Valerie(Marie Curie)

Marie Curie was born as the daughter of a secondary-school teacher. She received general education in local schools and a bit of scientific training from her father. In 1891, she went to Paris to continue her studies at the Sorbonne where she obtained Licenciateships in Physics and the Mathematical Sciences.

There, she met Pierre Curie, Professor in the School of Physics in 1894. In the following year, they got married. She succeeded her husband as Head of the Physics Laboratory at the Sorbonne and gained her Doctor of Science degree in 1903. Following the tragic death of Pierre Curie in 1906, she took his place as the Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences. That was the first time a woman had held that position. She was also appointed Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris, founded in 1914.

Her early researches with her husband were often performed under difficult conditions. Laboratory arrangements were poor and the both of them had to undertake much teaching to earn a livelihood. The discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896 inspired the Curies in their brilliant researches and analyses, which led to the isolation of polonium, named after the country of Marie's birth, and radium. Marie Curie developed methods for the separation of radium from radioactive residues in sufficient quantities to allow for its characterization and the careful study of its properties, especially therapeutic properties.

Throughout her life, she actively promoted the use of radium to alleviate suffering, and during World War I, assisted by her daughter, Irene Curie , she personally devoted herself to this remedial work. She did a lot to establish a radioactivity laboratory in her native city. In 1929, President Hoover of the United States presented her with a gift of $ 50,000- all of it donated by American friends of science- to purchase radium for use in the laboratory in Warsaw.



Marie Curie, though quiet, dignified and unassuming, was held in high esteem and admiration by scientists throughout the world. She was a member of Counseil Du Physique Solvay from 1911 until her death and since 1922 she had been a member of the Committee of Intellectual Co-operation of the League of Nations. Her work is recorded in numerous papers in scientific journals and she is the author of -Recherches Sur Les Substances Radioactives, published in 1904.



Marie Curie's work is reflected by the numerous awards bestowed on her. She received many honorary science, medicine and law degrees and honorary memberships of learned societies throughout the world. Together with her husband, she was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903, for their study into the spontaneous radiation discovered by Becquerel, who was awarded the other half of the Prize. In 1911 she received a second Nobel prize, but this time in chemistry, in recognition of her work in radioactivity. Jointly with her husband, she received the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in 1903, and in 1921, President Harding of the United States, on behalf of the women of America, presented her with one gram of radium in recognition of her service to science.

Sadly, Marie Curie died in Savoy, France, after a short illness on July 4, 1934.