Our Patron

Maria Skłodowska-Curie (1867 – 1934)

Maria Skłodowska was born on November 17, 1867 in a house at 16 Freta Street in Warsaw. Her parents Bronisława and Władysław Skłodowski came from the minor nobility and were not wealthy, so Maria was brought up in difficult material and social conditions, which was related to the situation in the Russian partition. She was the youngest of five siblings, she had three sisters: Zosia, Bronia and Hela, and a brother Józio.

Mania, as she was affectionately called then, was a very talented child. She acquired knowledge easily and quickly. She was also a very quiet and shy girl. She liked reading Polish and foreign poetry. She diligently studied foreign languages: French, German, Russian and English. At the age of 15, she finished her secondary school education with first place, for which she received a gold medal. She was interested in literature, sociology and science, but decided that she would focus on mathematics and physics. She wanted to go to France to study at the famous Sorbonne.

She conducted her first experiments in physics and chemistry in the laboratory at the Museum of Industry and Agriculture in Warsaw.

In the years 1891-95 she was a student at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the Sorbonne. In 1893 she obtained a bachelor's degree in physics, and in the spring of 1894 in mathematics. Then she began independent research on the magnetism of metals.

At home prof. Kowalski met the scientist Piotr Curie, with whom she married in 1895 and took French citizenship, and from then on she was known as Maria Curie, or Maria Skłodowska-Curie.

At the end of 1897, Maria Skłodowska-Curie, together with her husband Piotr, decided to deal with the "uninteresting" issue of uranium radiation at that time. The place where the Curies carried out all their research and experiments was an old shed (former dissecting room of the Medical School). Their systematicity and precision meant that in July 1898, the Curies announced that they had discovered a new element, which they named polonium (in honor of the discoverer's homeland). Five months later, in December, they announced the discovery of another element, radium (the name was supposed to refer to the phenomenon of radioactivity).

In 1902, the existence of radium was finally established. The atomic weight and properties of this element were also determined. A year later, Maria also completed her doctoral thesis and received her diploma. Already at the end of the following year, 1903, Maria, Piotr and their collaborator Becquerel were awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of radioactivity and radioactive elements.

Maria was the first woman to take over the chair of physics at the Sorbonne after her husband's death. In 1910, she managed to obtain metallic radium. A year later, she received another Nobel Prize, this time for determining the atomic weight of radium and other work related to this metal. In 1912, on the initiative of the widow Curie, the construction of the Radium Institute with physics and biology laboratories began in Paris on the corner of rue d'Ulm and the new street named after Pierre Curie.

The two-time Nobel Prize winner did not forget about her homeland and in 1925 she came to Poland, to Warsaw, to lay the foundation stone for the building of the Polish branch of the Radium Institute. A dozen or so years later, in 1932, she visited Warsaw again in connection with the opening ceremony of the first Radium Institute in Poland.

In 1934, due to a progressive disease, which was believed to be lung disease, she went to a sanatorium. On arrival, it turned out that Maria had healthy lungs, but suffered from severe anemia. He died on July 4, 1934 in the Sancellemoz sanatorium in Savoie. Later, during the autopsy, it was discovered that the cause of the anemia was radiation from radium.

She was a two-time winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and Physics. She was one of the first women to get a driving license and obtain Rysy, she was one of the first students at the Sorbonne and the first woman professor at this university. During the war, she worked in a traveling X-ray laboratory. She liked bicycle trips (she received bicycles as a wedding gift), until the end of her life she counted only in Polish, and her favorite flowers were white roses.

In recognition of her achievements, in 1995, Maria Skłodowska-Curie became the first woman buried under the dome of the Pantheon in Paris. Maria Skłodowska-Curie was part of an extremely talented family that received a total of 5 Nobel Prizes (Maria – 2, husband, Piotr -1, daughter, Irène – 1, son-in-law, Frédéric – 1)

On May 20, 1921, Friday, at At 4 p.m. she received 1 gram of radium, which she needed to conduct her scientific research. The President of the United States of America, Warren Harding, presented the Nobel Prize winner with 1 gram of radium donated by American women at a ceremony at the White House.