MARIE CURIE
The year is 1883. Warszawianka, a Polish revolutionary anthem, is being published for the first time and female workers at Żyrardów textiles factory have begun striking in protest of a wage cut. Maria Skłodowska is 15 years old.
After graduating high school at the top of her class, her passion for chemistry and physics was blatant - however, despite ambitions to study at the prestigious University of Warsaw, the institute wouldn’t open its doors to female scholars for another 30 years. So, how did a young woman living in a 19th-century occupied state work tirelessly to become one of the most influential figures in both physics and chemistry, the first person to ever win two Nobel prizes with a charity now named in her honour dedicated to providing support to people suffering from terminal illnesses and their families.
Maria and Bronya, her older sister, initially enrolled in the Flying University. Held in secret locations around Warsaw to prevent Russian authorities from arresting participants, its scholars believed that education was crucial to Polish liberation. However, it could not provide the level of education the sisters hungered for. Instead, the youngest Skłodowska became a governess to fund Bronya’s path to the University of Paris. In return, they would switch roles after Bronya’s degree was complete.
Maria reached Paris in 1891. Night and day Maria worked tirelessly with little outside communication. To Maria, it was an acceptable sacrifice to achieve her maths and physics master's degrees in 1893 and 1894 respectively. Now, a professor who had sponsored her studies would introduce her to Pierre Curie to use a lab. Their shared devotion to physics soon grew into an equally intense love. She motivated Pierre to pursue a doctorate and used the prize money from a research paper on the magnetic properties of steel to fund the education of future Polish students. She determinedly maintained her scientific career alongside the birth of her first child, Irène, ready to face the next question of her career - what would her doctoral research focus on?
As Röntgen discovered X-rays, Marie was fascinated by uranium rays and proposed that the emission of rays by uranium was an atomic property itself. She referred to this behaviour with a word of her invention - radioactivity. Her husband joined her in her research, they employed chemical analysis to investigate why certain compounds were more radioactive than uranium, and by early 1898, Marie and Pierre were in the process of achieving one of the most enviable achievements in science, adding two elements to the periodic table - Radium and Polonium, named after her beloved native country.
Amid these vital discoveries, the pair would be awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Skłodowska-Curie would be the first woman to become a Nobel laureate.She could invest the prize money into more experiments, and they could now afford an assistant. Pierre would finally be appointed a professor at the University of Paris. Marie would have access to the laboratory built there. Marie was not someone to break down at the challenge of increased publicity. Instead, she was invigorated and inspired by the prospect of more work and more research. She skillfully balanced her laboratory work with the birth of a second daughter, Eve, and raised awareness of what their discoveries meant—radium therapy, for example, could be used to fight cancers.
On the 19th of April 1906, Pierre died instantly after being hit by a carriage. A heartbroken Marie Skłodowska-Curie found salvation in her family and work. She became the first female professor at Sorbonne, confirmed that radium was undoubtedly an element, established a measurement for radioactivity, a Curie, and was awarded her second Nobel prize in chemistry - all in a matter of years after Pierre’s death. She was relentlessly determined to found a laboratory in Pierre’s memory, the Radium Institute pursuing fundraising campaigns across the U.S. throughout the 1920s, despite the great aversion to the press after years of racist and misogynistic smear campaigns against her after her husband's death.
Her work was not in vain. In 1920, she founded The Curie Foundation, which soon became a major international powerhouse in cancer treatment. At the same time, the Radium Institute became the centre of radioactive study. Skłodowska-Curie devoted the remaining years of her life to heading the Radium Institute, cultivating future minds who focussed on independent questions, all rooted in the study of radioactivity, with many Poles and women joining her. No matter how many researchers filled the halls of the institute, Skłodowska-Curie invested herself in all their studies, even if Marie would not live to see her daughter become the second woman to receive a Nobel Prize for chemistry in honour of her work at the radium institute into synthetic radioactivity. Her health had radically declined throughout 1934. On her deathbed, she asked, “Was it done with radium, or with mesothorium?”
A force of nature and a legendary figure in her field, we are indebted to Marie Skłodowska-Curie’s trailblazing research. She did not care for the numerous awards she was offered, caring more for a gram of radium than any prize. She soulfully campaigned her entire life for funding, for understanding, and for the millions of people whose lives were transformed due to her research and the charities formed in her name, also fostering a culture more gracious than what she had experienced. On reflection, Marie Skłodowska-Curie’s lasting legacy is rooted in herself.
After graduating high school at the top of her class, her passion for chemistry and physics was blatant - however, despite ambitions to study at the prestigious University of Warsaw, the institute wouldn’t open its doors to female scholars for another 30 years. So, how did a young woman living in a 19th-century occupied state work tirelessly to become one of the most influential figures in both physics and chemistry, the first person to ever win two Nobel prizes with a charity now named in her honour dedicated to providing support to people suffering from terminal illnesses and their families.
Maria and Bronya, her older sister, initially enrolled in the Flying University. Held in secret locations around Warsaw to prevent Russian authorities from arresting participants, its scholars believed that education was crucial to Polish liberation. However, it could not provide the level of education the sisters hungered for. Instead, the youngest Skłodowska became a governess to fund Bronya’s path to the University of Paris. In return, they would switch roles after Bronya’s degree was complete.
Maria reached Paris in 1891. Night and day Maria worked tirelessly with little outside communication. To Maria, it was an acceptable sacrifice to achieve her maths and physics master's degrees in 1893 and 1894 respectively. Now, a professor who had sponsored her studies would introduce her to Pierre Curie to use a lab. Their shared devotion to physics soon grew into an equally intense love. She motivated Pierre to pursue a doctorate and used the prize money from a research paper on the magnetic properties of steel to fund the education of future Polish students. She determinedly maintained her scientific career alongside the birth of her first child, Irène, ready to face the next question of her career - what would her doctoral research focus on?
As Röntgen discovered X-rays, Marie was fascinated by uranium rays and proposed that the emission of rays by uranium was an atomic property itself. She referred to this behaviour with a word of her invention - radioactivity. Her husband joined her in her research, they employed chemical analysis to investigate why certain compounds were more radioactive than uranium, and by early 1898, Marie and Pierre were in the process of achieving one of the most enviable achievements in science, adding two elements to the periodic table - Radium and Polonium, named after her beloved native country.
Amid these vital discoveries, the pair would be awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Skłodowska-Curie would be the first woman to become a Nobel laureate.She could invest the prize money into more experiments, and they could now afford an assistant. Pierre would finally be appointed a professor at the University of Paris. Marie would have access to the laboratory built there. Marie was not someone to break down at the challenge of increased publicity. Instead, she was invigorated and inspired by the prospect of more work and more research. She skillfully balanced her laboratory work with the birth of a second daughter, Eve, and raised awareness of what their discoveries meant—radium therapy, for example, could be used to fight cancers.
On the 19th of April 1906, Pierre died instantly after being hit by a carriage. A heartbroken Marie Skłodowska-Curie found salvation in her family and work. She became the first female professor at Sorbonne, confirmed that radium was undoubtedly an element, established a measurement for radioactivity, a Curie, and was awarded her second Nobel prize in chemistry - all in a matter of years after Pierre’s death. She was relentlessly determined to found a laboratory in Pierre’s memory, the Radium Institute pursuing fundraising campaigns across the U.S. throughout the 1920s, despite the great aversion to the press after years of racist and misogynistic smear campaigns against her after her husband's death.
Her work was not in vain. In 1920, she founded The Curie Foundation, which soon became a major international powerhouse in cancer treatment. At the same time, the Radium Institute became the centre of radioactive study. Skłodowska-Curie devoted the remaining years of her life to heading the Radium Institute, cultivating future minds who focussed on independent questions, all rooted in the study of radioactivity, with many Poles and women joining her. No matter how many researchers filled the halls of the institute, Skłodowska-Curie invested herself in all their studies, even if Marie would not live to see her daughter become the second woman to receive a Nobel Prize for chemistry in honour of her work at the radium institute into synthetic radioactivity. Her health had radically declined throughout 1934. On her deathbed, she asked, “Was it done with radium, or with mesothorium?”
A force of nature and a legendary figure in her field, we are indebted to Marie Skłodowska-Curie’s trailblazing research. She did not care for the numerous awards she was offered, caring more for a gram of radium than any prize. She soulfully campaigned her entire life for funding, for understanding, and for the millions of people whose lives were transformed due to her research and the charities formed in her name, also fostering a culture more gracious than what she had experienced. On reflection, Marie Skłodowska-Curie’s lasting legacy is rooted in herself.
Frankie Cobell
13/11/24
13/11/24
