Manya: The woman who became Marie Curie.

[She was born on November 7, 1867, in Warsaw, the city that had once been the capital of Poland.]

Her family suffered because of their patriotism. Manya’s father was forced out of a good teaching position because of his pro-Polish beliefs, and during her childhood, the family struggled financially. Manya’s parents were teachers, and they taught their five children the value of learning. Only modern education could lift them, and Poland, from their lowly condition.

Before Manya turned 11, her eldest sister had died of typhus and her mother had died of tuberculosis. Despite these losses, Manya graduated from high school at 15 with the highest honours. After graduating, however, she suffered from a nervous illness, which left her feeling too tired to do anything. It may have been depression. Her father sent her to visit cousins in the countryside, where she could spend a carefree year.

[In the late 19th century, Poland experienced large scale nationalism, socialism, and agrarianism.]

Education drew Manya back to Warsaw from her year of recovery in the country. In those days, women were not permitted to study at the University of Warsaw. So Manya and her older sister Bronya joined other students at a "floating university." It did not have an established place for the meetings; they were held wherever they could find room. The classes were held secretly to avoid police detection.

 

Manya and Bronya knew that to get a true professional education, they would have to go to a major university in Western Europe. The sisters made a pact. Manya would work as a governess to help pay for Bronya’s medical studies in Paris and as soon as Bronya was trained and began to earn money, she would help cover the costs of Manya’s university training.

So Manya spent three years in a village 150 kilometres from Warsaw. She was hired by the owner of a beet-sugar factory to teach his children. He did not object when she used some of her spare time to teach the children of the Polish peasant workers how to read, although she risked punishment if the Russian authorities found out. Manya used her free hours to read widely on many subjects. She found that she was best at math, physics, and chemistry. The Russian authorities had forbidden the Polish people to teach laboratory science, but a chemist in the beet-sugar factory gave Manya some lessons.

Manya returned to Warsaw in 1889. Her father was now earning a better salary as head of a reform school and was able to send money to Bronya in Paris each month. For another two years, Manya went on working as a governess and tutor. On Sundays and evenings, she secretly studied chemistry courses at a “Museum,” which was actually an illegal lab for training Polish scientists.

Shortly before she turned 24, Manya calculated she had saved up just enough money for university studies in Paris. She had looked forward to this moment for a long time. All the same, she took leave of her beloved father and their beloved Poland with sadness. She promised to return after finishing her studies.

She travelled economy-class from Warsaw to Paris in autumn 1891. She had enough money to cover university tuition, a small room and the cheapest food, but little else. She left behind not only her beloved father and country but her very name. She registered at the famous Sorbonne university as 'Marie' in order to fit in with the French community.

Even though she was not as well prepared as her fellow students. Nevertheless, through hard work, she completed her master’s degrees in physics and math in only three years. Living on her own for the first time, she focused so hard on her studies that she sometimes forgot to eat.

Many people still believed that women should not be studying science, but Marie was a dedicated student. She rented a small space in an attic and often studied late into the night. In 1893, Marie took an exam to get her degree in physics and passed, with the highest marks in her class. She was the first woman to earn a degree in physics from the Sorbonne.

Marie thought seriously about returning to Poland and getting a job as a teacher there. But she met a French scientist named Pierre Curie, and on July 26, 1895, they were married. They rented a small apartment in Paris, where Pierre earned a modest living as a college professor, and Marie continued her studies at the Sorbonne. In September 1897, Marie gave birth to a daughter, Irène.

In 1898, Marie and Pierre discovered a new element that was 400 times more radioactive than any other. They named it “polonium,” after her native country. Later that year, the Curies announced the existence of another element they called “radium,” from the Latin word for “ray.” It gave off 900 times more radiation than polonium. Marie also came up with a new term to define this property of matter: “radioactive.”

In 1903, Marie received her doctorate degree in physics, which was the first PhD awarded to a woman in France. In November of the same year, Pierre was nominated for the Nobel Prize, but without Marie. He sent a letter to the nominating committee expressing a wish to be considered together with her. For their discovery of radioactivity, the couple, along with Henri Becquerel, shared the Nobel Prize in physics. Marie Curie was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize.

After many years of hard work and struggle, the Curies achieved great renown. But there was one serious problem. The Curies were unable to travel to Sweden to accept the Nobel Prize because they were sick. Both of them suffered from what later was recognized as radiation sickness. Marie coughed and lost weight; they both had severe burns on their hands and tired very quickly. All of this came from handling radioactive material. At the time, scientists didn’t know the dangers of radioactivity.

The Nobel prize itself included a sum of money, some of which Marie used to help support poor students from Poland.

In 1904, Marie gave birth to Eve, the couple’s second daughter. Around that time, the Sorbonne gave the Curies a new laboratory to work in. But on April 19, 1906, this period came to a tragic end. On a busy street, Pierre Curie was hit by a horse-drawn carriage. He died instantly. Only 39 years old when she was widowed, Marie lost her partner in work and life.

Marie struggled to recover from the death of her husband and to continue his laboratory work and teaching. Though the university did not offer her his teaching job immediately, they soon realized she was the only one who could take her husband’s place. On November 5, 1906, as the first female professor in the Sorbonne’s history, Marie Curie stepped up to the podium and picked up where Pierre had left off. Around her, a new age of science had emerged.

In the years after Pierre’s death, Marie juggled her responsibilities and roles as a single mother, professor, and esteemed researcher. She wanted to learn more about the elements she discovered and figure out where they fit into Mendeleev’s table of the elements, now referred to as the “periodic table.”

In 1911, Marie was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, becoming the first person to win two Nobel Prizes. This time, she travelled to accept the award in Sweden, along with her daughters. Marie was recognized for her work isolating pure radium, which she had done through chemical processes.

A year later, Marie was visited by Albert Einstein and his family.

{A letter from Einstein to Curie.}

In the end,

Marie Curie died of a type of leukaemia, and we now know that radioactivity caused many of her health problems. In the 1920s scientists became aware of the dangers of radiation exposure: The energy of the rays speeds through the skin, slams into the molecules of cells, and can harm or even destroy them.

She was not affected by physical or personal hardships. Her notable qualities were a love of science, high intelligence, the strong conviction that her work would provide important benefits for humanity, and the ability to persevere in light of the difficulties she faced. Marie Curie is perhaps best known for her research on radioactivity which led to the significant development of x-rays in surgery. Having an IQ score ranging from 180 to 200, she was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize and the first person to win it twice in both physics and chemistry.

11 thought-provoking quotes from Madame Curie:

1. ON PERSEVERING THROUGH THE HARD TIMES

“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.”

2. ON HELPING OTHERS

“You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for his own improvement and, at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.”

3. ON FEARING LIFE

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

4. ON PROGRESS

“I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.”

5. ON CURIOSITY

“In science, we must be interested in things, not in persons.”

6. On stereotypes placed on how a woman should dress

“I have no dress except the one I wear every day. If you are going to be kind enough to give me one, please let it be practical and dark so that I can put it on afterwards to go to the laboratory.”

7. ON THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING A PASSION

“If I see anything vital around me, it is precisely that spirit of adventure, which seems indestructible and is akin to curiosity.”

8. ON FOLLOWING YOUR DREAMS

“We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.”

9. ON GROWING OLDER

“The older one gets, the more one feels that the present must be enjoyed; it is a precious gift, comparable to a state of grace.”

10. ON CONFIDENCE

“First principle: never to let one’s self be beaten down by persons or by events.”

11. ON BELIEVING IN YOURSELF

“We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves.”

 

It was a pleasure to research this essay about Madame Curie.

I came across this idea when I was looking at a quote from her and It was a fun experience, just learning about her. I have to say, science is not one of my subjects in school but I cannot resist it and I keep coming back to it. 

- Pranati Pathak, 17.04.2022, 1:10 p.m.