne where she obtained Licenciateships in Physics and the Mathematical Sciences. Curie was definitely a pride to woman with her exemplary achievements. The only woman to receive two Nobel Prizes — one for physics in 1903 which she shared with her husband Pierre Curie, and another for chemistry in 1911. She was also the first woman professor of general physics at the University of Paris.

Her early researches, together with her husband, were often performed under difficult conditions, laboratory arrangements were poor and both had to undertake much teaching to earn a livelihood. Despite the lack of proper laboratory facilities, she and Pierre isolated radioactive isotopes and discovered two new elements - polonium (named after the country of her birth) and radium. Curie developed methods for the separation of radium from radioactive residues in sufficient quantities to allow for its characterization and the careful study of its properties, therapeutic properties in particular.


Following the death of her husband, Madam Curie actively promoted the use of radium to alleviate pain during the World War I and later with the help of her daughter Irene, devoted herself to this remedial work. She also went on to set up a private Radium Institute with the funding from the French government, at which research was carried out in chemistry, physics, and medicine. The Institute has since produced four more Nobel Prize winners, including Irene and her husband Frederic Joliot.

Madam Curie died in 1934 of aplastic anaemia contracted from exposure to radiation. She was 67 years of age. The damaging effects of radiation were not then known, and much of her work had been carried out without any safety measures. It is said that she had carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket. Curie, quiet, dignified and unassuming, was held in high esteem and admiration by scientists throughout the world.