Remembering Marie Curie on Her 89th Death Anniv.

Today, July 4, marks the 89th death anniversary of Marie Curie, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics 1903.

She gained an international reputation as a great innovator, physician, scientist whose revolutionary theories forever changed our perception of nuclear radiation.

Born in Warsaw on November 7, 1867, Curie Received a general education in local schools and some scientific training from her father.

She became involved in a students’ revolutionary organization and found it prudent to leave Warsaw, then in the part of Poland dominated by Russia, for Cracow, which at that time was under Austrian rule.

Following her passion, she went in 1891 to Paris to continue her studies at the Sorbonne where she obtained Licenciateships in Physics and the Mathematical Sciences. She met Pierre Curie, Professor in the School of Physics in 1894 and in the following year they were married.

Soon, she became Head of the Physics Laboratory at the Sorbonne, gaining her Doctor of Science degree in 1903.

Following the tragic death of Pierre Curie in 1906, she succeeded him as Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences, the first time a woman had held this position.

She also served as Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris, founded in 1914.

Her early researches, together with her husband, were often performed under difficult conditions, laboratory arrangements were poor and both had to undertake much teaching to earn a livelihood.

The discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896 inspired the Curies in their brilliant researches and analyses which led to the isolation of polonium, named after the country of Marie’s birth, and radium.

Moreover, Curie developed methods for the separation of radium from radioactive residues in sufficient quantities to allow for its characterization and the careful study of its properties, therapeutic properties in particular.

Throughout her life, Curie actively promoted the use of radium to alleviate suffering and during World War I, assisted by her daughter, Irene.

Unfortunately, Curie breathed her last in Savoy, France, after a short illness, on July 4, 1934.