The First Women to be Awarded the Nobel Prize
- Aug 28, 2015
- 2 min read
Marie Curie was born on November 7, 1867 in Warsaw, Poland. Both her parents were teachers. That meant that, Marie was taught to read and write early. Being a bright child, she not only did really well in school, but she also had sharp memory.
After graduating from high school, Marie wanted to attend a university. Unfortunately, at that time women were not allowed to study in University. That meant, Marie would have to study abroad. However, Marie did not have the money to study abroad, but she agreed to work to help pay for her sister Bronislawa to go to school in France. In return, Bronislawa had to agree to help Marie back, one she got a job.
It took about six years, then Bronislawa graduated and became a doctor, Marie moved to France and entered the Sorbonne University. In the six years Marie had read a lot of books on math and physics as she wanted to become a scientist. Marie arrived in France in 1891. Although, Marie lived the life of a poor college student, she loved every minute of it as she was learning so much. After three years she earned her degree in Physics. In 1894 Marie met Pierre Curie. Like Marie, he was a scientist and the both of them fell in love. They married a year later and soon had their first child, a daughter named Irene.
Marie, who became fascinated by rays that were recently discovered was inspired to conduct experiments. One fine day, as Marie was examining a material called pitchblende she found a lot of rays. She soon realized that there must be a new, undiscovered element in pitchblende. Marie and her husband then, spent hours in the lab investigating the pitchblende and the new element. They eventually figured out that there were two new elements in pitchblende.
Marie named one of the elements polonium after her homeland Poland. She named the other radium, because it gave off such strong rays. The Curies too, came up with the term "radioactivity" describing elements that emitted strong rays. In 1903, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Marie and Pierre Curie for their work in radiation. Marie also became the first woman to be awarded the prize. In 1911 Marie won her second Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering the two elements, polonium and radium. She was the first person to be awarded two Nobel Prizes. Marie became very famous after that, that scientists came from around the world to study radioactivity with Marie. Soon doctors too realised that radiology could help to cure cancer. When World War I started Marie learned that doctors could use X-rays to help determine what was wrong with an injured soldier. However, there weren't enough X-ray machines for every hospital to have one. Thus, she came up with the idea of X-ray machines that would move from hospital to hospital. Marie even helped to train people to run the machines. The trucks became known as "little Curies" and are thought to have helped over 1 million soldiers. Marie died on July 4, 1934 at the age of 66. The cause of her death was due to the overexposure to radiation, both from her experiments and from her work with X-ray machines.
Adapted from Bio.
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