Life
Marie Curie-Sklodowska was born on 7 November 1867 in Warsaw in the family of a secondary school professor of mathematics and physics.
Because women in Poland had no access to higher university education, she moved to France and enrolled at the Sorbonne in 1891.
After her studies she worked in the laboratory of Gabriel Lippmann and met physicist Pierre Curie, whom she married in 1895.
Discovery of radioactivity
In 1896 Henri Becquerel discovered radiation emitted by uranium salts. Curie-Sklodowska named this phenomenon radioactivity.
Large quantities of pitchblende from Jáchymov were used in her research. From this material Marie and Pierre Curie isolated a new element in July 1898, which she named polonium.
Four months later they announced the discovery of radium.
In 1910 Marie Curie succeeded in isolating a small quantity of pure radium from several tons of radioactive material.
Nobel Prizes
In 1903 she received the Nobel Prize in Physics together with Henri Becquerel and Pierre Curie.
In 1911 she received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery and isolation of polonium and radium.
She thus became the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize and remains the only person awarded Nobel Prizes in two different scientific fields.
She was also the first woman to become a professor at the Sorbonne.
Later life and connection with Jáchymov
In 1914 the French government founded the Institut du Radium for her research.
During the First World War she organized mobile X-ray units for the treatment of wounded soldiers.
In 1925 she visited Jáchymov, descended into the Svornost mine and studied the therapeutic effects of radium water in the local spa.
Death
Marie Curie-Sklodowska died on 4 July 1934 in Sallanches in Savoy. The cause of death was aplastic anemia, most likely resulting from long-term exposure to radiation.
In 1995 her remains were transferred to the Panthéon in Paris.
