| Known by the French "Marie,"
she spent every spare hour reading in the library or in the laboratory.
The industrious student caught the eye of Pierre Curie, director one of
the laboratories where Marie worked.
Curie ardently wooed Marie and made several marriage proposals. They
were finally married in 1895 and began their famous partnership. In 1898
they discovered polonium and radium. The Curies and scientist Henri
Becquerel won a Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903 for discovering
radioactivity.
When Curie died in 1904, Marie pledged to
carry on their work. She took his place at the Sorbonne, becoming the
school's first female teacher. In 1911 she became the first person to
win a second Nobel Prize, this time for chemistry. She continued to
experiment and lecture until her death of leukemia in 1934, driven by
the memory of the man she loved. |
