Marie Curie – a Woman Who Influenced The World of Science

From the first woman professor to the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize Marie Curie was able to change the way women were viewed in the science community forever, and was able to be a role model for thousands of women in many years following her death. With her discovery of Radium and the effects of radiation there have been leaps and bounds in the advances towards the cure of cancer and treatments for it. Even with everything against her, Marie Curie was able to be the most impactful women in the history of science because of all of her accomplishments. Maria Sklodowska was born in Warsaw, Poland on November 7th, 1867. Maria was only eight when tragedy first struck her life, her older sister caught typhus and died. Only three years after that, her mother, Madame Sklodowska, at the age of 42 died after a five year battle with tuberculosis. Later on in life she lost her husband to a freak accident as well. The only people she still had in her life that she was very close with were her father, Professor Sklodowski, and her siblings Joseph, Bronya and Hela.

Marie was the brightest is her class. Her personal losses did not affect her academic life negatively at all. However, when she graduated at the age of 15 she was not allowed to attend the medical school at the University of Warsaw-because they did not allow women- where she wished to get an advanced degree. She then attended Sorbonne where she quickly realized that was nowhere near as advanced in math, science, and French as her fellow students were. However, she persisted, through hard work and motivation. “Marie finished first in her master’s degree physics course in the summer of 1893 and second in math the following year”. Even being as poor as she was, Marie was able to study. One of her professors saw her potential and was able to get her a scholarship to continue studying. That was when she moved to France and met her future husband, Pierre Curie. “In Marie, Pierre found an equal with a comparable devotion to science. They would soon marry and have two daughters”. They worked together in Pierre’s lab, where he gave Marie her own space.

Together the Curies work and research with radium would receive a Nobel Prize in 1903. The Curies then published all the processes that went into isolating Radium and didn’t put a patent on any of it, showing how truly generous they were and how they really just wanted to better society. Radium was a huge success and many people began studying it, “On November 8, 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen at the University of Würzburg, discovered a new kind of radiation which he called X-rays”. This new discovery of X-rays was incredible people believe Roentgen to be insane. But his discovery opened up a whole new method of viewing the inside of a body, which led to the invention of CT scans and the ability to spot cancer within a patient along with a way to view atoms. This discovery affected millions of people and is still affecting people today and will continue for times to come. The impact of the discovery of radium was huge. “With the discovery of radium and polonium there came a rapid and, initially, completely uncontrolled use of radium in all fields of life and medicine. However, it did not come without a cost, because of the extended amounts of time Marie spent with the radioactive material, it caused many health problems. Even while she was struggling with her health she was able to benefit society and with the help of studies from her husband on the effects of radium and the damage it can cause on tissues, helped with the fight against cancer, “Gaining experience in the side effects resulted in elaboration of the modern principles of radiotherapy. Today’s radiotherapy is an essential therapeutic method in oncology.” Oncology is the study and treatment of tumors, which led to the huge success of radiotherapy for treatment of cancer. Many people have suffered through cancer but because of Marie a cure is possible: More than 14 million new cases of cancer are diagnosed globally each year; radiation therapy (RT) has the potential to improve the rates of cure of 3.5 million people and provide palliative relief for an additional 3.5 million people. These conservative estimates are based on the fact that approximately 50 percent of all cancer patients can benefit from RT in the management of their disease; of these, approximately half present early enough to pursue curative intent.

Those number are only yearly, imagine the amount of people Marie has helped since radium first took off more than a hundred years ago. Along with her discoveries Marie became the first woman professor in the history of the world. She took the job of her late husband after his accidental death. She then went on to receive a second Nobel prize, “In recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element”. So not only was she the first woman professor, but she was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize and then another. Making her the most influential women in the history of the sciences.

Marie Curie is extremely admired for her work and accomplishment. She was able to make all these great accomplishments in the face of discrimination and poverty. She wasn’t allowed to go to the school she wanted to because she was a woman, and for her to go and become the first woman to do all of those things in her field is incredible. 41 women since Marie have been awarded a Nobel Prize. She also made it possible for women to be professors and there have been hundreds of thousands women become them because she opened that door for them. There’s still so much that can be done for women in the sciences against discrimination, but the fact woman get to freely study the sciences is owed to Marie.

In the name of the Curie’s there have been institutions made to continue their legacy. The biggest one is Institut Curie, whose main goals are researching, teaching, and treating cancer. It is an international renowned research center, specializing in rare forms of cancer.

Works Cited

1. “Marie Curie” by Science History Institute https://www.sciencehistory.org/historical-profile/marie-curie
2. “Marie Curie - Mini Biography” by Biography.com
3. “Marie Curie: How she changed the world” by BBC News
4. “Marie Curie: A Life” by Susan Quinn
5. “The Discovery of Radioactivity and Radium” by American Institute of Physics
6. “Pierre and Marie Curie and the Discovery of Polonium and Radium” by NobelPrize.org
7. “Marie Curie's Early Years” by NobelPrize.org https://www.nobelprize.org/womenwhochangedscience/stories/marie-curie-s-early-years
8. “Marie Curie and the Science of Radioactivity” by The Royal Society of Chemistry
9. “The Curies' Legacy” by The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/opinion/the-curies-legacy.html
10. “Marie Curie: Inventing a New Radioactive World” by History.com