Marie Curie. The True Story of the Nobel Laureate

Written by Rory Thornfield

Two-time Nobel Prize winner, discoverer of polonium and radium, icon of science – Maria Skłodowska-Curie entered history as a pioneer of radioactivity research. Behind her successes, however, lie dramatic life choices, moral scandals, and heroic commitment during the Great War. Here are facts from the scientist’s biography that rarely appear in textbooks.

Youth Marked by Loss and a Failed Engagement

The future Nobel laureate was born in Warsaw into a family where her father taught physics and mathematics, and her mother ran a boarding school for girls. When Maria was eleven years old, she lost her mother – the woman died of tuberculosis. At the age of twenty, she took a position as a governess with the Żorawski family in Szczuki, where she stayed from 1886 to 1889.

There, feelings developed between her and the family’s son, Kazimierz, who later became a mathematician. The young couple planned a future together, but the man’s parents firmly refused consent for marriage to an impoverished teacher. This romantic defeat strengthened Maria’s conviction that she had to leave the country.

The trip to Paris required financial sacrifice based on an agreement with her sister Bronisława. According to it, Maria was to remain in Poland and earn money for her sister’s medical studies in France, who would later reciprocate the support. In 1891, Maria arrived at the Sorbonne, where she earned degrees in physics and mathematics, ranking first and second in her year respectively.

Nobel Prize Awarded Under Pressure

The first Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded in 1903, nearly bypassed the scientist due to gender discrimination. The French Academy of Sciences intended to nominate only Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel for the prize, omitting Maria’s contribution. Only her husband’s determined intervention, which clearly indicated the collaborative nature of the discoveries concerning radioactivity, persuaded the committee to include her name.

After Pierre’s death in 1906 – he was killed under the wheels of a horse-drawn cart on a Paris street – Maria took over his position at the university. She thus became the first woman in the history of the Sorbonne to receive the title of professor.

Love Scandal on the Eve of the Second Nobel

Four years later, she began a romance with physicist Paul Langevin, a former student of her husband. Langevin lived separately, though he remained formally married. In November 1911, the decision to award Maria an independent Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of polonium and radium was announced.

Almost simultaneously, Langevin’s wife gave the press stolen intimate correspondence between the pair, which sparked a media storm. Newspapers attacked the scientist, falsely calling her Jewish and accusing her of destroying French families. An angry crowd gathered outside her home in Sceaux, forcing her to flee with her daughters.

Svante Arrhenius of the Swedish Academy of Sciences suggested in a letter that she should not come to the ceremony in Stockholm. Maria responded firmly that she had received the prize for scientific achievements, and her private affairs were irrelevant. She went and accepted the honor.

Mobile X-Ray Stations at the Front

The outbreak of the Great War in 1914 prompted Skłodowska to take direct action for wounded soldiers. She recognized the potential of X-ray equipment in field surgery – they enabled the location of bullets and shrapnel in wounded bodies. She convinced wealthy Parisian women to donate cars, which she personally transformed into mobile radiological laboratories.

These vehicles, called „petites Curies,” set out for the front line under her leadership. She learned vehicle mechanics, human anatomy, and obtained a driver’s license – she was among the first Frenchwomen to possess such a document. She drove the vans herself into the combat zone, and her then seventeen-year-old daughter Irène helped train medical personnel, which included one hundred and fifty women.

Wanting to additionally support the war effort, she proposed to the government the melting down of her gold Nobel medals, but officials refused to accept the gifts. Instead, she invested the prize money in war bonds.

Gift from American Women and Radioactive Legacy

After the war ended, Skłodowska had no radium needed to continue her research – the element cost astronomical sums. In 1921, journalist Marie Mattingly Meloney organized a tour of the United States for her. Meloney launched the „Marie Curie Radium Fund” campaign, in which American women raised one hundred thousand dollars for a gram of radium.

The gift was presented by President Warren G. Harding during an official ceremony. The scientist died in 1934 at the Sancellemoz sanatorium from aplastic anemia caused by years of contact with radiation – she carried radium samples in the pockets of her laboratory coat.

In 1995, her remains, along with Pierre’s remains, were transferred to the Panthéon in Paris. She became the first woman buried in that place for her own scientific achievements. Her notebooks from the 1890s are stored in lead containers at the National Library in Paris – anyone who wishes to study them must sign a document confirming awareness of radiological risk.

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Rory Thornfield

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Rory's grandfather left behind a wartime diary filled with accounts of a minor Burma skirmish that history books never mentioned. Reading it, Rory realized: behind every famous battle are dozens of forgotten struggles, each with its own human drama.

His preferred topics: The overlooked corners of military history – secondary campaigns, shadow battalions, local conflicts that never made headlines. From medieval sieges to twentieth-century expeditions, he focuses on the soldiers, not the generals. The people who faced impossible choices and carried those experiences forever.

Rory strips away the romanticism without losing respect for those who served. He combines tactical analysis with personal stories, examining human endurance and moral complexity rather than celebrating warfare. His writing is balanced, thoughtful, and deeply researched.

Outside work, Rory visits forgotten battlefields (now quiet farmland), photographs war memorials nobody tends anymore, and interviews veterans' families.