• November 7, 1867—Marie Salomea Sklodovska is born, the last of five children, Zofia, Jozef, Bronislawa (Bronya), Helena
o Alfred Nobel has invented dynamite
o The Civil War in America ended 2 years ago
o Alaska purchase was made
o The Austro-Hungarian Empire if founded
o Emperor Komei of Japan has died, his fourteen year old son takes over as emperor Meiji and marries Ichijo Haruko
o Cambodia has declared independence from Siam and is under the protection of France and Britain
o US takes Midway Island
• At the age of 10, her mother succumbs to tuberculosis
• 1883—Marie wins a gold medal at age 15 for her completion of her secondary education. She speaks Polish, Russian, French and English, excels at physics, chemistry, math, biology and music
• 1885—Marie works as a governess for the Zorawski family, teaching the children and peasants on the estate while she sends money to Bronya so that she may study to be a doctor
o She briefly entertains a short courtship with the son of the Zorawski family, and they ask to be married, but the family stoutly refuses and it seems to be one of the times that Maria feels her status acutely, per Eve Curie
• 1891-1894—Maria makes her way to the Sorbonne in Paris, living with Bronya for a time while studying mathematics and physics
o Of the 1800 students in attendance, Marie is one of 23 female students that attend the Sorbonne in 1891
o She studies incredibly hard, often to the detriment of her health, after leaving Bronya and her husband’s place of residence, she lives in a small attic space while she is at the Sorbonne. With little income to cover expenses, she is remarked as being particularly thin, which would probably alarm many today. She even faints in class one day from lack of calories
o In 1893, she receives her first degree, first in her class for Physics, making her the first women to receive a degree in Physics from the Sorbonne
o A year later, (in 1894) she receives her second degree, also at the top of her class, in mathematics
o Her professor Count Jozef Wierusz-Kowalski, who had known Marie in Warsaw and helped her get into the Sorbonne, introduces her to Pierre under the guise that he has a “wonderful pupil” that will help tremendously in the lab
o Meets Pierre in 1894 and helps with his work on magnetism
 Kismet: Pierre who had invented the piezoelectric quartz electrometer with his brother Jacques, and Marie who would eventually have a need to measure faint electric currents to properly measure radioactivity
o Pierre is at first apprehensive about allowing a woman to work in his lab, but quickly relents, (though he notes in his journal that Marie must just be a rare breed, instead of really coming around to the idea that women as a whole are capable of genius)
 Pierre receives his doctorate in March 1895 after writing his dissertation on the relationship between temperature and the disappearance of magnetism (known as the Curie Point) with Marie’s encouragement
o On July 26, 1895, Marie and Pierre are married (after Marie gives him the run around for a while saying that she must return to Poland, after all she is a patriot)
 She marries Pierre in a dark blue smock at Marie’s request that she be able to use it later in the lab
o Their honeymoon is a bicycle tour around the French countryside

• In December of 1895, Wilhelm Rontgen discovers X-Ray (a name given to imply that their nature is unknown)
• In early 1896, (shortly after Feb. 24, when he made his initial discovery the uranium salts have a certain “activity”) Henri Becquerel give a Marie Curie uranium after it is discovered that
o Uranium gives of these mysterious “X-Rays”
o Marie has decided that this will be an interesting topic for her doctorate going forward
• Marie confirms Becquerel’s suspicions that uranium does emit rays, and does many experiments, showing that regardless of matter state, whether pure or compounded, wet, dry, in darkness, light, or at any temperature, uranium continued to emit these powerful rays
• Getting her hands on pitch-blend, which was shown to have even more radioactivity than uranium itself, Marie sets about testing to see if there is another unknown element hidden inside
o At the time, only 63 elements had been discovered and named. Today there are 118.
• From 1896 until 1898, Marie and Pierre worked in an old shed that had been given to them after medical students complained it was “too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer, and too wet when it rained” to properly store cadavers. Their working conditions were abysmal.
o Polonium and Radium are discovered in 1898, Polonium, named for her native country of Poland, gives off 400 times the amount of radiation seen in uranium samples, and Radium, named for the Latin for ray, gives off 900 times the radiation found in uranium
o Marie coins the term “radioactive” to describe these elements that give off rays
• In the middle of their time working on the pitchblende to find these new elements, on September 12, 1897, Irene is born
• In 1899, Ernest Rutherford, a New Zealand based scientist uses Curie’s work and the work of J. J. Thompson to identify alpha rays, which are heavier, travel a shorter distance and are stopped by barriers made of plastic, and beta rays, lighter rays that travel farther and require a high-z material as a barrier to stop
o With Rutherford’s work and theory of transformation, (that radioactive materials are decaying into other elements), Marie’s theory that radioactivity is a subatomic property is confirmed
• From the time of identification, it takes 4 years until finally in 1902 Marie and Pierre successfully isolate a small amount of radium from the pitchblende
• Her discovery, and her hypothesis that polonium, radium, and even uranium were all comprised of decaying atomic particles was a theory that flipped physics on its head. Until this discovery and hypothesis atomic structure was thought to have been solid and unchanging, but this presented the idea that there were even smaller structures to atoms that had yet to be discovered
• On June 25, 1903, Marie receives her doctorate in physics, the first ever awarded to a woman in France
o Her female students that she taught during her work on the pitchblende came to support her dissertation defense, many of whom went on to become educated women of renown
• In November of 1903, Pierre is nominated for the Nobel Prize, along with Henri Becquerel. Pierre won’t have it though, and writes a letter stating they must be considered together for this prize. The Curies, along with Becquerel, accept the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of radioactivity
o It should be noted that by the time the Nobel Prize is awarded, the damaging effects of radiation were known
o Pierre was remarked as having experimented with a small dose of radium and marveling at the burned and agitated skin of his arm after subjecting himself to radiation exposure for ten minutes. The resulting radiation burned left his arm scarred until his death, and ultimately was one of the many reasons that scientists and doctors began looking at radium as a source of cancer killing capabilities
o Brachytherapy, cancer treatment that began its use in 1896, and by 1901 radium encapsulated in small tubes were used in the treatment of malignant tumors
• They were unable to accept the Nobel Prize in person, as they were both sick with illness. This illness was related to the massive amount of exposure to radiation
o Marie at this time suffers a miscarriage of her and Pierre’s second child.
• On December 6, 1904, Marie gives birth to Eve, her third daughter and last child
• With the Nobel Prize awarded to the Curie’s, Pierre takes on a professorship at the Sorbonne and Marie teaches at the women’s college, and it seemed that their lives would begin to be eased with more recognition and allowances to do more work in the fields of physics and chemistry with consideration to radioactivity.
o During the years between receiving the Nobel Prize and 1906, the Curie’s find solace in great biking vacations through the country-side, visiting Pierre’s family, and having many visits from Marie’s family.
o The Curie’s are relentlessly hounded by the press, verified celebrities at the time. Noted recluses, they don’t enjoy the fame, but endure
o It also during this year that Rutherford with the help of Marie’s research, (remember him?) comes up with the term “half-life to describe the breakdown of radioactive elements
• April 19, 1906, Pierre heads out on a stormy, grey day. From his intense work with radioactive materials that had done significant damage his body, (numbed limbs, a rattling cough, extreme fatigue), Pierre steps out into a busy street, his umbrella turned in such a way that he doesn’t see the horse-drawn carriage, he is struck down and trampled, instantly dead.

• After the funeral, Marie throws herself back into her work, writing,
“Crushed by the blow, I did not feel able to face the future. I could not forget, however, what my husband used to say, that even deprived of him, I ought to continue my work”
• On May 13, 1906, the Sorbonne offers her Pierre’s professorship, making her the first female professor to teach at the Sorbonne
• During the summer between her taking over the professorship and her first lecture on November 5, 1906, Lord Kelvin, (the guy who came up with the standard unit for thermodynamic pressure, the kelvin) issues what seems to be a challenge of sorts, stating his belief that radium is not an element at all, but rather lead with five helium atoms attached to it. Marie throws herself into proving Lord Kelvin wrong, enlisting the help of Andre Debierne (who will remain Marie’s devoted friend and colleague)
• While juggling motherhood, a professorship, setting out to prove Kelvin wrong, Marie also begins the work of setting up the Radium Institute. With the help of an Daniel Iffla, a Jewish philanthropist, and Andrew Carnegie, an American philanthropist, friends of the Curie’s, a network of politicians that agreed with their work and goals, a partnership between the University of Paris and the Pasteur Foundation, Marie’s dream is realized, and she becomes the supervisor of the radioactive laboratory.
• In February of 1910, Pierre’s father, who had stayed with Marie and Pierre to help raise Irene and Eve, and continued to act as caregiver to the girls after Pierre’s death, dies.
• Marie isolates radium metal and publishes her textbook, A Treatise on Radioactivity, defining the international standard for radium emissions called a Curie.
o One Curie is the quantity of radioactive substance the decays at a rate of 3.7 x 1010/sec
• Two scandals happen in 1910-1911 for Marie:
o Marie applies as candidate for the physics seat at the French Academy of Science, running against Edouard Branly
 At this time, France is divided along conservative/religious lines, and Marie and her circle’s more liberal, science based views. Branly, who taught at the Catholic Institute, wins the seat by a mere 2 votes after the French tabloids viciously attack Marie, stating that she is a Jewish woman, and not French, and should therefore not get the seat
o Paul Langevin, a family friend and married man, becomes entangled with Marie as his marriage is falling apart
 In the summer and fall of 1911, Langevin and Marie come together through work, eventually entering a romantic relationship
 While meeting for a conference in Brussels in the fall, the press gets ahold of the love letters between Lengevin and Marie, which are them published, with certain anti-Semitic papers painting Marie as “Jewish homewrecker” (though again, not Jewish)
 Lengevin doesn’t leave his wife then but does have a “duel”
 Marie has to leave her home with her two girls and shelter with friends as the press hounds her mercilessly at her place of work and at home. It is during this time that she takes to using her maiden name, and occasionally her mother’s maiden name to escape from prying eyes
• On December 10, 1911, Marie is awarded a second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry. With her sister Bronya and young Irene in tow, she accepts the award, crediting those that helped her along the way, specifically her late husband after there was much press about how she had tarnished his name
o The Nobel Prize was awarded to her due to her discoveries revolutionizing the scientific understand of atomic energy, opening up new areas of medicine, with her work helping in measuring the age of the Earth
• In 1912, Marie takes ill with acute kidney problems and her ongoing depression
• She spends a great deal of time with Hertha Ayrton, a fellow physicist in the summer of 1912, convalescing
• By October, Marie and her two daughter return to Paris. By December she is back in the lab
• By August 1914, the Radium Institute is complete, On Rue Pierre-Curie
• September 2, 1914, bombs fall in Paris. The single gram of radium in possession of the French government is in Marie’s hands, and at the government’s request, she takes the lead line case of radium via train to Bordeaux, but returns to Paris to help with the war effort.
o One note made in Barbara Goldsmith’s Obsessive Genius is that she likely took the radium in a container that could never have provided enough shielding for the amount carried. The lead container needed for the radium would have simply been too heavy for Marie to carry
• Marie asks her friends and acquaintances for help securing car, trucks, and vans to employ the use of mobile X-ray units to use on the field to help with soldiers that have been shot, blasted with shrapnel, or injured in other ways. Marie becomes the Director of the Red Cross Radiology Service. By October 1914, Marie has 20 vehicles at her service, and they are eventually named Petites Curies, or Little Curies
o Marie teaches herself in this time how to drive a car, read human anatomy, and do a crash course in reading X-Rays. She employs her seventeen year old daughter Irene to help her on the battlefield
o Marie and Irene worked on the battlefields, training at least 150 women to be radiological assistants at the Radium Institute, (but proved capable of independent work according to Marie herself)
o Irene eventually earns a military medal
• While training her newest radiological assistants, in 1915 Marie ask figures out how to encapsulate radon gas (emitted from the radium she returned from Bordeaux to the Radium Institute), and deliver the radioactivity to damaged tissues within platinum needles.
• By November 11, 1918, the war has ended, but Marie continues her work, teaching radiology courses to many, including American soldiers waiting to go home, and finishes another book, Radiology in War.
• In May of 1920, Marie “Missy” Mattingly Meloney, editor of The Delineator at the time, started the 1920’s version of a GoFundMe, called the “Marie Curie Radium Campaign” and raised $100,000 to buy a single gram of Radium, and also does the legwork to ensure that there will be NO negative press about Marie and Lengevin
o Marie, Irene and Eve come to America to receive the gift and tour the United States in the Spring on 1921
o Marie receives the Radium from President Warren G. Harding, after the night before requesting that the gift be made out to the laboratory instead of her, as it should belong to science and not a single person
o Marie also agrees to help write an autobiographical look at her life
o Marie would remain friends with Meloney until her death
• Marie would make a second tour of the US and meet President Hoover in 1929
• From 1919 until her death, Marie would have a hand in 483 papers, 31 Marie wrote herself while she worked at the Radium Institute
• She would find more work serving on the commission on Intellectual Cooperation and working with the League of Nations
• 1920 began her decline in health, and in 1925 she helps create new guidelines where radiation safety is concerned, recommending lead vests for workers and periodic blood tests
o She often took time to work from home when too ill, finishing her notes on her book, Radioactivity, that would be publish posthumously in 1935
• Eventually diagnosed with aplastic pernicious anemia, Marie Curie died on July 4, 1934
o Marie is initially put to rest next to her husband, but 60 years later, Marie and Pierre are moved to the Pantheon

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