Biography of Marie Curie for Kids: Famous Scientists for Children - FreeSchool

You're watching Free School! Today we are going to learn about the

famous

scientist Marie Curie. Marie Curie was a physicist and chemist, and is best known for her studies of radiation. She was born Maria Sklodowska on November 7, 1867 in Warsaw, Poland. Her parents were both well educated: her father taught physics and mathematics and her mother ran a school for girls. Marie had three older sisters and one older brother, but one of her sisters and her mother died when she was ten years old. Young Marie had a sharp and curious mind and did well in her studies, graduating at age fifteen from an all-girls school with a gold medal.

She wanted to go to university, but Warsaw University did not accept women. Marie and her sister Bronislawa secretly studied at something called Flying University, an unofficial night school that would allow women to enter. However, this was not enough and Marie and her sister came up with a plan. Bronislawa would go to France to study medicine at a university that accepted women as students. Marie would stay in Poland and work to support her sister. Once Bronislawa became a doctor, Marie would come to see her in France and it would be her turn to study. It was not until late 1891, when Marie was 24 years old, that she was able to move to France and begin her university education.

She had spent the years waiting for her studying alone and reading many books, and she knew that she wanted to become a scientist. Instead of living with her sister, whose house Marie thought was too far from the university, Marie rented a small attic nearby. Marie immediately encountered difficulties. Her years of unofficial studies had not prepared her for university courses. Worse still, all courses were taught in French, a language Marie spoke imperfectly. Determined to do well, Ella Marie studied during the day and tutored at night to earn money, but she barely had enough to live on. She was too poor to buy much food and, according to some accounts, she survived on bread and butter and tea, and often she was so interested in her studies that she forgot to eat, sometimes fainting from hunger.

Her attic room was often cold, but Ella Marie kept warm by wearing all of her clothes at once. Despite her difficulties, Marie earned a master's degree in physics in 1893, finishing as the best student in the course. She earned a second degree, this one in chemistry, in 1894. She was only 27 years old. While looking for a laboratory to work in, Marie met Pierre Curie. Pierre was also a scientist and had a small space where Marie could start working. Through their scientific work, the two became close and began to fall in love. Pierre even proposed to Marie, but she initially refused because she wanted to return to Poland.

She traveled to Warsaw to visit her family and tried to find work as a scientist, but was denied a place at university because she was a woman. Pierre wrote to her and convinced her to return to Paris. The two married in 1895 and together they had two daughters, Irene and Eve. Marie decided to begin working toward her doctorate, although at that time no woman had earned a doctorate in science. As a research topic, Marie decided to study uranium. Recent discoveries had shown that X-rays could pass through skin and muscles. Uranium could produce rays that could travel through the metal!

Marie called the materials that produced these rays "radioactive." She tested every other material she could think of to see if anything else produced these "rays" and found two materials that were even more radioactive than uranium. She realized that there must be something new and undiscovered in them. Pierre was so interested in Marie's work that he stopped her own research to help her. Together, the two discovered two new radioactive elements: polonium, named after Marie's home country of Poland, and radium. In 1903, Marie earned her doctorate in physics, becoming the first woman in Europe to do so. That same year, Marie and Pierre Curie received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the advances that their study of radiation brought to the understanding of the structure of atoms.

After his award, Pierre became a professor at the University of Paris and president of the physics department. Unfortunately, he died in a traffic accident in 1906. The university decided to offer her position to Marie, and she accepted, becoming the first woman to be a professor there. In 1911, Marie received her second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry, for her discoveries of radium and polonium. At that time she was a very

famous

scientist. She was eventually offered a position in Warsaw, but she declined. She wanted to build a research laboratory in Paris in Pierre's memory. She continued her research until World War I, when she created mobile X-ray trucks to help battlefield surgeons treat wounded soldiers.

It is estimated that more than a million soldiers were treated with her x-ray units. In the years after the war, Marie worked to raise funds for her research institute, but she became increasingly sicker. Prolonged exposure to radioactive materials without any safety measures had damaged her body. She died on July 4, 1934 from a radiation illness. Marie Curie achieved many scientific advances throughout her life. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win two Nobel Prizes, and the only person in history to win them in two different sciences. Marie and Pierre named many things after them: the unit with which radioactivity is measured is called the

curie

.

There are three radioactive minerals and an element named after her. Marie's research laboratory, now called the Curie Institute, is one of the world's leading medical research centers. Today Marie Curie is remembered as one of the best-known

scientists

in history. I hope you enjoyed learning about the famous scientist Marie Curie and learning about her important work.