Marie Curie - a biography

Marie Curie was a famous physicist who coined the word “radioactivity”. Born in Poland, she showed a love for mathematics and physics when she was young. After studying in secondary school, she acted as a teacher for a couple of years before entering Paris University. After she finished schooling, she found out that she had a keen interest of things that glow and began doing experiments of crystals and minerals. After experimenting for some time, she met a professor: Pierre Curie, and soon married afterwards. Then, they began to experiment together, and rented a large lab for it.
Curie was first interested in radioactivity when she found out that a substance in iron ore glows mysteriously in the dark. She worked endlessly with Pierre to try to find out the substance. After a few months of hard work, they finally found the two candidates: thorium and uranium, which is four times brighter. When they reported their discovery to the scientific world, many scientists were suspicious of the findings, so they requested Curie to bring them a sample of radium.
When Curie received a report from the scientists, she decided to do her best to get some uranium. With Pierre’s help, they refined eight tons of iron ore, hoping that they could find a trace amount of radium. They worked very hard in a small laboratory, and Curie fell sick six times! However, they did not give up and were finally rewarded, as they found one gram of uranium in the ore. When the scientific work saw this new material, they were amazed, and that led Currie and Pierre to win the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics along with Henri Becquerel for investigation of radioactivity. Curie also pocketed the 1911 Nobel Prize in chemistry for her discovery of two new elements. This was very painstaking, as her husband was killed in a traffic accident, and she had to accept the fact the she must work alone. But still, she did not give up, and her will to discover new things led her to success. Along with Bardeen, Pauling and Sanger, Curie was on of the four people who had won two Nobel Prizes in their career. Many people were inspired by her love of science, and her daughter Irene Joliot-Curie and son-in-law Frederic Joliot-Curie both won Nobel Prizes and her close friend and neighbor Perrin did so too. As a gift for her amazing scientific discoveries, Curie was presented with a pendant containing uranium. As you might expect, Currie died of leukemia which is cause by overexposure to radioactivity.