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if you want a glimpse of marie curie's manuscripts, you'll have to sign a waiver and put onprotective gear to shield yourself from radiation contamination. madame curie's remains, too,were interred in a lead-lined coffin, keeping the radiation that was the heartof her research, and likely the cause of her death,well contained. growing up in warsaw in russian-occupied poland, the young marie, originally namedmaria sklodowska, was a brilliant student,but she faced some challenging barriers.
as a woman, she was barred from pursuinghigher education, so in an act of defiance, marie enrolled in the floating university, a secret institution that providedclandestine education to polish youth. by saving money and workingas a governess and tutor, she eventually was able to move to paristo study at the reputed sorbonne. there, marie earned both a physicsand mathematics degree surviving largely on bread and tea, and sometimes fainting from near starvation.
in paris, marie met the physicist pierre curie, who shared his lab and his heart with her. but she longed to be back in poland. upon her return to warsaw, though, she found that securing an academic position as a woman remained a challenge. all was not lost. back in paris, the lovelorn pierre was waiting, and the pair quickly married and becamea formidable scientific team.
another physicist's work sparkedmarie curie's interest. in 1896, henri becquerel discoveredthat uranium spontaneously emitted a mysterious x-ray-like radiation thatcould interact with photographic film. curie soon found that the elementthorium emitted similar radiation. most importantly, the strength of the radiation depended solely on the element's quantity, and was not affected by physicalor chemical changes. this led her to conclude that radiationwas coming from something fundamental within the atoms of each element.
the idea was radical and helped to disprove the long-standingmodel of atoms as indivisible objects. next, by focusing on a super radioactive ore called pitchblende, the curies realized that uranium alonecouldn't be creating all the radiation. so, were there other radioactive elementsthat might be responsible? in 1898, they reported two new elements, polonium, named for marie's native poland, and radium, the latin word for ray. they also coined the term radioactivityalong the way.
by 1902, the curies had extracted a tenthof a gram of pure radium chloride salt from several tons of pitchblende, an incredible feat at the time. later that year, pierre curie and henri becquerel were nominated for the nobel prize in physics, but marie was overlooked. pierre took a stand in supportof his wife's well-earned recognition. and so both of the curies and becquerelshared the 1903 nobel prize, making marie curie the first femalenobel laureate.
well funded and well respected,the curies were on a roll. but tragedy struck in 1906 when pierrewas crushed by a horse-drawn cart as he crossed a busy intersection. marie, devastated, immersed herselfin her research and took over pierre's teaching positionat the sorbonne, becoming the school's first female professor. her solo work was fruitful. in 1911, she won yet another nobel, this time in chemistry for her earlierdiscovery of radium and polonium,
and her extraction and analysis ofpure radium and its compounds. this made her the first, and to this date, only person to win nobel prizesin two different sciences. professor curie put her discoveries to work, changing the landscape of medical researchand treatments. she opened mobile radiology unitsduring world war i, and investigated radiation'seffects on tumors. however, these benefits to humanitymay have come at a high personal cost. curie died in 1934 of a bone marrow disease,
which many today think was causedby her radiation exposure. marie curie's revolutionary research laid the groundwork for our understandingof physics and chemistry, blazing trails in oncology, technology, medicine, and nuclear physics, to name a few. for good or ill, her discoveries in radiation launched a new era, unearthing some of science's greatest secrets.