Marie Curie was born November 7th, 1867 in Warsaw, Poland. From a very early age Marie had a love for academics and education, which she got from her father who was a teacher. She was born in a time where women did not always go to school, and education for women was pretty rare. She attended an all girls school until the age of 15 when she graduated early with a gold star. She went to Flying University after which, at the time, was an underground University for women due to Russian laws that did not allow women to go to college. While she was there she studied mathematics and science.
In 1891 she enrolled at Sorbonne, a University in Paris. She received a degree in physics in 1893 where she was first in her class, and a second degree in mathematics in 1894, being second in her class. This is when she met her husband, Pierre Curie, who she married in 1895. He was also a physicist, and their relationship was marked by their passion for science and respect for each other’s work.
She soon became the Head of the Physics Lab at Sorbonne where she worked, and eventually received her Doctor of Science in 1903. After her husband died in 1904 she took over his position as Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences; this was the first time a woman held this position. In 1914 she became Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute at the University of Paris that she helped to found.
Her main research consisted of work with radium, in which she used to help people alleviate pain during World War I. This led to two Nobel Prizes she received later. She won her first after a successful separation of two elements, polonium and radium, which she did with her husband in 1898. This earned them a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903. Her second Nobel Prize was in Chemistry in 1911 for her work in the discovery of polonium and radium.
Marie Curie is remarkable, becoming the first woman to ever win a Nobel Prize and the first, and only, person to win the Nobel Prize in two scientific categories. On July 4th, 1934 she passed away at the age of 66 in Passy, France due to aplastic anemia. Her work pioneered the concept of X-rays on the battlefield after the radiographic units she made. Her work was essential to the development of radiotherapy during a time that did not respect women’s capabilities, but she proved them wrong time and time again.