Marie Curie
Physicist and Chemist
Biography
Marie Curie was born November 7, 1867 in Poland, and she died at age 66 on July 4,1934 in France. Marie had a disease called Aplastic Anemia, and back then there wasn't anything to treat her disease. Curie is famous because she invented the substance Radium. Curie died of her disease Aplastic Anemia, which was caused by continuous exposure to radiation. Her symptoms of Aplastic Anemia were body pain, cracked fingers. Aplastic Anemia is treated today by blood transfusions, blood and marrow stem cell transplant, and medicines.
Interesting Facts
At the First Solvay Conference,Curie was the only woman to be present in the meeting in 1911.
Marie Curie's daughter Irene Joliot Curie followed in her mother's footsteps, becoming the second women to win the Nobel Prize in chemistry, also shared with her husband in 1935.
Key Terms
- Aplastic Anemia- A rare condition in which the body stops producing enough new blood cells.
- Radiation- Is the emission or transmission of energy in the form of waves or particles through space or through a material medium.
- Radium- Radium is chemical element with symbol Ra and atomic number 88.
- Uranium- It is a silvery - white metal in the actinide series of the periodic table.
Time line
- She won the Nobel Prizes in 1903 with her husband Pierre Curie in Physics and won one in 1911 in chemistry.
- When World War I, broke out in 1914, she suspended her studies and organized a fleet of portable X-Ray machines for doctors on the front.
- Marie Curie's husband Pierre got killed by a horse-drawn cab on April 19,1906.
- Antoine Henri Becquerel was a Physicist and with Marie and her husband Pierre, they won the Nobel Prize in 1903.