Women power in Science - Marie Curie

Today we will learn of a couple of scientists who were actually married and worked together in their discoveries and inventions.

Pierre and Marie Curie got married in 1895 and in 1903 they won the Nobel prize for physics for there work concerning radiation.  Pierre died in 1906 in a street accident and Marie died in 1934 and it is speculated that her work actually caused her death since she was over exposed to radiation.

Radiation is used today in getting rid of cancer in a patient. 

In physics, radiation is the emission or transmission of energy in the form of waves or particles through space or through a material medium. 

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Pierre Curie made many breakthroughs in his discoveries and work with magnetism and radioactivity, but it is his wife Marie that will be best remembered for her work.

She was brought up in Poland and then moved to France.  She won two Nobel prizes for her scientific work.  She was a chemist and also a physicist.

Henry Beckquerel first discovered that there were a strange energy coming from Uranium and Marie then did further tests and investigations and by using her husband's electrometer, she discovered that the energy came from the atom itself and not because of the interaction between molecules.

In 1911 she received a Nobel prize for her discovery of radium and polonium.

In 1932 Marie Curie founded the ‘Radium Institute’ in Warsaw, Poland. The name was changed after World War II to the ‘Maria Skłodowska-Curie Institute of Oncology’. The institute carries out specialized cancer research and treatment. 

Marie Curie was a strong women that did not let the fact that society did not take women seriously, stand in her way.  Even thought male scientist were more on the foreground and believed more, she kept on working and make a tremendous contribution on the fight against cancer.  Read more about this extraordinary women here.