I am Marie Curie
I am Marie Curie, a scientist. I was born
in Warsaw, Poland on 7th November, 1867. My original name was Maria Sklodowska,
but my family called me Manya. My parents were both teachers. My dad taught me
Maths and Physics. I was a very bright student, had a sharp memory, and did
very well in my school.
As I grew up my family started facing
troubles and tough times. This was because Poland was under the control of
Russia at that time. We were not allowed to read and write anything in Polish
language. My father lost his job because he supported the Polish rule. When I
was ten years old my dear elder sister, Zofia, became sick and died of Typhus
disease. Two years later my mother also died from tuberculosis. This was a difficult
time for me.
After graduating from high school, I
wanted to attend a university. But this wasn't something that young women did
in Poland in the 1800s because the university was only for men. However, there
was a famous university in Paris, France called the Sorbonne where women could
study. But I did not have money to go there. Somehow I started working and
arranged the money for my studies. After three years I got my degree in
Physics. Later, I met Pierre Curie. He was also a scientist. We fell in love
with each other and got married and soon we had our first child, a daughter
named Irene.
Do you know what scientific achievements I have done when I was alive? No? Then let me tell you. I became fascinated by rays that were recently discovered by scientists Wilhelm Roentgen and Henri Becquerel. Roentgen had discovered X-rays and Becquerel had found rays given off by an element called uranium. I began to do more experiments on them. One day I was examining a material called pitchblende. I expected there to be a few rays from the uranium in pitchblende, but instead I found a lot of rays. I realized that there must be a new, undiscovered element in pitchblende. I and my husband spent many hours in the science lab investigating pitchblende and the new element. We eventually figured out that there were two new elements in pitchblende. So, we had discovered two new elements for the periodic table. I named one of the elements as polonium after my homeland Poland. I named other as radium because it gave off such strong rays. We then came up with the term radioactivity to describe elements that emitted strong rays.
In 1903, we were awarded with the
prestigious Nobel Prize in Physics for our work in radiation. Because of this I
became the first woman to be awarded the prize. Later, in 1911 I won the Nobel
Prize in Chemistry for discovering the two elements, polonium and radium. So I
was the first person to be awarded two Nobel Prizes. I became very famous.
Scientists came from around the world to study radioactivity with me. Soon
doctors found that radiology could help with curing cancer. The Curie Institute
in Paris was founded by me in 1921 and is still a major cancer research
facility. Finally, I died on 3rd July, 1934. This was because of overexposure
to radiation, both from my experiments and from my work with X-ray machines.
This is why today there are lots of safety measures to keep scientists from
getting overexposed to the rays.
