Maria Sklodowska ( Manya)

By Paul, Luc, Cyrielle, Bethany & Allan

She was born on November 7, 1867 in Poland and grew up in Warsaw. Her dad was a math and
physics teacher and her mom was a headmistress. There were 5 children in the family. She was the
youngest one. Marie was could read and write early. She was a very bright child and had a very sharp
memory. She worked hard and did very well at school.

The times were hard. Poland was under the control of Russia at the time. People were forbidden to
read or write anything Polish. Her father lost his job. When Marie was ten, her sister Zofia died from
typhus and two years later her mother died from tuberculosis. For the young Marie this was a difficult
time..

She graduated from high school and wanted to attend a university. but young women did do that in
Poland in the 1800s. It was for men only. But there was a famous university in Paris, France called the
Sorbonne. Women could attend. Marie did not have the money to go there, So she accepted to work
to help her sister Bronislawa to go to school in France. After she graduated she would in her turn help
Marie.It took six years !!! Bronislawa graduated and became a doctor, Marie moved to France and
entered the Sorbonne. Marie had read tons of books on math and physics. She knew she wanted to
become a scientist.

She arrived in France in 1891. She changed her name from Manya to Marie because she wanted to fit
in. Marie did not have much money. She lived the life of a poor college student, but she loved every
minute of it. After three years she got her degree in Physics. In 1894 Marie met Pierre Curie. He was
also a scientist and they fell in love with one another. A year later, they got married and their first child
was a daughter: Irene.



Marie was fascinated by rays. Wilhelm Roentgen and Henri Becquerel had discovered them.
Roentgen discovered X-rays and Becquerel had found rays given off by uranium. She started to do
experiments. One day Marie was examining a material called pitchblende and she found a lot of rays.
She realized that there was a new, undiscovered element in pitchblende.
Marie and her husband spent a lot of time in their lab experimenting with pitchblende and the new
element. Finally they discovered that there were two new elements: two new elements for the periodic
table! One of the elements was named polonium after her homeland Poland, still divided among three
empires. She named the other radium, because it gave off very strong rays. The Curies invented the
word "radioactivity" to describe elements that had strong rays.




In 1903, Marie and Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel were awarded the Nobel prize in physics for their
work in radiation. Marie was the first woman to be awarded the prize. In 1911 Marie won the Nobel
Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of polonium and radium. She was the first person to have two
Nobel Prizes. She became very famous. From all around the world scientists came to study
radioactivity with Marie. Doctors found that radiology could help with curing cancer.

When World War I started doctors used X-rays to help determine what was wrong with an injured
soldier. But not every hospital could have an X-ray machine. She had an idea. X-ray machines could
go from hospital to hospital in a lorry. Marie helped train people to use the machines. The lorries were
called petites Curies, meaning "little Curies".

Marie died on July 4, 1934. She died from overexposure to radiation; overexposure from her
experiments and from her work with X-ray machines.
Marie was the first woman to be a Professor of Physics at the Sorbonne. She knew Albert Einstein.
They were good friends. She had two daughters. Both could speak Polish and visited Poland many
times. Her first daughter, Irene, won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Her second daughter, Eve wrote a
biography of her mother's life. In 1921 she founded the Curie Institute in Paris. It is still a major cancer
research facility.


The Curie-Sklodowska university, Lublin