Physicist and chemist — Marie Curie, born Maria Skłodowska (Warsaw, 1867 – Passy, 1934), was a Polish-born, naturalised French physicist and chemist, among the most influential scientists in history. Together with her husband Pierre Curie she carried out pioneering research on radioactivity, a term she herself coined, discovering two new elements, polonium and radium, isolated through gruelling experimental work. Her studies showed that radioactivity is an intrinsic atomic property, radically changing the understanding of the structure of matter. She was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize and the only person to win it in two different scientific disciplines, physics (1903) and chemistry (1911). Her research had enormous repercussions, from nuclear physics to the medical applications of radiotherapy.
Fun fact
Her laboratory notebooks are still so radioactive today that they are kept in lead-lined boxes, and consulting them requires signing a waiver; Marie Curie in fact died of aplastic anaemia caused by prolonged exposure to radiation.
Theories and contributions
- Radioactivity — The property of certain atomic nuclei to spontaneously emit radiation; it is a phenomenon intrinsic to the atom, not to molecules.
- Discovery of polonium and radium — Isolation of two new radioactive elements from pitchblende, with highly accurate measurements of the activity emitted.
Present in chapters
Linked atoms
2 linked atoms.