 MARIE CURIEPhysicist, Scientist
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MARIE CURIEPhysicist, Scientist
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Marie Curie was born Marya Salomee Sklodowska (sklaw DAWF skah) in Poland when that part of the country was under Russian rule. She was the youngest of five children. She had a brother and three older sisters.
When she was four years old one of her older sisters taught her the alphabet, and Manya (as they called her) learned how to read. In fact, she could read better than Bronya who had taught her.
Her father was a professor. Sometimes the family would rent out rooms to students to help pay the bills. At one time they had ten boys living in the apartment with the family, and Manya had to sleep on a couch in the dining room.
Her mother was very ill with tuberculosis* and died of the disease when Manya was ten years old.
When she graduated from high school she won a gold medal because she had been such a good student. Her father knew she had worked very hard, and as a reward, she was permitted to spend a whole year in the country with relatives. She enjoyed a marvelous year with her cousins.
She wanted to study when she returned to Warsaw, but there was no money to send her away to college. She and her sister did private tutoring to earn money. Manya told her sister she would work to send her to school, then when Bronya became a doctor, she could return the favor. That's what they did.
Marie became a governess to a family in the country and also had an opportunity to teach several peasant children to read and write.
She fell in love with her employer's son, but his parents thought she wasn't rich enough or good enough to marry their son.
Her sister invited her to come to Paris to live and begin her studies. Manya changed her name to a French name, Marie. At the Sorbonne, the university, she chose to study mathematics and physics. While studying there she lived in a cold apartment and survived on very little food, but when she graduated she had the highest grades in the class. She had a master's degree in physics. Then she was awarded a scholarhip and was able to study further to get a master's degree in mathemetics. She would also later receive a doctorate in physics.
She met Pierre Curie and they married in 1895. With the money a cousin gave her for a wedding present, Marie bought two bicycles, one for herself and one for Pierre. They pedaled through the French countryside on their honeymoon.
Marie and Pierre in the laboratory
Pierre and Marie began experimenting together and discovered two new radioactive elements. She named one of them polonium* to honor her native country Poland, and the other they named radium* . They worked four years preparing a very small quantity of radium in order to prove there really was such an element. They had to work with a ton of pitchblende* uranium ore to accomplish this. The Austrian government had provided the ore, and they only had to pay for transporting it. Marie worked hard carrying very large jars of liquid during those years of experimenting.
In 1903 Pierre and Marie along with Henri Becquerel (ahn REE beck REL) received the Nobel Prize* in physics for their work and their discovery of radioactivity* . The money they received made life a little easier, and they also used some of it to help friends and family members. In 1911 she was again awarded the Nobel Prize for discovery of the two new elements polonium and radium.
The Curies had two daughters, Irene and Eve. They were good, loving parents. Pierre was offered a professor's job at the Sorbonne. Life seemed to be getting easier for them.
Then the unthinkable happened; Pierre was killed when he stepped out in front of a wagon being pulled by horses. Marie was in shock. What would she do without him? She felt like only half a person with Pierre gone, but she was strong and able to continue their work. They let her start teaching his classes at the Sorbonne. She was the first woman to teach at the university. Pierre's father, Dr. Curie lived with the family and helped to raise the girls. Four years later, he too died.
During the First World War Marie determined she could best serve by outfitting some cars with x-ray machines which could be taken to the battlefield hospitals. Bullets and shrapnel* could be located with x-rays to help the doctors treat the wounded soldiers. Irene, who was seventeen years old, helped her mother by becoming a nurse and working with her on the battlefield. Marie trained 150 women to become x-ray technicians.
Madame Curie made two trips to America to receive a gram of radium each time, first from President Warren Harding and eight years later from President Herbert Hoover.
In 1923 the French government gave her a pension of 40,000 francs a year in recognition of her lifetime of work in France.
She became ill and died from all her years of exposure to radium. Today doctors identify the disease as leukemia.
After Marie's death her daughter Irene and her husband Frederic Joliot received the Nobel prize for their work in atomic research. She followed in her mother's footsteps to also become a great scientist.
Many people have benefited from the discoveries made by Pierre and Marie Curie. The radiation which burned their skin as they worked with it, eventually came to be used to kill cancer cells in patients suffering from the disease.
You will enjoy reading Marie Curie, Pioneer Physicist byCarol Greene.
The 112 page book was written for elementary age children and contains many photographs.
A frequent question: "Who wrote this biography and when was it written?" Look on this Reference Citations Chart.
Biography of Marie Curie
Biography of Madame Curie
from World of Biography
Marie Curie
from Nobelprize.org
Marie and Pierre Curie
from Nobelprize.org
Marie Curie
biography and resources from Wikipdia
Marie Curie
and the science of radioactivity from the American Institute of Physics
Women's History - Marie Curie
Super Scientists
Marie Curie
About.com links
English Lesson Plan on Marie Curie
At biography.com search for Marie Curie.
Scroll the panel for the "Video & Audio Results".
World History Biographies: Marie Curie, The Woman Who Changed the Course of Science
By Philip Steele / National Geographic Children's Books
Marie Curie was not only one of the most distinguished scientists of her time, she was also the winner of two Nobel Prizes, in an era when women in the sciences was anything but encouraged. Growing up in Russian-occupied Poland, she was born into an intelligent family who nurtured her education. Famous for her discovery and isolation of radium, her discoveries led the way for many advances in energy and medicinal fields. With photographs, quotes, illustrations and a running timeline, this is a thorough look into the life of a woman who broke through the barriers in her life. 64 pages, indexed, softcover.
Great Scientists in Action, Grades 4-8
By Ed Shevick / The Lorenz Corp.(teaching & Learning Co)
How much do your students know not only about the accomplishments, but also the backgrounds of famous scientists? Your students will be inspired as they discover how hard most great scientists had to struggle to succeed. The lives of Aristotle, Isaac Newton, George Washington Carver, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein and many others, will inspire students that it isn't always the students with the best grades in school who turn out to be the scientific leaders of their generation.Students will enjoy doing the simple but interesting experiments suggested to make discoveries about everything from gravity to making peanut butter. An answer key is included at the back of the book. Softcover, 64 pages. Grades 4-8.
From Word Central's Student Dictionary
by Merriam - Webster
(Pronunciation note: the schwa sound is shown by ə)
tuberculosis
Pronunciation: t(y)u-"bər-kyə-'lO-səs
Function: noun
a disease of human beings and some other vertebrates caused by a bacterium
and usually marked by wasting, fever, and formation of
cheesy tubercles that in human beings occur mostly in the lungs
polonium
Pronunciation: pə-'lO-nE-əm
Function: noun
a radioactive metallic element that is found in pitchblende and decays to form lead
radium
Pronunciation: 'rAd-E-əm
Function: noun
a strongly radioactive shining white metallic element that is
chemically similar to barium, occurs in combination
in very small quantities in minerals (as pitchblende),
and is used in the treatment of cancer
pitchblende
Pronunciation: 'pich-"blend
Function: noun
a brown to black mineral that is a source of uranium and radium
radioactivity
Pronunciation: -"ak-'tiv-ət-E
Function: noun
the giving off of rays of energy or particles
by the breaking apart of atoms of certain elements (as uranium)
Nobel Prize
Pronunciation: (")nO-"bel-
Function: noun
an annual prize (as in literature, medicine, peace) established by
the will of Alfred Nobel for the encouragement of people
who work for the interests of humanity
shrapnel
Pronunciation: 'shrap-nəl
Function: noun
1 : a shell designed to burst and scatter metal balls with which it is filled along with jagged fragments of the case 2 : metal pieces from an exploded bomb, shell, or mine
Page Comments
Most Recent Comments ( See more comments on this page ) 2009-09-20
Highly informative and educational, I'm using this webpage with my 10-year-old students this week. Also very useful follow-up activities. Thanks!
Valeria2009-08-13
you were a nice guy them or the gurls
carolina2009-07-04
I loved your work! U are a role model for us girls!
Ellen
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