Discussion
Happy birthday to Marie Skłodowska-Curie (1867 – 1934, Polish-born, naturalized-French #physicist & #chemist at work in her lab. The contents of her lab glassware appropriately glow-in-the-dark!
Marie Curie was the 1st woman to win a Nobel prize, the only woman to ever win TWO Nobel prizes, and the only person ever to win in two different sciences: #physics & #chemistry! She was also the 1st woman prof at the U of Paris, 🧵
and in 1995 became the 1st woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris. Born Maria Salomea Skłodowska in Warsaw, she studied secretly at the Floating University there before moving to Paris where she earned higher scientific degrees, met her PhD supervisor & future husband Pierre.
She was one of the pioneers who helped explain radioactivity, a term she coined. She was 1 of the 1st to developed a means of isolating radioactive isotopes & discovered not 1, but 2 new elements:🧵
polonium (named for her native country) & radium. She also pioneered radioactive medicine, proposing the treatment of tumors with radioactivity. She founded medical research centres, the Curie Institutes in Paris & Warsaw which are still active today. She created the 1st field radiology centres during WWI. She died in 1934 from aplastic anemia brought on by exposure to radiation, including carrying test tubes of radium in her pockets during research & her WWI service in her mobile X-ray units.
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Her pioneering work explaining #radioactivity earned her the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie & with physicist Henri Becquerel. At first, the Committee intended to honour only Pierre & Becquerel, but Swedish mathematician Magnus Goesta Mittag-Leffler, an advocate of women in science alerted Pierre to the situation. After Pierre’s complaint, Marie’s name was added to the nomination. 🧵4/5
The 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to her “in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium & polonium, by the isolation of radium & the study of the nature & compounds of this remarkable element.”
Her life and legacy are truly extraordinary!
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