Maria Skłodowska-Curie

1867-1934

Physicist and chemist. Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband, Pierre, in 1903. Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1911.

Madam Curie is – as far as I remember – the only Pole I learnt about while at school.

She grew up in the part of Poland that was under Russian rule. Her father was a maths and physics teacher and taught his daughter. Her mum ran a boarding house and school for girls “from good homes”.

Girls didn’t study in Poland at that time

Maria dreamed of studying, which was impossible for girls in Russia (Warsaw was by then a part of the Russian empire). It wasn’t until 1900 that girls were admitted to most degree programmes at the University of Krakow, which was part of Austria, as the first Polish university to admit girls.

After self-study, in 1891 she was admitted to the Sorbonne in Paris, where she studied maths and physics. Alongside her studies, she performed theatre about Polish independence, including with pianist Jan Pederewski, who would briefly become Polish Prime Minister and who worked hard on influencing US President Wilson to include the formation of an independent Poland in his declaration on the post-World War I world.

After completing her studies at the Sorbonne, Maria Skłodowska was offered a research scholarship and came to work closely with Pierre Curie, whom she married in 1895. The honeymoon was a cycling trip into nature.

In 1903, Maria, her husband and Henri Becquerel jointly won the Nobel Prize for their exploration of radioactivity. After her husband’s death in 1906 in a road accident, Madam Curie was the first woman to receive a professorship at the Sorbonne. In 1911, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of polonium and radium.

A not uncomplicated career

Despite the recognition and research opportunities, Madam Curie’s stay in France was not without complications. Her Polish background gave rise to speculation that she could be Jewish, which at the time in France was worse than being a woman. Furthermore, her professed atheism and association with married men attracted negative comments.

Here, actor Greer Garson reproduces Madam Curie’s speech after receiving the 1911 Nobel Prize in the film “Madame Curie”:

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