Discovery of polonium and radium (1898)
Two new radioactive elements found in pitchblende with Pierre Curie; polonium in July, radium in December
Science · Physics
Marie Curie
1867–1934 · Polish-French
Physics and chemistry; radioactivity
Marie Curie, born Maria Skłodowska in Warsaw, pioneered the study of radioactivity, a term she coined, and with her husband Pierre discovered polonium and radium in 1898. She shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel and won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry alone. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences.
How to spot them
- ▸Born Maria Skłodowska in Warsaw; studied at the Sorbonne
- ▸Discovered polonium (named after Poland) and radium with Pierre Curie
- ▸Nobel Prizes in Physics (1903) and Chemistry (1911)
- ▸'Petites Curies': mobile X-ray units in the First World War
- ▸Element curium and the unit the curie; daughter Irène Joliot-Curie
Key discoveries & works
Coining of the term 'radioactivity' (1898)
Showed radiation from uranium is an atomic property, not a chemical reaction
Recherches sur les substances radioactives (1903)
Doctoral thesis on radioactive substances, completed the year of her first Nobel Prize
Isolation of pure radium metal (1910)
Achieved with André-Louis Debierne; part of the work recognised by the 1911 Chemistry prize
Traité de radioactivité (1910)
Two-volume treatise on radioactivity
'Petites Curies' mobile radiography units (1914–1918)
X-ray vehicles for treating wounded soldiers at the front in the First World War
Key ideas
- Radioactivity is a property of atoms themselves
- Radioactive elements can be discovered and measured by the radiation they emit
- Founded the Radium Institute in Paris, a centre for research and cancer treatment
Quick-fire facts
- •Born in Warsaw on 7 November 1867; died of aplastic anaemia at Sancellemoz, Passy, in Haute-Savoie, on 4 July 1934
- •In Poland she attended the clandestine 'Flying University'; she moved to Paris in 1891
- •Married Pierre Curie in 1895; he was killed by a horse-drawn wagon in a Paris street in 1906
- •1903 Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, for research on radiation phenomena
- •1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, alone, for discovering radium and polonium and isolating radium
- •First woman to win a Nobel Prize, first person to win two, and still the only person to win in two different sciences
- •Succeeded Pierre at the Sorbonne, becoming its first woman professor
- •Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie shared the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry; her other daughter Ève wrote the biography Madame Curie
- •In 1995 she and Pierre were reinterred in the Panthéon in Paris; she was the first woman honoured there on her own merits
- •Element 96, curium, is named after Marie and Pierre Curie
Drill it — 9 cards
1 / 9new card
Sources
- Nobel Prize Outreach — Marie Curie – Biographical (Nobel Prize in Physics 1903)
- Nobel Prize Outreach — Marie Curie – Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1911
- Ève Curie — Madame Curie