Marie Curie

Polish-French scientist, a physicist and chemist, winning Nobel Prizes for both in 1903 and 1911 but not allowed in the French Academy of Science as she was female.

When Curie was born, Poland was divided between Austria, Germany and Russia. The daughter and fifth child of two teachers, intellectuals and patriots, she learned young to resist the repression of Polish culture by small rebellions. When she was eight, a younger sister died of tuberculosis; two years later her mother died of the same disease. Her father lost his job at the state school, and turned the home into a boarding school.

She needed to make a living so began to work as a governess. She fell in love at 18 with the son of the family for whom she worked but the parents objected to a marriage. After her initial anguish, Marie picked herself up and went on.

With her wages, she sent her sister Bronia to Paris to put her through the Sorbonne. They planned that once Bronia was established, Marie would join her in Paris for her turn. After four years, in 1891 she joined her sister in Paris to study math, physics and chemistry at the Sorbonne. She proved a brilliant student with an early interest in the magnetic properties of steel. Within two years she received her license in science with the highest marks of her class.

She was drawn to fellow scientist, Pierre Curie by their mutual interest in magnetism and devotion to science. They met at the home of a Polish physicist who was staying in Paris, and married on 26 July 1895 at a simple civic ceremony. Their early years were very hard. In 1898, after they discovered radium, Marie had a struggle of four years of toil which finally resulted in the extraction of one-tenth of a gram of radium from one ton of uranium mine waste, one of the epic stories of science.

They had two daughters, the first, Irene, in 1897 and the second, Eva, in 1904. Irene became a chemist and Eva, a writer.