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If you want a glimpse
of Marie Curie's manuscripts,
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you'll have to sign a waiver and put on
protective gear
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to shield yourself
from radiation contamination.
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Madame Curie's remains, too,
were interred in a lead-lined coffin,
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keeping the radiation that was the heart
of her research,
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and likely the cause of her death,
well contained.
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Growing up in Warsaw
in Russian-occupied Poland,
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the young Marie, originally named
Maria Sklodowska,
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was a brilliant student,
but she faced some challenging barriers.
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As a woman, she was barred from pursuing
higher education,
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so in an act of defiance,
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Marie enrolled in the Floating University,
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a secret institution that provided
clandestine education to Polish youth.
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By saving money and working
as a governess and tutor,
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she eventually was able to move to Paris
to study at the reputed Sorbonne.
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There, Marie earned both a physics
and mathematics degree
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surviving largely on bread and tea,
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and sometimes fainting
from near starvation.
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In Paris, Marie met the physicist
Pierre Curie,
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who shared his lab and his heart with her.
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But she longed to be back in Poland.
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Upon her return to Warsaw, though,
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she found that securing
an academic position as a woman
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remained a challenge.
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All was not lost.
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Back in Paris,
the lovelorn Pierre was waiting,
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and the pair quickly married and became
a formidable scientific team.
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Another physicist's work sparked
Marie Curie's interest.
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In 1896, Henri Becquerel discovered
that uranium spontaneously emitted
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a mysterious X-ray-like radiation that
could interact with photographic film.
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Curie soon found that the element
thorium emitted similar radiation.
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Most importantly,
the strength of the radiation
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depended solely on the element's quantity,
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and was not affected by physical
or chemical changes.
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This led her to conclude that radiation
was coming from something fundamental
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within the atoms of each element.
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The idea was radical
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and helped to disprove the long-standing
model of atoms as indivisible objects.
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Next, by focusing on a super radioactive
ore called pitchblende,
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the Curies realized that uranium alone
couldn't be creating all the radiation.
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So, were there other radioactive elements
that might be responsible?
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In 1898, they reported two new elements,
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polonium, named for Marie's native Poland,
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and radium, the Latin word for ray.
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They also coined the term radioactivity
along the way.
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By 1902, the Curies had extracted a tenth
of a gram of pure radium chloride salt
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from several tons of pitchblende,
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an incredible feat at the time.
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Later that year, Pierre Curie
and Henri Becquerel
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were nominated for
the Nobel Prize in physics,
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but Marie was overlooked.
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Pierre took a stand in support
of his wife's well-earned recognition.
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And so both of the Curies and Becquerel
shared the 1903 Nobel Prize,
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making Marie Curie the first female
Nobel Laureate.
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Well funded and well respected,
the Curies were on a roll.
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But tragedy struck in 1906 when Pierre
was crushed by a horse-drawn cart
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as he crossed a busy intersection.
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Marie, devastated, immersed herself
in her research
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and took over Pierre's teaching position
at the Sorbonne,
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becoming the school's
first female professor.
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Her solo work was fruitful.
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In 1911, she won yet another Nobel,
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this time in chemistry for her earlier
discovery of radium and polonium,
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and her extraction and analysis of
pure radium and its compounds.
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This made her the first,
and to this date,
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only person to win Nobel Prizes
in two different sciences.
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Professor Curie put
her discoveries to work,
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changing the landscape of medical research
and treatments.
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She opened mobile radiology units
during World War I,
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and investigated radiation's
effects on tumors.
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However, these benefits to humanity
may have come at a high personal cost.
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Curie died in 1934 of
a bone marrow disease,
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which many today think was caused
by her radiation exposure.
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Marie Curie's revolutionary research
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laid the groundwork for our understanding
of physics and chemistry,
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blazing trails in oncology, technology,
medicine, and nuclear physics,
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to name a few.
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For good or ill, her discoveries
in radiation launched a new era,
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unearthing some of
science's greatest secrets.6842
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