Marie Curie & how her genius killed her.

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Marie Curie was an incredible scientist, and the first woman to win a Nobel prize. Her contributions to the world of science are extraordinary. Let's read a little into her incredible discoveries and a little into her life. 

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Marie Curie, and How Her Genius Killed Her.

Born in Warsaw, Russian-occupied Poland, in 1867, originally named Marie Skłodowska was a brilliant student but faced some challenging barriers. Being a woman, she was not allowed to receive higher education. In defiance and to pursue her dreams, she enrolled in the secret Floating University, a secret institution providing education to polish youth. Marie work as a governess and tutor. She eventually moved to Paris and studied at the Sorbonne. Here she earned degrees in physics and mathematics. During this time, she barely had anything to eat and survived on bread and tea and, at times, even fainted from hunger. In Paris, Marie met the physicist Piere Curie, who shared his lab with her. Marie felt homesick in Paris and longed to go back to Poland. When she returned to Warsaw, she realized that securing an academic position as a woman was challenging. After returning to Paris, Marie married Pierre Curie and settled with him. The two were a formidable scientific team. Later, another physicist's work interested young Marie. In 1896, Henri Becquerel discovered that Uranium emitted strange radiation that reacted with photographic film. 

Curie found Thorium emitting similar radiation. She also saw that the strength of this radiation was not affected by any physical or chemical changes, differing solely on the quantity of the element. This lead her to conclude that the radiation came from within the atoms of each element. The radical idea helped to disprove the model of atoms as indivisible, believed by scientists for a long time. While focusing on the radioactive ore 'Pitchblende,' she realized Uranium couldn't be making all the radiation. This intrigued the Curies who researched the topic further, and, in 1898, she reported two elements - Polonium and Radium. Marie named the element Polonium after her home, Poland. Radium means 'ray' when translated from Latin. She also coined the term Radioactivity. By 1902, she had extracted 1/10 gram of pure Radium chlorite salt from tons of pitchblende, though not much today, it was an outstanding feat at the time. That very year, the Curies and Henri Becquerel shared the 1903 Noble prize in physics. Marie became the first female noble laureate. The Curies were now well-funded to conduct their experiments. Pierre died soon died in 1906, crushed by a horse-drawn carriage. Marie, heartbroken, took over Piere's teaching position at the Sorbonne, becoming their first female professor. In 1911, she won a Noble Prize in Chemistry for her earlier discovery of Radium and Polonium and her extraction and analysis of pure Radium Chlorite salt. To this day, Marie Skłodowska Curie is the only person to win Nobel prizes in 2 different sciences. Marie had now put her years of research to the test. She had opened mobile radiology unit during the 1st world War and looked into the effects of radiation on tumours. However, These benefits to humanity came at a cost, she died in 1934, as many today believe, of a bone marrow disease caused by her radiation exposure. Marie Skłodowska Curie’s revolutionary research laid the groundwork for our understanding of physics and chemistry, blazing trails in oncology, technology, medicine, and nuclear physics, to name a few. 

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