Marie Curie

About

Marie Curie, born Maria Salomea Skłodowska on November 7, 1867, in Warsaw, Poland, was a pioneering physicist and chemist. She is renowned for her groundbreaking work on radioactivity, a term she coined. In 1891, she moved to Paris to pursue higher education, where she met her future husband, Pierre Curie. Together, they conducted extensive research, leading to the discovery of the elements polonium and radium. Marie became the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize, winning the Physics award in 1903 alongside Pierre and Henri Becquerel. Marie Curie's achievements continued with a second Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911. She was the first person to win two Nobel Prizes and the only one to achieve this in different scientific fields. During World War I, she developed mobile X-ray units to aid wounded soldiers. Her work paved the way for new cancer treatments and significantly contributed to women's participation in STEM fields. Marie Curie died on July 4, 1934, due to radiation exposure. Her legacy includes her daughters Irene and Eve, with Irene also becoming a Nobel laureate, and numerous institutions named in her honor worldwide[1][2][3].