Marie Curie

You must be an exceedingly clever scientist to win a Nobel Prize in

chemistry or physics. There is one person who won a Nobel Prize in

both of these sciences. What’s more, she was a woman and she lived

in an era when women were definitely not taken seriously in the world

of science.

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Marie was born in Poland in 1867 to a family of famous teachers, and seemed set to have
an easy life. But her mother and sister both died when she was a little girl, and her family
lost all their money supporting Polish independence groups.
As a teenager and young adult, Marie, who was extremely intelligent, had to take
whatever kind of work she could get in order to put herself through school. She worked
as a governess, teaching the children of a rich family, and fell in love with their son. The
family would not let him marry this penniless woman, and Marie was out of a job again.
She finally moved to Paris, where her sister was living, and where some of the best
universities could be found. Marie lived in a bare attic, tutoring at night, going to
university in the day, and barely making ends meet.
Her luck changed when she met another science student named Pierre Curie. They
married and set up a laboratory together; they both loved science so much that they
hardly ever left their lab.
Now Marie Curie’s brilliance had a chance to shine. She began looking at radioactivity,
which had just been discovered, and set up innovative experiments that proved how