1. Marie Curie, born Maria Sklodowska in Poland in 1867, is one of the most famous women scientists in history. She is famous for her work on radioactivity and was twice a winner of the Nobel Prize. With her husband, Pierre Curie, and Henri Becquerel, she was awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics, and was then sole winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.
2. As a child, Marie had a prodigious memory and won a gold medal at 16 on completion of her secondary education. After her father lost his savings, she worked as a teacher to help her sister Bronia study medicine in Paris. In 1891, Bronia kept her promise and supported Marie’s education at the Sorbonne. Despite living in poverty, Marie ranked first in physics in 1893 and second in mathematics in 1894, the same year, she met Pierre Curie. After Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity in 1896, Marie began researching whether other elements, like thorium, showed similar properties. She then investigated pitchblende and, with Pierre’s help, discovered two new elements: polonium and radium. Marie worked with chemist André-Louis Debierne to isolate pure radium, earning her a Doctorate of Science and the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics. On May 13, 1906, she was appointed to the professorship that had been left vacant on her husband's death, becoming the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne. In 1911 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the isolation of a pure form of radium.
3. During World War I, Marie Curie, with the help of her daughter Irène, devoted herself to the development of the use of X-radiography. It included the mobile units which came to be known as ‘Little Curies', used for the treatment of wounded soldiers. In 1918, the Radium Institute, whose staff Irène had joined, began to operate in earnest and became a centre for nuclear physics and chemistry. Marie Curie, now at the highest point of her fame and, from 1922, a member of the Academy of Medicine, researched the chemistry of radioactive substances and their medical applications.
4. One of Marie Curie's outstanding achievements was to have understood the need to accumulate intense radioactive sources, not only to treat illness but also to maintain an abundant supply for research. The existence in Paris at the Radium Institute of a stock of 1.5 grams of radium made a decisive contribution to the success of the experiments undertaken in the years around 1930. This work prepared the way for the discovery of the neutron by Sir James Chadwick and, above all, for the discovery in 1934 by Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie of artificial radioactivity.