7th November: Marie Curie

Marie Curie was born Maria Salomea Skłodowska in Warsaw on 7 November 1867. 

1. When Marie Curie was a young woman, it was almost impossible for a woman to receive a university education. However, in Poland, there was a clandestine "Flying University," where she and her older sister were able to study.
2. Pierre Curie wasn't her first love - in Warsaw she worked as a governess (part of an arrangement with her sister that while one studied, the other would work to finance it) and Kazimierz Żorawski was the son of the family she worked for. His parents refused to let him marry a penniless woman, so they went their separate ways - but Żorawski never quite lost his feelings for her - as an old man he used to sit in front of the statue of her in front of the Radium Institute which she founded in 1932.
3. She left for France at the age of 24. Living in a rented garret, she studied by day and and worked as a tutor in the evenings. Her income was so meagre that she would sometimes faint from hunger.
4. In 1894, Professor Józef Kowalski-Wierusz learned that Marie was looking for a larger laboratory space for her experiments, and he was sure he knew someone who might be able to help with that - an instructor at the School of Physics and Chemistry, the École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris, a man by the name of Pierre Curie. He introduced them - Pierre did indeed have some space she could use. Their mutual interest in science brought them close together. They also had a mutual love of cycling and foreign travel.
5. However, when Pierre proposed marriage, Marie at first refused, because she wanted to go back to Poland. Pierre said he would be willing to move to Poland with her, give up his scientific studies and become a French teacher. That must have convinced her - they were married in 1895. For her marriage, Marie wore a dark blue dress which she continued to wear to work for many years.
6. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person (and only woman) to win twice, the only person to win twice in multiple sciences - but the Nobel Committee at first intended only to honour Pierre and their associate, Becquerel. However, one member of the Committee disagreed - Swedish mathematician Magnus Goesta Mittag-Leffler, who was an advocate for women scientists. He told Pierre of the Committee's decision - Pierre complained and got Marie's name added to the nomination.
7. Although she lived in France for most of her life, the French public and scientific community never really accepted her. They saw her as a foreigner, and disliked her because she was an atheist and because they believed she was Jewish (she wasn't). When, a few years after Pierre's death, she had an affair with a younger, married man, they added home-wrecker to their list. It got so bad that she came home from a conference one day to find an angry mob outside her house and was forced to move in with a friend.
8. During World War I, Marie worked tirelessly to set up mobile X-ray machines to assist military surgeons on the battlefield. It is estimated that over a million wounded soldiers were treated with her X-ray units, but even then, the French government refused to formally recognise her efforts. The French National Bank refused to accept her Nobel Prize medals for the war effort, although she was able to use some of her prize money to buy war bonds.
9. At that time, people didn't know about the damaging effects of radiation, so health and safety didn't exist. Even Marie Curie herself had no idea - she would carry test tubes of radioactive isotopes around in her pockets, and keep them in a desk drawer, noticing how they would glow faintly in the dark. When working with X-rays in the war, she didn't shield herself or the equipment. Radiation is likely to have caused her death from anaemia, not to mention a number of other chronic illnesses she suffered from in later life. Today, her notes and papers are still highly radioactive and have to be kept in a lead lined box and anyone wanting to read them must wear protective clothing! This includes her cookbook!
10. She and Pierre have a number of things named after them - an element, with atomic number 96, was named curium; three radioactive minerals: curite, sklodowskite, and cuprosklodowskite; since 2007, a Metro station in Paris; a Polish nuclear research reactor is named Maria; the 7000 Curie Asteroid, and a bridge over the Vistula in Warsaw.