Marie curie mini biography sample
Marie Curie
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Who Was Marie Curie?
Marie Curie became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the first person — man or woman — to win the award twice. With her husband Pierre Curie, Marie's efforts led to the discovery of polonium and radium and, after Pierre's death, the further development of X-rays. The famed scientist died in of aplastic anemia likely caused by exposure to radiation.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Marie Salomea Skodowska-Curie
BORN: November 7,
BIRTHPLACE: Warsaw, Poland
DEATH: July 4,
SPOUSE: Pierre Curie (m. )
CHILDREN: Irene Joliot-Curie, Eve Curie
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Cancer
Early Life and Education
Maria Sklodowska, later known as Marie Curie, was born on November 7, , in Warsaw (modern-day Poland). Curie was the youngest of five children, following siblings Zosia, Józef, Bronya and Hela.
Both of Curie’s parents were teachers. Her father, Wladyslaw, was a math and physics instructor. When she was only 10, Curie lost her mother, Bronislawa, to tuberculosis.
As a child, Curie took after her father. She had a bright and curious mind and excelled at school. But despite being a top student in her secondary school, Curie could not attend the male-only University of Warsaw. She instead continued her education in Warsaw's "floating university," a set of underground, informal classes held in secret.
Both Curie and her sister Bronya dreamed of going abroad to earn an official degree, but they lacked the financial resources to pay for more schooling. Undeterred, Curie worked out a deal with her sister: She would work to support Bronya while she was in school, and Bronya would return the favor after she completed her studies.
For roughly five years, Curie worked as a tutor and a governess. She used her spare time to study, reading about physics, chemistry and math.
In , Curie finally made her way to Paris and enrolled at the Sorbonne. She threw herself into her studies, but this dedication had a personal cost: with little mo
Marie Curie the scientist
Work on radioactivity and discoveries
The Curies became research workers at the School of Chemistry and Physics in Paris and there they began their pioneering work into invisible rays given off by uranium – a new phenomenon which had recently been discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel. He had shown that the rays were able to pass through solid matter, fog, and photographic film and caused air to conduct electricity.
Marie also noticed that samples of a mineral called pitchblende, which contains uranium ore, were a great deal more radioactive than the pure element uranium. Further work convinced her the very large readings she was getting could not be caused by uranium alone – there was something else in the pitchblende. Since nobody had ever found it before, it could only be present in tiny quantities and seemed to be very radioactive. Marie was convinced she had found a new chemical element – but other scientists doubted her results.
Pierre and Marie Curie set about working to search for the unknown element. They ground up samples of pitchblende, dissolved them in acid, and began to separate the different elements present using the standard analytical chemistry techniques of the time. Eventually, they extracted a black powder times more radioactive than uranium, which they called polonium. Polonium was a new chemical element, atomic number
When the Curies investigated further, they found that the liquid left behind after they had extracted polonium was still extremely radioactive. They realised that pitchblende contained another new element, far more radioactive than polonium, but present in even smaller quantities.
In , the Curies published strong evidence supporting the existence of the new element – which they called radium – but they still had no sample of it. Pitchblende is an expensive mineral, because it contains valuable uranium, and Marie needed a lot of it.
She got in touch with a factory in Austria that
Abstract
Marie Curie was a remarkable woman whose discoveries broke new ground in physics and chemistry and also opened the door for advances in engineering, biology, and medicine. She broke new ground for women in science: she was, for example, the first woman to receive a doctor of science degree in France, the first woman to win Nobel Prize, the first woman to lecture at the Sorbonne, the first person to win two Nobel Prizes, and the first Nobel Laureate whose child also won a Nobel Prize. Her life offers insights into the changing role of women in science and academia over the past century. It also offers examples of many ways in which scientists can, and should, work to improve the educational programs and career opportunities available to those who follow in their footsteps.
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Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Langevin-Joliot H. Radium, Marie Curie and modern science. Radiat Res. Nov;(5 Suppl):S3–S8. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
Articles from The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine are provided here courtesy of Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine
Marie Curie
Polish-French physicist and chemist (–)
This article is about the Polish-French physicist. For the musician, see Marie Currie. For other uses, see Marie Curie (disambiguation).
Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie (Polish:[ˈmarjasalɔˈmɛaskwɔˈdɔfskakʲiˈri]; née&#;Skłodowska; 7 November – 4 July ), known simply as Marie Curie (KURE-ee;French:[maʁikyʁi]), was a Polish and naturalised-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. Her husband, Pierre Curie, was a co-winner of her first Nobel Prize, making them the first married couple to win the Nobel Prize and launching the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was, in , the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris.
She was born in Warsaw, in what was then the Kingdom of Poland, part of the Russian Empire. She studied at Warsaw's clandestine Flying University and began her practical scientific training in Warsaw. In , aged 24, she followed her elder sister Bronisława to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. In , she married the French physicist Pierre Curie, and she shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with him and with the physicist Henri Becquerel for their pioneering work developing the theory of "radioactivity"—a term she coined. In , Pierre Curie died in a Paris street accident. Marie won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of the elements polonium and radium, using techniques she invented for isolating radioactive isotopes. Under her direction, the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms by the use of radioactive isotopes. She founded the Curie Institute in Paris in , and the Curie Institute in