Biography of Marie Curie

Born Maria Sklodowska, Marie Curie (November 7, 1867 to July 4, 1934) became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to win the award in two different fields (physics and chemistry). Curie's efforts, with her husband Pierre Curie, led to the discovery of polonium and radium and, after Pierre's death, the further development of X-rays.

Marie became fascinated by rays that were recently discovered by scientists Wilhelm Roentgen and Henri Becquerel. Roentgen discovered X-rays and Becquerel had found rays given off by an element called uranium. Marie began to do experiments.

One day Marie was examining a material called pitchblende ( uraninita). She expected there to be a few rays from the uranium in pitchblende, but instead Marie found a lot of rays. She soon realized that there must be a new, undiscovered element in pitchblende.

Marie and her husband spent many hours in the science lab investigating pitchblende and the new element. They eventually figured out that there were two new elements in pitchblende. They had discovered two new elements for the periodic table! Marie named one of the elements polonium after her homeland Poland.

 She named the other radium, because it gave off such strong rays. The Curies came up with the term "radioactivity" to describe elements that emitted strong rays.

In 1903, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Marie and Pierre Curie as well as Henri Becquerel for their work in radiation. Marie became the first woman to be awarded the prize.

 In 1911 Marie won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering the two elements, polonium and radium. She was the first person to be awarded two Nobel Prizes. Marie became very famous. Scientists came from around the world to study radioactivity with Marie. Soon doctors found that radiology could help with curing cancer.

When World War I started Marie learned that doctors could use X-rays to help determine what was wrong with an injured soldier. However, there weren't enough X-ray machines for every hospital to have one. She came up with the idea that the X-ray machines could move from hospital to hospital in a truck. Marie even helped to train people to run the machines. The trucks became known as petites Curies, meaning "little Curies" and are thought to have helped over 1 million soldiers during the war.

Marie died on July 4, 1934. She died from overexposure to radiation, both from her experiments and from her work with X-ray machines. Today there are lots of safety measures to keep scientists from getting overexposed to the rays.