Marie Curie

01Maria Salomea Sklodowska-Curie, birth name Sklodowska, November 7, 1867 to July 4, 1934.

02Known simply as Marie Curie, was a Polish and naturalized French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity.

03She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields.

04Her husband, Pierre Curie, was a co-winner of her first Nobel Prize, making them the first married couple to win the Nobel Prize and launching the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes.

05She was, in 1906, the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris.

06She was born in Warsaw in what was then the Kingdom of Poland, part of the Russian Empire.

07She studied at Warsaw's Clandestine Flying University and began her practical scientific training in Warsaw.

08In 1891, age 24, she followed her elder sister Braneslava to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work.

09In 1895, she married the French physicist Pierre Curie, and she shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics with him and with the physicist Henri Becquerel for their pioneering work developing the theory of radioactivity, a term she coined.

10In 1906, Pierre Curie died in a Paris Street accident.

11Marie won the 1911 Nobel Prize in chemistry for her discovery of the elements polonium and radium, using techniques she invented for isolating radioactive isotopes.

12Under her direction, the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms by the use of radioactive isotopes.

13She founded the Curie Institute in Paris in 1920 and the Curie Institute in Warsaw in 1932.

14Both remain major medical research centers.

15During World War I, she developed mobile radiography units to provide x-ray services to field hospitals.

16While a French citizen, Marie Sklodowska Curie, who used both surnames, never lost her sense of Polish identity.

17She taught her daughters the Polish language and took them on visits to Poland.

18She named the first chemical element she discovered polonium after her native country.

19Marie Curie died in 1934, aged 66, at the Sanselema Sanatorium in Passy, Haute-Savoy, France, of a plastic anemia likely from exposure to radiation in the course of her scientific research and in the course of her radiological work at field hospitals during World War I.

20In addition to her Nobel Prizes, she received numerous other honors and tributes.

21In 1995, she became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Paris Pantheon, and Poland declared 2011 the year of Marie Curie during the International Year of Chemistry.

22She is the subject of numerous biographical works, life and career, early years.

23Maria Sklodowska was born in Warsaw, in Congress Poland in the Russian Empire, on November 7, 1867, the fifth and youngest child of well-known teachers Braneslava, Nei Boguska, and the Ladyslaw Sklodowski.

24The elder siblings of Maria, nicknamed Mania, were Zofia, born 1862, nicknamed Zozia, Yosef, born 1863, nicknamed Josio, Braneslava, born 1865, nicknamed Bronia, and Helena, born 1866, nicknamed Hela.

25On both the paternal and maternal sides, the family had lost their property and fortunes through patriotic involvements in Polish national uprisings aimed at restoring Poland's independence.

26The most recent had been the January uprising of 1863-65.

27This condemned the subsequent generation, including Maria and her elder siblings, to a difficult struggle to get ahead in life.

28Maria's paternal grandfather, Yosef Sklodowski, had been principal of the Lublin Primary School attended by Bolslaw Pruss, who became a leading figure in Polish literature.

29The Ladyslaw Sklodowski taught mathematics and physics, subjects that Maria was to pursue, and was also director of two Warsaw Gymnasia, secondary schools, for boys.

30After Russian authorities eliminated laboratory instruction from the Polish schools, he brought much of the laboratory equipment home and instructed his children in its use.

31He was eventually fired by his Russian supervisors for pro-Polish sentiments and forced to take lower-paying posts.

32The family also lost money on a bad investment and eventually chose to supplement their income by lodging boys in the house.

33Maria's mother, Bronislaw, operated a prestigious Warsaw boarding school for girls.

34She resigned from the position after Maria was born.

35She died of tuberculosis in May 1878, when Maria was ten years old.

36Less than three years earlier, Maria's oldest sibling, Sophia, had died of typhus contracted from a border.

37Maria's father was an atheist, her mother a devout Catholic.

38The deaths of Maria's mother and sister caused her to give up Catholicism and become agnostic.

39When she was ten years old, Maria began attending the boarding school of J.

40Sikorska.

41Next, she attended a gymnasium for girls, from which she graduated on June 12, 1883 with a gold medal.

42After a collapse, possibly due to depression, she spent the following year in the countryside with relatives of her father, and the next year with her father in Warsaw, where she did some tutoring.

43Unable to enroll in a regular institution of higher education because she was a woman, she and her sister Bronislaw became involved with the Clandestine Flying University, sometimes translated as Floating University, a Polish patriotic institution of higher learning that admitted women students.

44Maria made an agreement with her sister Bronislaw that she would give her financial assistance during Bronislaw's medical studies in Paris, in exchange for similar assistance two years later.

45In connection with this, Maria took a position first as a home tutor in Warsaw, then for two years as a governess in Sksuki with a landed family, the Zorowskis, who were relatives of her father.

46While working for the latter family, she fell in love with their son, Kazimir Zorowski, a future eminent mathematician.

47His parents rejected the idea of his marrying the penniless relative, and Kazimierz was unable to oppose them.

48Maria's loss of the relationship with Zorowski was tragic for both.

49He soon earned a doctorate and pursued an academic career as a mathematician, becoming a professor and rector of Krakow University.

50Still, as an old man and a mathematics professor at the Warsaw Polytechnic, he would sit contemplatively before the statue of Maria Sklodowska that had been erected in 1935 before the Radium Institute, which she had founded in 1932.

51At the beginning of 1890, Branislava, who a few months earlier had married Kazimierz Dluski, a Polish physician and social and political activist, invited Maria to join them in Paris.

52Maria declined because she could not afford the university tuition.

53It would take her a year and a half longer to gather the necessary funds.

54She was helped by her father, who was able to secure a more lucrative position again.

55All that time she continued to educate herself, reading books, exchanging letters, and being tutored herself.

56In early 1889, she returned home to her father in Warsaw.

57She continued working as a governess and remained there until late 1891.

58She tutored, studied at the Flying University, and began her practical scientific training, 1890-1891, in a chemistry laboratory at the Museum of Industry and Agriculture at Krakowski-Przedmisi 66, near Warsaw's Old Town.

59The laboratory was run by her cousin Josef Boguski, who had been an assistant in St.

60Petersburg to the Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleev.

61Life in Paris In late 1891, she left Poland for France.

62In Paris, Maria or Marie, as she would be known in France, briefly found shelter with her sister and brother-in-law before renting a garret closer to the university, in the Latin Quarter, and proceeding with her studies of physics, chemistry, and mathematics at the University of Paris, where she enrolled in late 1891.

63She subsisted on her meager resources, keeping herself warm during cold winters by wearing all the clothes she had.

64She focused so hard on her studies that she sometimes forgot to eat.

65Sklodowska studied during the day and tutored evenings, barely earning her keep.

66In 1893, she was awarded a degree in physics and began work in an industrial laboratory of Gabriel Lippmann.

67Meanwhile, she continued studying at the University of Paris, and with the aid of a fellowship, she was able to earn a second degree in 1894.

68Sklodowska had begun her scientific career in Paris with an investigation of the magnetic properties of various steels, commissioned by the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry.

69That same year, Pierre Curie entered her life.

70It was their mutual interest in natural sciences that drew them together.

71Pierre Curie was an instructor at the City of Paris Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution, ESPCI Paris.

72They were introduced by Polish physicist Josef Wieruszkowalski, who had learned that she was looking for a larger laboratory space, something that Wieruszkowalski thought Pierre could access.

73Though Curie did not have a large laboratory, he was able to find some space for Sklodowska where she was able to begin work.

74Their mutual passion for science brought them increasingly closer, and they began to develop feelings for one another.

75Eventually, Pierre proposed marriage, but at first Sklodowska did not accept as she was still planning to go back to her native country.

76Curie, however, declared that he was ready to move with her to Poland, even if it meant being reduced to teaching French.

77Meanwhile, for the 1894 summer break, Sklodowska returned to Warsaw, where she visited her family.

78She was still laboring under the illusion that she would be able to work in her chosen field in Poland, but she was denied a place at Krakow University because of sexism in academia.

79A letter from Pierre convinced her to return to Paris to pursue a PhD.

80At Sklodowska's insistence, Curie had written up his research on magnetism and received his own doctorate in March 1895.

81He was also promoted to professor at the school.

82A contemporary quip would call Sklodowska Pierre's biggest discovery.

83On July 26, 1895, they were married in Sos.

84Neither wanted a religious service.

85Curie's dark blue outfit, worn instead of a bridal gown, would serve her for many years as a laboratory outfit.

86They shared two pastimes, long bicycle trips and journeys abroad, which brought them even closer.

87In Pierre, Marie had found a new love, a partner, and a scientific collaborator on whom she could depend.

88New elements.

89In 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen discovered the existence of x-rays, though the mechanism behind their production was not yet understood.

90In 1896, Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium salts emitted rays that resembled x-rays in their penetrating power.

91He demonstrated that this radiation, unlike phosphorescence, did not depend on an external source of energy, but seemed to arise spontaneously from uranium itself.

92Influenced by these two important discoveries, Curie decided to look into uranium rays as a possible field of research for a thesis.

93She used an innovative technique to investigate samples.

94Fifteen years earlier, her husband and his brother had developed a version of the electrometer, a sensitive device for measuring electric charge.

95Using her husband's electrometer, she discovered that uranium rays caused the air around a sample to conduct electricity.

96Using this technique, her first result was the finding that the activity of the uranium compounds depended only on the quantity of uranium present.

97She hypothesized that the radiation was not the outcome of some interaction of molecules but must come from the atom itself.

98This hypothesis was an important step in disproving the assumption that atoms were indivisible.

99In 1897, her daughter Irine was born.

100To support her family, Curie began teaching at the Eccle Norma Superior.

101The Curies did not have a dedicated laboratory.

102Most of their research was carried out in a converted shed next to ESPCI.

103The shed, formerly a medical school dissecting room, was poorly ventilated and not even waterproof.

104They were unaware of the deleterious effects of radiation exposure attendant on their continued unprotected work with radioactive substances.

105ESPCI did not sponsor her research, but she received subsidies from metallurgical and mining companies and from various organizations and governments.

106Curie's systematic studies included two uranium minerals, pitchblend and torbernite, also known as calcolite.

107Her electrometer showed that pitchblend was four times as active as uranium itself and calcolite twice as active.

108She concluded that, if her earlier results relating the quantity of uranium to its activity were correct, then these two minerals must contain small quantities of another substance that was far more active than uranium.

109She began a systematic search for additional substances that emit radiation.

110And by 1898 she discovered that the element thorium was also radioactive.

111Pierre Curie was increasingly intrigued by her work.

112By mid-1898 he was so invested in it that he decided to drop his work on crystals and to join her.

113The idea was her own.

114No one helped her formulate it, and although she took it to her husband for his opinion she clearly established her ownership of it.

115She later recorded the fact twice in her biography of her husband to ensure there was no chance whatever of any ambiguity.

116It likely that already at this early stage of her career realized that.

117Many scientists would find it difficult to believe that a woman could be capable of the original work in which she was involved.

118She was acutely aware of the importance of promptly publishing her discoveries and thus establishing her priority.

119Had not Becquerel, two years earlier, presented his discovery to the French Academy of Sciences the day after he made it, credit for the discovery of radioactivity and even a Nobel Prize, would instead have gone to Sylvanus Thompson.

120Curie chose the same rapid means of publication.

121Women were not eligible for membership of the Academy de Sciences until 1979, so that all her presentations had to be made for her by male colleagues.

122Her paper, giving a brief and simple account of her work, was presented for her to the Academy on April 12, 1898 by her former professor Gabriel Lippmann.

123Even so, just as Thompson had been beaten by Becquerel, so Curie was beaten in the race to tell of her discovery that thorium gives off rays in the same way as uranium.

124Two months earlier, Gerhard Carlschmidt had published his own finding in Berlin.

125At that time, no one else in the world of physics had noticed what Curie recorded in a sentence of her paper, describing how much greater were the activities of pitchblende and calcolite than uranium itself.

126The fact is very remarkable, and leads to the belief that these minerals may contain an element which is much more active than uranium.

127She later would recall how she felt a passionate desire to verify this hypothesis as rapidly as possible.

128On April 14, 1898, the Curies optimistically weighed out a 100-gram sample of pitchblende and ground it with a pestle and mortar.

129They did not realize at the time that what they were searching for was present in such minute quantities that they would eventually have to process tons of the ore.

130In July 1898, Curie and her husband published a joint paper announcing the existence of an element they named polonium, in honor of her native Poland, which would for another 20 years remain partitioned among three empires, Russia, Austria, and Prussia.

131On December 26, 1898, the Curies announced the existence of a second element, which they named radium, from the Latin word for ray.

132In the course of their research, they also coined the word radioactivity.

133To prove their discoveries beyond any doubt, the Curies sought to isolate polonium and radium in pure form.

134Pitchblende is a complex mineral.

135The chemical separation of its constituents was an arduous task.

136The discovery of polonium had been relatively easy.

137Chemically, it resembles the element bismuth, and polonium was the only bismuth-like substance in the ore.

138Radium, however, was more elusive.

139It is closely related chemically to barium, and pitchblende contains both elements.

140By 1898, the Curies had obtained traces of radium, but appreciable quantities, uncontaminated with barium, were still beyond reach.

141The Curies undertook the arduous task of separating out radium salt by differential crystallization.

142From a ton of pitchblende, one-tenth of a gram of radium chloride was separated in 1902.

143In 1910, she isolated pure radium metal.

144She never succeeded in isolating polonium, which has a half-life of only 138 days.

145Between 1898 and 1902, the Curies published, jointly or separately, a total of 32 scientific papers, including one that announced that, when exposed to radium, diseased tumor-forming cells were destroyed faster than healthy cells.

146In 1900, Curie became the first woman faculty member at the École Normandie Supérieure, and her husband joined the faculty of the University of Paris.

147In 1902, she visited Poland on the occasion of her father's death.

148In June 1903, supervised by Gabriel Lipman, Curie was awarded her doctorate from the University of Paris.

149That month, the couple were invited to the Royal Institution in London to give a speech on radioactivity.

150Being a woman, she was prevented from speaking, and Pierre Curie alone was allowed to.

151Meanwhile, a new industry began developing, based on radium.

152The Curies did not patent their discovery and benefited little from this increasingly profitable business.

153Nobel Prizes In December 1903, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Pierre Curie, Marie Curie, and Henri Becquerel the Nobel Prize in Physics, in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel.

154At first, the committee had intended to honor only Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, but a committee member and advocate for women scientists, Swedish mathematician Magnus Gosta Mittigleffler, alerted Pierre to the situation, and after his complaint, Marie's name was added to the nomination.

155Marie Curie was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize.

156Curie and her husband declined to go to Stockholm to receive the prize in person.

157They were too busy with their work, and Pierre Curie, who disliked public ceremonies, was feeling increasingly ill.

158As Nobel laureates were required to deliver a lecture, the Curies finally undertook the trip in 1905.

159The award money allowed the Curies to hire their first laboratory assistant.

160Following the award of the Nobel Prize and galvanized by an offer from the University of Geneva, which offered Pierre Curie a position, the University of Paris gave him a professorship and the chair of physics, although the Curies still did not have a proper laboratory.

161Upon Pierre Curie's complaint, the University of Paris relented and agreed to furnish a new laboratory, but it would not be ready until 1906.

162In December 1904, Curie gave birth to their second daughter, Eve.

163She hired Polish governesses to teach her daughters her native language, and sent or took them on visits to Poland.

164On April 19, 1906, Pierre Curie was killed in a road accident.

165Walking across the Rue Dauphine in heavy rain, he was struck by a horse-drawn vehicle and fell under its wheels, fracturing his skull and killing him instantly.

166Curie was devastated by her husband's death.

167On May 13, 1906, the physics department of the University of Paris decided to retain the chair that had been created for her late husband and offer it to Marie.

168She accepted it, hoping to create a world-class laboratory as a tribute to her husband Pierre.

169She was the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris.

170Curie's quest to create a new laboratory did not end with the University of Paris.

171However, in her later years, she headed the Radium Institute, Institute du Radium, now Curie Institute, Institute Curie, a radioactivity laboratory created for her by the Pasteur Institute and the University of Paris.

172The initiative for creating the Radium Institute had come in 1909 from Pierre-Paul-Émile Roux, director of the Pasteur Institute, who had been disappointed that the University of Paris was not giving Curie a proper laboratory and had suggested that she move to the Pasteur Institute.

173Only then, with the threat of Curie leaving, did the University of Paris relent, and eventually the Curie Pavilion became a joint initiative of the University of Paris and the Pasteur Institute.

174In 1910, Curie succeeded in isolating Radium.

175She also defined an international standard for radioactive emissions that was eventually named for her and Pierre, the Curie.

176Nevertheless, in 1911, the French Academy of Sciences failed, by one or two votes, to elect her to membership in the Academy.

177Elected instead was Edouard Branly, an inventor who had helped Guglielmo Marconi develop the wireless telegraph.

178It was only over half a century later, in 1962, that a doctoral student of Curie's, Marguerite Puri, became the first woman elected to membership in the Academy.

179Despite Curie's fame as a scientist working for France, the public's attitude tended toward xenophobia, the same that had led to the Dreyfus Affair, which also fueled false speculation that Curie was Jewish.

180During the French Academy of Sciences elections, she was vilified by the right-wing press as a foreigner and atheist.

181Her daughter later remarked on the French press's hypocrisy in portraying Curie as an unworthy foreigner when she was nominated for a French honor, but portraying her as a French heroine when she received foreign honors such as her Nobel Prizes.

182In 1911, it was revealed that Curie was involved in a year-long affair with physicist Paul Langevin, a former student of Pierre Curie's, a married man who was estranged from his wife.

183This resulted in a press scandal that was exploited by her academic opponents.

184Curie, then in her mid-forties, was five years older than Langevin and was misrepresented in the tabloids as a foreign Jewish homewrecker.

185When the scandal broke, she was away at a conference in Belgium.

186On her return, she found an angry mob in front of her house and had to seek refuge, with her daughters, in the home of her friend Camille Marbo.

187International recognition for her work had been growing to new heights, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, overcoming opposition prompted by the Langevin scandal, honored her a second time with the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

188This award was in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element.

189Because of the negative publicity due to her affair with Langevin, the chair of the Nobel Committee, Svante Arrhenius, attempted to prevent her attendance at the official ceremony for her Nobel Prize in Chemistry, citing her questionable moral standing.

190Curie replied that she would be present at the ceremony, because the prize has been given to her for her discovery of polonium and radium, and that there is no relation between her scientific work and the facts of her private life.

191She was the first person to win or share two Nobel Prizes, and remains alone with Linus Pauling as Nobel laureates in two fields each.

192A delegation of celebrated Polish men of learning, headed by novelist Henrik Sinkowitz, encouraged her to return to Poland and continue her research in her native country.

193Curie's second Nobel Prize enabled her to persuade the French government to support the Radium Institute, built in 1914, where research was conducted in chemistry, physics, and medicine.

194A month after accepting her 1911 Nobel Prize, she was hospitalized with depression and a kidney ailment.

195For most of 1912, she avoided public life but did spend time in England with her friend and fellow physicist Hertha Ayrton.

196She returned to her laboratory only in December, after a break of about 14 months.

197In 1912, the Warsaw Scientific Society offered her the directorship of a new laboratory in Warsaw, but she declined, focusing on the developing Radium Institute to be completed in August 1914, and on a new street named Rue Pierre Curie, today Rue Pierre E.T.

198Marie Curie.

199She was appointed director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris, founded in 1914.

200She visited Poland in 1913 and was welcomed in Warsaw, but the visit was mostly ignored by the Russian authorities.

201The Institute's development was interrupted by the First World War, as most researchers were drafted into the French Army.

202It fully resumed its activities after the war, in 1919.

203World War I.

204During World War I, Curie recognized that wounded soldiers were best served if operated upon as soon as possible.

205She saw a need for field radiological centers near the front lines to assist battlefield surgeons, including to obviate amputations when in fact limbs could be saved.

206After a quick study of radiology, anatomy, and automotive mechanics, she procured x-ray equipment, vehicles, and auxiliary generators, and she developed mobile radiography units, which came to be popularly known as Petites Curies, Little Curies.

207She became the director of the Red Cross Radiology Service and set up France's first military radiology center, operational by late 1914.

208Assisted at first by a military doctor and her 17-year-old daughter Irine, Curie directed the installation of 20 mobile radiological vehicles and another 200 radiological units at field hospitals in the first year of the war.

209Later, she began training other women as aides.

210In 1915, Curie produced hollow needles containing radium emanation, a colorless, radioactive gas given off by radium, later identified as radon, to be used for sterilizing infected tissue.

211She provided the radium from her own one gram supply.

212It is estimated that over a million wounded soldiers were treated with her x-ray units.

213Busy with this work, she carried out very little scientific research during that period.

214In spite of all her humanitarian contributions to the French war effort, Curie never received any formal recognition of it from the French government.

215Also, promptly after the war started, she attempted to donate her gold Nobel Prize medals to the war effort but the French National Bank refused to accept them.

216She did buy war bonds using her Nobel Prize money.

217She said, I am going to give up the little gold I possess.

218I shall add to this the scientific medals, which are quite useless to me.

219There is something else.

220By sheer laziness I had allowed the money for my second Nobel Prize to remain in Stockholm in Swedish crowns.

221This is the chief part of what we possess.

222I should like to bring it back here and invest it in war loans.

223The state needs it.

224Only, I have no illusions.

225This money will probably be lost.

226She was also an active member in committees of Polonia in France dedicated to the Polish cause.

227After the war, she summarized her wartime experiences in a book, Radiology in War 1919, Post-War Years.

228In 1920, for the 25th anniversary of the discovery of radium, the French government established a stipend for her.

229Its previous recipient was Louis Pasteur, who had died in 1895.

230In 1921, Curie toured the United States to raise funds for research on radium.

231Marie Mattingly Maloney, after interviewing Curie, created a Marie Curie radium fund and helped publicize her trip.

232In 1921 U.S., President Warren G.

233Harding received Curie at the White House to present her with the one gram of radium collected in the United States, and the First Lady praised her as an example of a professional achiever who was also a supportive wife.

234Before the meeting, recognizing her growing fame abroad, and embarrassed by the fact that she had no French official distinctions to wear in public, the French government offered her a Legion of Honor award, but she refused.

235In 1922, she became a fellow of the French Academy of Medicine.

236She also traveled to other countries, appearing publicly and giving lectures in Belgium, Brazil, Spain, and Czechoslovakia.

237Led by Curie, the Institute produced four more Nobel Prize winners, including her daughter Irine Joliath-Curie and her son-in-law Frederick Joliath-Curie.

238Eventually, it became one of the world's four major radioactivity research laboratories, the others being the Cavendish Laboratory with Ernest Rutherford, the Institute for Radium Research Vienna with Stephen Meyer, and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry with Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner.

239In August 1922, Curie became a member of the League of Nations' newly created International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation.

240She sat on the committee until 1934 and contributed to League of Nations scientific coordination with other prominent researchers such as Albert Einstein, Hendrik Lawrence, and Henri Bergson.

241In 1923, she wrote a biography of her late husband, titled Pierre Curie.

242In 1925, she visited Poland to participate in a ceremony laying the foundations for Warsaw's Radium Institute.

243Her second American tour, in 1929, succeeded in equipping the Warsaw Radium Institute with radium.

244The Institute opened in 1932, with her sister Bronisława its director.

245These distractions from her scientific labors, and the attendant publicity caused her much discomfort but provided resources for her work.

246In 1930, she was elected to the International Atomic Weights Committee, on which she served until her death.

247In 1931, Curie was awarded the Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh.

248Death.

249Curie visited Poland for the last time in early 1934.

250A few months later, on July 4, 1934, she died aged 66 at the Sanselemans Sanatorium in Pasi, Hotzevoy, from a plastic anemia believed to have been contracted from her long-term exposure to radiation, causing damage to her bone marrow.

251The damaging effects of ionizing radiation were not known at the time of her work, which had been carried out without the safety measures later developed.

252She had carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket, and she stored them in her desk drawer, remarking on the faint light that the substances gave off in the dark.

253Curie was also exposed to x-rays from unshielded equipment while serving as a radiologist in field hospitals during the First World War.

254When Curie's body was exhumed in 1995, the French Office to Protection Contra Les Réaum & Zionisens, OPRI, concluded that she could not have been exposed to lethal levels of radium while she was alive.

255They pointed out that radium poses a risk only if it's ingested, and speculated that her illness was more likely to have been due to her use of radiography during the First World War.

256She was interred at the cemetery in Sos, alongside her husband Pierre.

257Sixty years later, in 1995, in honor of their achievements, the remains of both were transferred to the Paris Pantheon.

258Their remains were sealed in a lead lining because of the radioactivity.

259She became the second woman to be interred at the Pantheon, after Sophie Berthelot, and the first woman to be honored with interment in the Pantheon on her own merits.

260Because of their levels of radioactive contamination, her papers from the 1890s are considered too dangerous to handle.

261Even her cookbooks are highly radioactive.

262Her papers are kept in lead-line boxes, and those who wish to consult them must wear protective clothing.

263In her last year, she worked on a book, Radioactivity, which was published posthumously in 1935.

264Legacy.

265The physical and societal aspects of the Curie's work contributed to shaping the world of the 20th and 21st centuries.

266Cornell University Professor L.

267Pierce Williams observes, The result of the Curie's work was epic-making.

268Radium's radioactivity was so great that it could not be ignored.

269It seemed to contradict the principle of the conservation of energy, and therefore forced a reconsideration of the foundations of physics.

270On the experimental level, the discovery of radium provided men like Ernest Rutherford with sources of radioactivity with which they could probe the structure of the atom.

271As a result of Rutherford's experiments with alpha radiation, the nuclear atom was first postulated.

272In medicine, the radioactivity of radium appeared to offer a means by which cancer could be successfully attacked.

273In addition to helping to overturn established ideas in physics and chemistry, Curie's work has had a profound effect in the societal sphere.

274To attain her scientific achievements, she had to overcome barriers, in both her native and her adoptive country, that were placed in her way because she was a woman.

275She was known for her honesty and moderate lifestyle.

276Having received a small scholarship in 1893, she returned it in 1897 as soon as she began earning her keep.

277She gave much of her first Nobel Prize money to friends, family, students, and research associates.

278In an unusual decision, Curie intentionally refrained from patenting the radium isolation process so that the scientific community could do research unhindered.

279She insisted that monetary gifts and awards be given to the scientific institutions she was affiliated with rather than to her.

280She and her husband often refused awards and medals.

281Albert Einstein reportedly remarked that she was probably the only person who could not be corrupted by fame, commemoration, and cultural depictions.

282As one of the most famous scientists in history, Marie Curie has become an icon in the scientific world and has received tributes from across the globe.

283Even in the realm of pop culture.

284She also received many honorary degrees from universities across the world.

285Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win two Nobel Prizes, the only woman to win in two fields, and the only person to win in multiple sciences.

286Awards and honors that she received include Nobel Prize in Physics, 1903, with her husband Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel.

287Davy Medal, 1903, with Pierre.

288Matucci Medal, 1904, with Pierre.

289Actonian Prize, 1907.

290Elliott Cresson Medal, 1909.

291Legion of Honor, 1909.

292Rejected.

293Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1911.

294Civil Order of Alfonso XII.

2951919.

296Franklin Medal of the American Philosophical Society, 1921.

297Order of the White Eagle, 2018.

298Posthumously.

299Entities that have been named after Marie Curie include.

300The Curie, symbol CI, a unit of radioactivity, is named in honor of her and Pierre Curie, although the commission which agreed on the name never clearly stated whether the standard was named after Pierre, Marie, or both.

301The element with atomic number 96 was named Curium, symbol CM.

302Three radioactive minerals are also named after the Curies.

303Curite, Sclodoskyte, and Cuprosclodoskyte.

304The Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions Fellowship Program of the European Union for Young Scientists Wishing to Work in a Foreign Country.

305In 2007, a metro station in Paris was renamed after both of the Curies.

306The Polish research nuclear reactor Maria, the 7,000 Curie asteroid, Marie Curie charity in the United Kingdom.

307The IEEE Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Award, an international award presented for outstanding contributions to the field of nuclear and plasma sciences and engineering, was established by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2008.

308The Marie-Curie Medal, an annual science award established in 1996 and conferred by the Polish Chemical Society.

309The Marie-Curie-Sklodowska Medal and Prize, an annual award conferred by the London-based Institute of Physics for Distinguished Contributions to Physics Education.

310Maria-Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, Poland.

311Pierre and Marie-Curie University in Paris.

312Maria-Sklodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology in Poland.

313Ecole Elementaire Marie-Curie in London, Ontario, Canada.

314Curie Metropolitan High School in Chicago, United States.

315Marie-Curie High School in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

316Licee Francais Marie-Curie de Zurich, Switzerland.

317See Licee Marie-Curie for a list of other schools named after her.

318Rue Madame Curie in Beirut, Lebanon.

319Numerous biographies are devoted to her, including...

320Rue Madame Curie in Beirut, Lebanon.

321Rue Madame Curie in Beirut, Lebanon.

322Rue Madame Curie in Beirut, Lebanon.

323Rue Madame Curie in Beirut, Lebanon.