Who was Marie Curie? Interesting facts about her

Marie Curie, the woman who made history!


A name that we are all familiar with is that of Marie Curie. A Polish by birth and naturalized French citizen, she is known for creating history in the field of Nobel Prize. Why? There are three reasons why she was indeed a woman of great abilities-

  1. She was the first womanto win the Nobel Prize
  2. She was the first person to win two Nobel Prizes
  3. She won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903 along with
  4. her husband Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel (a physicist). In 1911
  5. she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, making her the only person to
  6. win a Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields.

Not only this, Curie came from a family of Nobel Prize winners. Her husband won one for Physics alongside her in 1903. Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie and her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie received it for Chemistry in 1935. In 1965, Henry Labouisse, the other son-in-law of Curie won the Nobel Peace Prize for UNICEF.

In 1903, the Nobel Prize was given to them for their work in radioactivity. Influenced by the discovery by Henri Becquerel in 1896, the husband and wife duo did a lot of research on radioactivity and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for it.

In 1911, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element.

She is also credited with the discovery of polonium and radium along with her husband. She also helped in developing portable X-ray machines during World War 1.

Her death in 1934 was caused due to prolonged exposure to radiation. What had helped this woman to make history, was sadly also the thing that killed her.

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