Marie Curie
Marie Curie (1867-1934), Polish physicist. Born Marie Sklodovska, she married her teacher, the French physicist Pierre Curie (1859-1906), in 1895. Together they undertook research into radioactivity and succeeded in discovering and isolating the new elements radium and polonium from pitchblende ore. The Curies were awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1903 for the discovery of radioactivity. After Pierre’s death in a road accident in 1906, Marie succeeded him as professor of physics at the University of Paris. She continued to work on radioactivity and on the medical application of radiation. In 1911 she was awarded a second Nobel Prize for the discovery of radium and plutonium. The radiation to which she was exposed in her research work finally caused her death. The Curies’ first daughter Irene Joliot-Curie (1897-1956) worked with her mother at the Radium Institute; in 1935 she and her husband Jean-Frederic (1900-58) were awarded the Nobel Prize for their discovery of artificial radiation.
