Marie Curie - French Physicist

Marie Curie was a Polish-born French physicist. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in Physics, which she accomplished in 1903 with her husband Pierre Curie. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911, which made her the first person to win two Nobel Prizes. Marie Curie was modest when speaking of her extraordinary accomplishments, but she made tremendous advances in science. Her impact on the scientific world can be seen in countless ways, ranging from the development of atomic physics to the everyday use of x-rays.

Born as Marya Skłodowska in Warsaw, Poland on November 7, 1867, Marie Curie was the youngest of five children. Her parents were both well educated; her mother, Bronsitwa Boguska, was a pianist, singer, and teacher, while her father, Ladislas Sklodowski, was a mathematics and physics professor. She suffered great losses as a child through the deaths of her oldest sister and mother. Marie’s oldest sister, Zofia, died of typhus when Marie was only eight, and her mother died after a five-year battle with tuberculosis when Marie was eleven.

Despite these hardships, Marie became the star student in her classes at the boarding school she attended in Warsaw, which her mother had helped to manage before she became ill. Marie graduated when she was only fifteen and had the ambition to continue her education in mathematics and physics, which both fascinated her. She wanted to enroll in the University of Warsaw, as her brother Józef did, but was unable to since the university did not accept women.

In addition to the difficultly Marie encountered as a woman who wanted to enter medical school, her family had suffered financial hardships which delayed her higher education. For eight years, Marie worked as a governess and tutor to put money toward her college education and that of her sister, who was studying at the Sorbonne in Paris. Marie assisted her sister, Bronisława, in funding her studies at the Sorbonne in return