This is the fifth in a series of articles about female role models we can all look up to.
In this series, my main aim is to highlight female achievers who have not been given the privilege of the limelight. For this reason, I will intermittently continue with this series beyond Women’s History Month (March).
However, any celebration of female achievement would be incomplete without the absolute rockstar of women in science. Marie Curie not only made the concept of a female scientist cool but also mainstream.
Maria Sklodowska was born in Poland in 1867 and had shown great promise from an early age. Despite her prodigious abilities, Sklodowska was not allowed to take admission to the University of Warsaw as women were prohibited. So she and her sister, Bronislawa, struck a deal. They would take it in turns to support each other’s education.
Bronislawa went off to Paris first while Maria worked as a teacher and governess to earn the funds for her sister’s education. At the same time, she continued her learning at so-called floating universities that held underground classes for girls. Once Bronislawa had earned her degree and began working, Maria, now calling herself Marie, was able to travel to France and enrol at the prestigious Sorbonne.
At the university, Marie earned a degree in Physics in which she topped her class and a degree in Mathematics in which she came second. When looking for a lab to continue her research on the magnetic properties of steel, she was introduced to Pierre Curie. This was the beginning of one of the most fruitful relationships in the history of relationships.
The couple got married in 1895 when Roentgen was discovering X-rays and Henri Becquerel was discovering radioactivity (a term coined later by Marie Curie). Curie became fascinated with these discoveries and dedicated her life to researching them further. Her husband, realising the potential importance of Curie’s work, abandoned his own projects and joined her.
The pair were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1903 along with Becquerel. Yet, Curie almost missed out on her award as the prize committee had originally wanted to honour only the two men. Curie’s husband ensured that her name was added.
Despite being honoured all over the world for her achievements, Curie was unable to escape the clutches of patriarchy. When she and her husband were invited to present their findings at the Royal Institution in London, she was not allowed to speak and her husband gave the talk alone.
After her husband was killed in a freak horse carriage accident in 1906, she was offered his chair at the University of Paris as the most qualified candidate and became the first woman professor at the university. Despite the tragedy, she was able to isolate Radium in 1910 for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry the following year. However, despite becoming the first woman to win two Nobel Prizes and the first individual ever to win a Nobel in two different fields, the French press tore her apart for becoming romantically involved with one of her lab assistants. How many male scientists have suffered that fate, I wonder.
Despite all the “negative press covfefe” – to quote one of the greatest examples of patriarchy in human form – Marie Curie went on to pioneer the use of x-rays in medicine. She developed, with Renault, and operated mobile radiology units to treat wounded soldiers at the front during World War I. This she did with the help of her daughter Irene who, incidentally, also won a Nobel Prize in Physics.
Marie Curie is responsible for the establishment of the Radium Institute in Paris of which she was director – another first for a woman. She, along with her daughters, Irene and Eva, a journalist, worked tremendously hard to change social perceptions and promoted the involvement of more and more women in science.
Marie Curie died of leukaemia in 1934 – killed by the very elements she discovered; literally sacrificing her life for her work. In doing so, Curie shone – with radioactive glow – the way for women in science and, in all senses of the word, became a hero.
References:
Marie Curie – Biographical. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2021. Thu. 25 Mar 2021. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1903/marie-curie/biographical/>
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Marie Curie". Encyclopedia Britannica, 3 Nov. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marie-Curie. Accessed 26 March 2021.
Biography.com Editors. “Marie Curie.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 24 Feb. 2020, https://www.biography.com/scientist/marie-curie.
Siewierska, Katarzyna. “The Struggles and Contributions of Marie Curie.” Trinity News, 3 Mar. 2017, trinitynews.ie/2017/03/the-struggles-and-contributions-of-marie-curie/ .
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