The Life of Marie Curie

I chose to do my project on Marie Curie, the woman who discovered radium and polonium. She was born Mary Sklodowska on November 7, 1867 in Warsaw, Poland and died July 4, 1934 in Passy, France at the age of 67. In 1895, Marie married a professor named Pierre Curie at the age of 26. She was the first woman to complete a doctorate in France in MMMM at the age xxx. And in MMMMM, Curie was also the first female professor at the Sorbonne. She was the first person to use the term “radioactivity”, which is the term still used till this day.

Marie Curie was born the youngest child of five, to parents which were both teachers, Marie was driven to excel. A top student at her secondary school, she could not attend an all men only university. Because it was illegal at the time for girls to attend school, she attended an underground night school with her sisters. She continued her education at the “floating University” it was Warsaw’s underground classes held in secret. Since they were poor, neither Marie Curie nor her sister could afford to pay for school. They made a deal that Marie would work first and her sister would go to school. Once her sister was done and able she would help Marie attend school. Marie Curie was a tutor and a governess for five years in order to make money and support her sister and pay for her sister’s education. She finally went to Paris in 1891 and enrolled in the Sorbonne. She was so involved with her studies and that affected her health and she got ill from spending all her time on studies. She had very little funds, enough just to pay for buttered bread and tea, and her health also suffered from her poor diet. Curie continued to get her master’s degree in physics in 1893, and another degree in mathematics the y...

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...longed exposure to radiation. Based on all her work, Marie Curie made many ground breaking discoveries in her lifetime. She is the most famous female scientist to have ever lived and received many posthumous honors. In 1995 her and her husband’s were interred into the Pantheon in Paris which is the final resting place of Frances’ great minds. She was the first and only woman to be laid to rest in the Pantheon. Curie passed down the love of science to the next generation. Her daughter Irene followed in her mother’s footsteps by winning the Nobel Prize in 1935. She shared her Nobel Prize with her husband on their work on their synthesis of new radioactive elements.

Today several educational and research institutions and medical centers are honored with the Curie name, including the institute Curie and the Pierre and Marie Curie University both located in Paris.