Who TF was Marie Curie? 🧪

Morning Marie!

This is known as the “most intelligent photo” ever taken:

It's absolutely chock full with the most brilliant scientists of the time.

But its a bit of a sausage fest right?

Literally all guys… All except 1.

The only woman in the picture, a brilliant physicist, and the first person to EVER win 2 Nobel prizes…

Marie Curie!

But how did she end up here? 

Who TF was Marie Curie?

Take us back to 1882, Warsaw, Poland.

Marie was 15 and had just graduated school early.

Oh and by the way she went by her original Polish name Maria Skodovska.

Now Maria really wanted to continue her studies at university as she was a bit of a nerd.

Trouble was, women at the time were FORBIDDEN from enrolling at a university in Poland. 

Eventually in 1891, Maria actually did end up getting into a University that did accept women.

The highly prestigious Sorbonne University in Paris. Registering under the French version of her name Marie instead of Maria.

Here she gained 3 things:

A degree in physics, a degree in mathematics, and a husband.

A young physicist by the name Pierre Curie.

They fell in love, got married, and then… got to work, attempting to unravel the secrets of the universe together in Pierre’s lab.

Marie chose to continue the work of famous French physicist Henri Becquerel.

See, he had found that rocks containing the element Uranium gives off these strange light rays.

And he had no idea what they were.

Marie wanted to find out what this weird phenomenon was…

And eventually, she did. 

She conducted a series of experiments and discovered that the rays were caused by changes in the atoms that make up the rocks.                             

Something scientists previously had agreed was impossible.

She had literally just discovered Radioactivity!

Ye, really.

For this amazing discovery Marie Curie became the first woman to EVER receive a Nobel Prize.

This also led Marie and Pierre to the discovery of two new elements:

Which completely revolutionized the newly discovered X-ray machine, making it much more accurate.

And for that she won a SECOND Nobel Prize.

Something literally nobody had ever done before, not to mention the fact that it wasn't even in physics, it was in chemistry.

How do you top that?

Well, next she casually invented a portable x-ray machine.

That you would put inside a truck like this:

They were used heavily during WW1 to examine injured soldiers immediately on the battlefield.

Likely saving countless lives.

And… then she died.

Yeah, hanging around all that radioactive material finally caught up to her.

We had no idea it was so dangerous until much later.

Still, she showed them all, nice job Marie.

Stay Cute,
Reece, Henry & Dylan 🌈

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