Marie+Curie

= Marie Curie =

 Marie Curie was a prominent scientist and researcher during the 19th century in the fields of chemistry and physics, and was known mainly for her work with radiation, as she developed the term and essentially discovered the phenomenon. Born in Warsaw on November 7th 1867, she kept her Polish identity throughout her life, even when she moved to France and became a naturalized French citizen. Curie is most widely known for being the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win two Nobel Prizes, and the only person to win in two different sciences. She discovered two radioactive elements (Polonium and Radium) that she isolated from the ore pitchblende, and was a pioneer for the advancement of women in science. She died on July 4th, 1934 after contracting aplastic anemia due to overexposure to radiation during her experiments. She was the first woman to be entombed in the Panthéon on her own merits.

Curie was born in Poland, but moved to France relatively early with her older sister in order to earn her higher degrees in 1891. It is in France that she conducted the majority of her most famous scientific research, as it is here that she met one of her greatest collaborators; Pierre Curie. Initially, Marie planned to return to Poland as soon as she finished her degree, but Krakow University would not give her a professorial position due to the fact that she was a woman, so she remained in Paris and began working with Henri Bequerel and Pierre on examining strange properties of uranium and its ores (pitchblende and torbernite). She discovered that the air around the uranium had an electric charge that did not seem to have come from any external source, but rather from the uranium itself. From this, she concluded that the Uranium must be emitting something from within itself, thereby putting forth the first use of the term "radioactive." She went on to isolate the elements Polonium and Radium from pitchblende, leading to her being awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics with her husband and Henri Bequerel for the radioactivity research and the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry by herself for the new elements.

Ultimately, Marie Curie's research not only laid the foundations for modern understanding of radioactive phenomena, but also paved the way for women to pursue the sciences in the future. Without her, the fields of chemistry and physics may have still been stuck in the 1900s and not been able to develop any further, as a large majority of modern science has been laid on the framework of radioactivity. She further established France as a powerhouse of modern science, which is a major part of its history and current identity. Innovation has always defined France, and Marie Curie played a major role in the cementation of this identity. Marie Curie's story is one of triumph despite all odds, and a tearing down of societal biases against women, and her legacy will continue to inspire people for many years to come.