Maria Sklodowska Curie was born in Warsaw in 1867 as the fifth and youngest child of Bronislawa Boguska and Wladyslaw Sklodowski . She lived in Warsaw until she was 24. When she was a little girl her nickname was Manya. When she was 16 she won a gold medal on completion of her secondary school in Russian lycée. When her father teacher of mathematics and physic had lost his savings through bad investment she had to take the work as a teacher. When she was 18 she was able to finance her sister medical studies in Paris, on the understanding that later her sister would help her to get an education.

In 1891 she went to study in Paris, where she obtained her higher degrees and started her scientific work. There she met some already known physicists- Jean Perrin, Charles Maurain and Aimé Cotton. She worked really hard into the night and virtually lived on bread, butter and tea.
In 1893 she began to work on Lippmann’s research laboratory.

She was marriage with Pierre Curie. It was a purely civil ceremony. Their marriage marked the start of partnership that was soon to achieve results of world significance, the discovery of polonium(so called by Maria in honour of Poland) in the summer of 1898 and the radium few months later.

She was the first person who get two Nobel prizes in different fields. In 1903 she get Nobel prize in physic and eight years later in chemistry. She also get Davy Medal(1903) and Matteucci Medal(1904).

She died in 1934 at the Sancellemoz sanatorium in Passy, was from aplastic anemia , almost certainly contacted form exposure to radiation. Her laboratory is preserved at the Musée Curie.


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