77 Facts About Marie Curie

Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields.

Marie Curie's husband, Pierre Curie, was a co-winner of her first Nobel Prize, making them the first-ever married couple to win the Nobel Prize and launching the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes.

Marie Curie was, in 1906, the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris.

Marie Curie was born in Warsaw, in what was then the Kingdom of Poland, part of the Russian Empire.

Marie Curie studied at Warsaw's clandestine Flying University and began her practical scientific training in Warsaw.

In 1906 Pierre Marie Curie died in a Paris street accident.

Marie Curie won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of the elements polonium and radium, using techniques she invented for isolating radioactive isotopes.

Marie Curie founded the Curie Institute in Paris in 1920, and the Curie Institute in Warsaw in 1932; both remain major medical research centres.

Marie Curie taught her daughters the Polish language and took them on visits to Poland.

Marie Curie named the first chemical element she discovered polonium, after her native country.

Marie Curie was eventually fired by his Russian supervisors for pro-Polish sentiments and forced to take lower-paying posts; the family lost money on a bad investment and eventually chose to supplement their income by lodging boys in the house.

Marie Curie died of tuberculosis in May 1878, when Maria was ten years old.

Marie Curie's parents rejected the idea of his marrying the penniless relative, and Kazimierz was unable to oppose them.

Marie Curie soon earned a doctorate and pursued an academic career as a mathematician, becoming a professor and rector of Krakow University.

Marie Curie was helped by her father, who was able to secure a more lucrative position again.

Marie Curie continued working as a governess and remained there until late 1891.

Marie Curie tutored, studied at the Flying University, and began her practical scientific training in a chemical laboratory at the Museum of Industry and Agriculture at Krakowskie Przedmiescie 66, near Warsaw's Old Town.

Marie Curie subsisted on her meagre resources, keeping herself warm during cold winters by wearing all the clothes she had.

Marie Curie focused so hard on her studies that she sometimes forgot to eat.

That same year, Pierre Marie Curie entered her life: it was their mutual interest in natural sciences that drew them together.

Pierre Marie Curie was an instructor at The City of Paris Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution.

Marie Curie declared that he was ready to move with her to Poland, even if it meant being reduced to teaching French.

In Pierre, Marie Curie had found a new love, a partner, and a scientific collaborator on whom she could depend.

Marie Curie demonstrated that this radiation, unlike phosphorescence, did not depend on an external source of energy but seemed to arise spontaneously from uranium itself.

Marie Curie hypothesized that the radiation was not the outcome of some interaction of molecules but must come from the atom itself.

Marie Curie's electrometer showed that pitchblende was four times as active as uranium itself, and chalcolite twice as active.

Marie Curie concluded that, if her earlier results relating the quantity of uranium to its activity were correct, then these two minerals must contain small quantities of another substance that was far more active than uranium.

Marie Curie began a systematic search for additional substances that emit radiation, and by 1898 she discovered that the element thorium was radioactive.

Marie Curie later recorded the fact twice in her biography of her husband to ensure there was no chance whatever of any ambiguity.

Marie Curie was acutely aware of the importance of promptly publishing her discoveries and thus establishing her priority.

Marie Curie's paper, giving a brief and simple account of her work, was presented for her to the Academie on 12 April 1898 by her former professor, Gabriel Lippmann.

Marie Curie never succeeded in isolating polonium, which has a half-life of only 138 days.

In 1900, Marie Curie became the first woman faculty member at the Ecole Normale Superieure and her husband joined the faculty of the University of Paris.

In June 1903, supervised by Gabriel Lippmann, Marie Curie was awarded her doctorate from the University of Paris.

That month the couple were invited to the Royal Institution in London to give a speech on radioactivity; being a woman, she was prevented from speaking, and Pierre Marie Curie alone was allowed to.

Marie Curie was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize.

In December 1904, Marie Curie gave birth to their second daughter, Eve.

Marie Curie hired Polish governesses to teach her daughters her native language, and sent or took them on visits to Poland.

On 19 April 1906, Pierre Marie Curie was killed in a road accident.

Marie Curie accepted it, hoping to create a world-class laboratory as a tribute to her husband Pierre.

Marie Curie was the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris.

Only then, with the threat of Marie Curie leaving, did the University of Paris relent, and eventually the Marie Curie Pavilion became a joint initiative of the University of Paris and the Pasteur Institute.

In 1910 Marie Curie succeeded in isolating radium; she defined an international standard for radioactive emissions that was eventually named for her and Pierre: the curie.

In 1911 it was revealed that Marie Curie was involved in a year-long affair with physicist Paul Langevin, a former student of Pierre Marie Curie's, a married man who was estranged from his wife.

Marie Curie was five years older than Langevin and was misrepresented in the tabloids as a foreign Jewish home-wrecker.

Marie Curie replied that she would be present at the ceremony, because "the prize has been given to her for her discovery of polonium and radium" and that "there is no relation between her scientific work and the facts of her private life".

Marie Curie was the first person to win or share two Nobel Prizes, and remains alone with Linus Pauling as Nobel laureates in two fields each.

Marie Curie was appointed Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris, founded in 1914.

Marie Curie visited Poland in 1913 and was welcomed in Warsaw but the visit was mostly ignored by the Russian authorities.

Marie Curie saw a need for field radiological centres near the front lines to assist battlefield surgeons, including to obviate amputations when in fact limbs could be saved.

Marie Curie became the director of the Red Cross Radiology Service and set up France's first military radiology centre, operational by late 1914.

In 1915, Marie Curie produced hollow needles containing "radium emanation", a colourless, radioactive gas given off by radium, later identified as radon, to be used for sterilizing infected tissue.

Marie Curie provided the radium from her own one-gram supply.

In spite of all her humanitarian contributions to the French war effort, Marie Curie never received any formal recognition of it from the French government.

Marie Curie did buy war bonds, using her Nobel Prize money.

Marie Curie was an active member in committees of Polonia in France dedicated to the Polish cause.

Marie Curie travelled to other countries, appearing publicly and giving lectures in Belgium, Brazil, Spain, and Czechoslovakia.

Marie Curie sat on the committee until 1934 and contributed to League of Nations' scientific coordination with other prominent researchers such as Albert Einstein, Hendrik Lorentz, and Henri Bergson.

Marie Curie visited Poland for the last time in early 1934.

Marie Curie had carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket, and she stored them in her desk drawer, remarking on the faint light that the substances gave off in the dark.

Marie Curie was exposed to X-rays from unshielded equipment while serving as a radiologist in field hospitals during the war.

Marie Curie was interred at the cemetery in Sceaux, alongside her husband Pierre.

Marie Curie became the second woman to be interred at the Pantheon and the first woman to be honoured with interment in the Pantheon on her own merits.

Marie Curie's papers are kept in lead-lined boxes, and those who wish to consult them must wear protective clothing.

Marie Curie was known for her honesty and moderate lifestyle.

Marie Curie gave much of her first Nobel Prize money to friends, family, students, and research associates.

Marie Curie insisted that monetary gifts and awards be given to the scientific institutions she was affiliated with rather than to her.

Marie Curie received 25.1 percent of all votes cast, nearly twice as many as second-place Rosalind Franklin.

An artistic installation celebrating "Madame Marie Curie" filled the Jacobs Gallery at San Diego's Museum of Contemporary Art.

Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win two Nobel Prizes, the only woman to win in two fields, and the only person to win in multiple sciences.

Marie Curie received numerous honorary degrees from universities across the world.

In Britain, the Marie Curie charity was organized in 1948 to care for the terminally ill.

Marie Curie's likeness has appeared on banknotes, stamps and coins around the world.

Curie-themed postage stamps from Mali, the Republic of Togo, Zambia, and the Republic of Guinea actually show a picture of Susan Marie Frontczak portraying Curie in a 2001 picture by Paul Schroeder.

Marie Curie's name is included on the Monument to the X-ray and Radium Martyrs of All Nations, erected in Hamburg, Germany in 1936.

Marie Curie has been the subject of a number of films:.

Marie Curie is the subject of the 2013 play, False Assumptions, by Lawrence Aronovitch, in which the ghosts of three other women scientists observe events in her life.