The character arc of Marie Curie
Born 7 November 1867 in Warsaw. Died 4 July 1934 in Passy. Between the two sit a university that would not admit women, secret classes held in private homes, a cold attic in Paris, two new elements, and two Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, a record that still stands alone. The line below draws that whole life in order.
Tap the line to pluck it. Hover or tap any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of her life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who was Marie Curie?
The student they refused rewrote the elements.
The university in Warsaw did not take women, so she studied at the Flying University, an illegal school that moved from parlour to parlour to stay ahead of the authorities. She worked six years as a governess to pay for her sister's medical degree in Paris, on the promise that her sister would then pay for hers. Both sisters kept the promise.
In Paris she finished first in her physics degree, met Pierre, and chose the strangest problem on offer: rays that came out of uranium for no known reason. In a leaking shed she stirred tonnes of pitchblende by hand until two new elements came out of it, and named the first one polonium, for the country that had not been allowed to teach her.
When Pierre was killed in the street in 1906 she was offered a widow's pension. She refused it, took over his chair at the Sorbonne, the first woman to teach there in six centuries, and five years later won a second Nobel Prize alone. Her line is worth reading for what refusal looks like when it is aimed forward.
The moments
Marie Curie's timeline.
The 1870s
Lost her mother at ten
Setback. Her eldest sister had died two years before. The family closed ranks around study.
The 1880s
Finished school with gold
Milestone. First in her class, with the gold medal, at fifteen.
No university would take her
Setback, and it changed her direction. Warsaw's university barred women, so she studied at the illegal school that met in secret.
The 1890s
Stay in Warsaw, or Paris
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: go to Paris, taken, or stay and teach in secret. The closed door in Warsaw pointed the whole line at Paris.
Moved to Paris to study
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Six years of governess wages bought the ticket. She was twenty four.
First in her physics degree
Milestone. She had arrived speaking imperfect French, in an unheated attic.
Married Pierre Curie
Everyday. No rings, no white dress, and a pair of bicycles for the honeymoon.
Announced radium
Milestone, and it changed her direction. The second new element of her year; polonium, named for Poland, came first in July.
The 1900s
The Nobel Prize in Physics
Milestone. The first woman awarded a Nobel Prize. The committee nearly left her name off.
Lost Pierre in the street
Setback, and it changed everything. A dray on the rue Dauphine. She wrote that the laboratory was now the only place.
The pension, or the chair
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: take the chair, taken, or accept the pension. She said the pension would mean giving up the work, and refused it.
Took his chair at the Sorbonne
Milestone, and it changed her direction. The first woman to teach there. She began at the exact sentence where his notes stopped.
The 1910s
A second Nobel, in Chemistry
Milestone. Still the only person with prizes in two different sciences.
Drove X rays to the front
Milestone, and it changed her direction. She fitted cars as mobile X ray units and trained the women who ran them; the soldiers called them little Curies.
The line ends 4 Jul 1934, in Passy. What it set moving has not ended: the science she opened still saves lives in radiotherapy wards every day, and every woman who takes a chair once closed to her is carrying the line forward.
Your turn
Every story draws a unique line.
Hers took sixty six years, one attic and one shed. Yours is already further along than you think, and drawing it takes about three minutes.
Sources
- Eve Curie, Madame Curie, 1937.
- The Nobel Prize archive, nobelprize.org: the 1903 and 1911 prizes.
- The Academy of Sciences notes of July and December 1898.
- Marie Curie, La Radiologie et la Guerre, 1921.
- The Musee Curie, Paris.