Madame Curie in her laboratory ca. 1905. From a rare photograph. Getty
The preeminence of Marie Curie's accomplishments, headlined by the only Nobel Laureate in multiple sciences, somehow undersells the depth of her greatness. Born Marya Salomee Sklodowska in 1867, she flourished academically despite Russian-controlled Poland forbidding women from attending universities. Curie still managed groundbreaking discoveries in what was described as "a cross between a stable and a potato shed.”
During WWI she offered her Nobel Prize medals in the war effort, utilized her discoveries to save lives, and even changed battlefield medicine. Curie's endless achievements were only outdone by the humility and grace in which she did them. Albert Einstein said of her, “Marie Curie is, of all celebrated beings, the only one whom fame has not corrupted.”
Curie went on to found one of the preeminent radium research centers in the world.
“I Was Taught That The Way Of Progress Was Neither Swift Nor Easy”
Much of Curie’s genius came thanks to her parents, both teachers. Their supplemental teaching led her to graduate from high school at age 15, despite losing her mother to tuberculosis at 11. That loss marked the first of many which shook her belief in “the benevolence of God.”
She attended “Flying University” in Poland, perhaps named due to its surreptitious relocations to avoid persecution for teaching women. Unsurprisingly, Curie and her siblings cleverly finagled their way to Paris. At Sorbonne University her brilliance quickly garnered scholarships that allowed her full potential to shine through.
“All my mind was centered on my studies, which, especially at the beginning, were difficult. In fact, I was insufficiently prepared to follow the physical science course at the Sorbonne, for, despite all my efforts, I had not succeeded in acquiring in Poland a preparation as complete as that of the French students following the same course.”
Pierre and Marie Curie in the laboratory, 1904. Wikimedia commons
“Be Less Curious About People And More Curious About Ideas”
While studying in Paris, she met her future husband, Pierre Curie, a fellow researcher while studying the magnetic properties of steel. Although they fell in love, Curie refused his first marriage proposal due to her own plans to return to Poland.
She only relented when he agreed to come with her even if it meant abandoning his research and becoming a French teacher. In 1895, they wed in a secular ceremony. Marie wore a blue gown, the same type she would wear while working in the lab.
“I have no dress except the one I wear every day. If you are going to be kind enough to give me one, please let it be practical and dark so that I can put it on afterward to go to the laboratory.”
Pierre always insisted his wife receive at least equal credit for their discoveries. A rarity of the time.
Nobel Prize #1
Together with physicist Henri Becquerel, the newlyweds won a Nobel Prize in physics for their work in radioactivity. Marie became the first woman to win, and the pair also earned the distinction of being the first Nobel Laureate couple.
Years later, famed German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald once visited the Curies' “laboratory” where she discovered radium. He described it as "a cross between a stable and a potato shed, and if I had not seen the worktable and items of chemical apparatus, I would have thought that I was been played a practical joke." Crucially, the Curies’ intentionally never patented their discoveries, eschewing huge financial gain to allow other scientists to build off their work.
Scientist Marie Curie and daughter, Irene, working in the radium laboratory in Paris. Getty Images
Tragedy Strike Again
Pierre once wrote to his wife, “It would be a beautiful thing, a thing I dare not hope if we could spend our life near each other, hypnotized by our dreams: your patriotic dream, our humanitarian dream, and our scientific dream.” Sadly, his worst fears came true when he tragically died in a horse carriage accident.
“One Never Notices What Has Been Done; One Can Only See What Remains To Be Done”
In spite of grief, Marie Curie went back to her studies and incredibly won another Nobel Prize. This time the honor came in chemistry for the discovery of two elements, radium, and polonium. The latter she named after her home country. However, when WWI hit, Marie incredibly upstaged all her historic work to date. First, she offered to melt her Nobel Medals when France put a call out for gold. When they refused, she invested the prize money in war bonds, knowing she’d never see the money again.
As if that wasn’t enough, she applied her prodigious brain to x-rays and invented a mobile machine for the frontlines. She convinced the French government to make her Director of the Red Cross Radiology Service and took donations from rich friends to construct 20 what became known as "petite Curies," or mobile x-rays. Her invention saved thousands and changed medicine forever.
All of the Curie women went on to great things, thanks to education.
An Unparalleled Life
In a cruel twist of fate, Curie would die at the hand of her passions. All her work in radioactivity led to aplastic anemia, probably due to prolonged exposure to her studies. She once wrote, "One of our joys was to go into our workroom at night; we then perceived on all sides the feebly luminous silhouettes of the bottles of capsules containing our products […] The glowing tubes looked like faint, fairy lights."
Nevertheless, Curie pulled off one more incredible act from beyond the grave. Her daughters, Irène and Ève, earned two more Nobel Prizes for the family's impressive collection. One for her research in chemistry and the other for Peace on behalf of UNICEF. Their contributions brought the family total to 5. What a woman!
