Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw in 1867, the youngest of five siblings. Her father, Władysław, and her mother, Bronisława, were both well-known teachers who directed respected secondary schools. However, their family had lost its wealth and standing in previous generations by supporting Polish independence movements. Maria’s father, Władysław, was eventually fired by Russian superiors for his pro-Polish views and had to take lower-paying positions.

Maria excelled in school and was especially interested in her father’s subjects of math and physics. When Russian authorities removed science labs from the curriculum, Władysław brought home his lab equipment and personally taught his children science.

Tragically, Maria’s mother Bronisława died of tuberculosis when Maria was ten years old, just three years after her eldest sibling, Zofia, had died of typhus. Prior to her mother’s death, Maria had held Catholic views; however, Władysław’s atheism and the deaths in her family led her to become agnostic.

After graduating from secondary school, Maria and her sister Bronia were unable to enter the all-male University of Warsaw, and Władysław could not pay for them to travel elsewhere for college. Undeterred, the sisters became involved in Warsaw’s “Flying University” (also sometimes translated as the “Floating University”), which covertly taught female students. They also struck a deal to overcome their financial troubles: Maria would work to support her sister while she attended college in Paris, and Bronia would repay her in kind a few years later.

Maria spent the next several years working as a tutor and governess. While working for the Żorawskis, who were relatives of her father, she formed a relationship with their son, Kazimierz. He was a rising mathematician and they discussed marriage, but his parents refused on the grounds that she was poor and related to them.

Kazimierz Żorawski would go on to become a professor, co-found the Kraków School of Mathematics, and contribute a great deal to Polish mathematics, both through his work and by co-founding the Polish Mathematical Society. And yet, as a professor at the Warsaw Polytechnic in 1935, he would often gaze pensively at the new statue of Maria Skłodowska in front of her Radium Institute.

Maria returned to Warsaw in 1889, where she continued her education at the Flying University and briefly worked at a chemical laboratory run by her cousin. By 1891, she finally had enough money to move to Paris and go to school there. Her sister Bronia had married Kazimierz Dłuski, a Polish physician and activist; Maria stayed with them when she first arrived in Paris. Soon afterward, she rented her own place closer to the University of Paris (also known as the Sorbonne), where she had enrolled. In France, she went by “Marie”.

Marie worked long hours studying and tutoring others for meager pay. She had very little money left over for food, and she suffered from hunger. Finally, in 1893, after eight years of covert education and two difficult years of studying in Paris, she earned a degree in physics. She would continue to study at the University of Paris while working at an industrial laboratory, earning a second degree in mathematics in 1894.

At about this time, she was commissioned to study magnetic properties of steel. In her search for laboratory space, Marie was introduced to the physicist Pierre Curie. He found a space for her to work, and the two of them grew close. Though she had intended to return to work in Poland, Marie found that Kraków University would not take her on because she was a woman. Instead, she returned in Paris to pursue a PhD; Pierre earned his own doctorate, becoming a professor at the Sorbonne. The two of them were married on July 26^th, 1895, and she became “Marie Curie”.

In searching for a thesis topic, Marie Curie landed on Henri Becquerel’s discovery of rays emitted from uranium. They were found to be similar to but different from Wilhelm Roentgen’s newly discovered X-rays. Using an electrometer developed by Pierre and his brother, she found that the air surrounding a uranium sample conducted electricity. Using this to measure the magnitude of the uranium rays, she found that their magnitude depended only on the mass of uranium in the sample. This led her to hypothesize that the rays were caused by the structure of the uranium atom.

After the birth of a daughter, Irene, in 1897, Marie Curie began teaching at the École Normale Supérieure for extra money. She carried out her research in a converted shed that was poorly insulated and leaked, and unfortunately she was unaware of the dangers of radiation exposure.

Two minerals she was using, pitchblende and torbernite, appeared to be more radioactive than uranium. If her hypothesis about radioactivity was correct, that would suggest that there were small quantities of another, much more radioactive substance in those minerals. After months of investigation, Curie concluded that the element thorium was also radioactive; however, she had been beaten to that discovery by two months. This did not account for the much more radioactive substance present in those minerals, though.

In early 1898, Pierre Curie dropped his own research on crystals to join his wife’s studies of radioactivity. After processing great quantities of pitchblende and separating its elements, the Curies produced a black powder approximately 330 times as radioactive as uranium. In a July 1898 paper, they announced their discovery of the new element “polonium”, named for Marie’s home country of Poland.

However, the liquid that remained after the polonium had been extracted was still extremely radioactive, so the Curies began searching for the presence of an even more radioactive element. In December 1898, they announced the discovery of “radium”, named for the Latin word for “ray”. They coined the term “radioactivity” at about this time.

To prove the existence of these elements, they attempted to isolate them from pitchblende. This was incredibly arduous and painstaking work, especially because it involved physically handling highly radioactive material. By 1902, they had isolated one-tenth of a gram of radium chloride from a ton of pitchblende and determined radium’s atomic weight. However, they also suffered from early symptoms of radiation sickness, experiencing physical exhaustion and inflamed hands.

In 1903, the University of Paris awarded Marie Curie her doctorate, but only her husband was permitted to speak about their work before the Royal Institution in London. In December of the same year, the Curies and Henri Becquerel were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their combined research into radioactivity. The committee was initially going to leave out Marie Curie, but an advocate for women scientists alerted Pierre to the committee’s intentions and he fought for her inclusion. Marie Curie thus became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.

After the Curies won the Nobel Prize and Pierre received offers from other universities, the University of Paris realized it had to treat them a bit better. Pierre quickly became a professor of physics; when he asked for a proper laboratory, the university promised him one, though it wouldn’t deliver on that promise until 1906.

Sadly, Pierre Curie was killed in an accident in April 1906, when he stepped in front of a horse and buggy during a rainstorm. Marie was grief-stricken but agreed to take over his teaching position and carry on in their scientific endeavors. In doing so, she became the first female professor in the history of the University of Paris.

In 1910, Curie succeeded in isolating pure radium and defined an international standard unit for measuring radioactivity, the curie (unfortunately, the current SI unit is instead the becquerel). However, she was not elected to the French Academy of Sciences by a margin of one or two votes; the Academy would not elect a female member until 1962. The right wing press did her no favors, portraying her as an atheist foreigner in the lead-up to the vote.

Despite the negative press, Curie’s international reputation was rising. In 1911, she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, making her the first person to win two Nobel Prizes, period. Though it was awarded to her alone, she shared it with her late husband in her acceptance speech. This second Prize gave her leverage to convince the French government to fund the Radium Institute, which would be built in 1914 and would support research in chemistry, physics, and medicine. Curie was asked to return to Poland and continue her work there, but declined.

During World War I, research ground to a halt. Instead, Curie promoted the use of portable X-ray machines in treating soldiers near the frontlines; those units became known as “Little Curies.” Her 17 year old daughter, Irene, helped her implement these in the field. About one million soldiers were treated with her X-ray units; she also bought war bonds with her Nobel Prize money.

After the war, Curie used her fame abroad to gather funds for the Radium Institute (especially in the United States, where she met President Warren G Harding). France also started treating her better; the government established a stipend for her and offered her a Legion of Honour award (which she declined), and she was elected to the French Academy of Medicine.

Marie Curie wrote a biography of her husband, Pierre Curie, in 1923. She also established a Radium Institute in Warsaw (the one her old mathematician friend would have seen), and her sister Bronia became its first director when it opened in 1932. She did not entirely welcome her newfound fame, because it took her away from her research, but she appreciated the funds it brought to her initiatives.

In 1934, Marie Curie travelled to the Sancellemoz Sanatorium in Passy, France to rest. She would die there in July of 1934 from aplastic anemia, likely caused by her decades-long exposure to radiation. In 1995, she and her husband were interred in the Panthéon in Paris with France’s greatest thinkers, she being the first woman to be interred there on her own merits.

Indeed, she is the most famous female scientist in history, and she and Linus Pauling remain the only scientists to have won Nobel Prizes in multiple fields. Her work on radioactivity provided vital insights into atomic theory and led to the discovery of many new elements. Indeed, her daughter, Irene, would go on to win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry with her husband for further synthesis of new radioactive elements. Curie’s institutes have also fostered research that has won multiple Nobel Prizes.

From all accounts, Marie Curie was also a very humble and dedicated person. She gave most of her Nobel Prize winnings to friends, family, and research associates, as well as using it to buy war bonds; she also decided to not patent the radium isolation process, allowing research to continue freely. Albert Einstein once remarked that she is the only person not to have been corrupted by fame. From what I’ve gathered, I’m inclined to agree with him.