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=Marie Curie =

Introduction
Marie Curie was born Maria Sklodowska on November 7, 1867. She was a Polish-born physicist and chemist who was a pioneer in the field of radiation .In 1893 she earned her master's degree in Physics and a year later earned a degree in mathematics. Curie became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in 1903 and the first person to win two Nobel Prizes in 1911.-- She and her husband worked closely together to study radiation even coining the term "radioactive". Their studies along with work from Henri Becquerel helped to discover two new elements, polonium and radium. Curie went on to create different techniques for the extraction of these two elements which would later win her second Nobel Prize in Chemistry. She had two daughters Eve Curie, who was a talented pianist, journalist, and diplomat, along with Irene Joliot-Curie who with her husband followed in her mother's footsteps and studied radiation also winning a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935. 2

Biography
Marie Curie was born Maria Sklodowska on November 7, 1867. She was born in Warsaw, Poland to Bronislawa Sklodowska and Wladyslaw Sklodowski with three sisters and one brother. Both of Curie's parents were educators and insisted on their children being well educated. She graduated first in her class from high school at the age of 15 and at the age of 17 became a governess to help pay for her sister Bronia to attend medical school in Paris. Curie moved to France at age 24 to follow in her sister Bronislawa's footsteps to study in Paris. The University of Warsaw at the time did not accept women, so Curie decided to enroll at Sorbonne in Paris, France. First in her class during final examinations earned her not only a master's degree in physics, awarded July 1893, but a scholarship from The Women's education advocates to stay and get another degree in mathematics which was awarded in 1894. It wasn't until a professor of Marie's gave her a research grant to study the magnetic properties and chemical composition of steel that she met her husband and research partner Pierre Curie. She worked alongside Pierre to break down the pitchblende to discover why after the uranium was extracted it was almost twice as radioactive. This led her to boil the pitchblende in acid stirring it with metal rods almost bigger than she was. This dedication to her work led to the her first Nobel Prize shared by her husband and Henri Becquerel; it also led to her developing techniques to isolate radium which she would be awarded with her second Nobel Prize for. After her first Nobel Prize, she passed her doctorate thesis in Physics in 1903. She had two daughters Eve Curie, who was a talented pianist, journalist, and diplomat, along with Irene Joliot-Curie who with her husband followed in her mother's footsteps and studied radiation also winning a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935. When World War 1 started Curie stopped all of her studies to help the war effort by organizing a fleet of portable x-ray machines to help the doctors on the front, even driving a few herself. After the war she began raising money for the Radium Institute, but do to the lack of understanding on how radiation affects the body at the time she quickly began to get very sick. On July 4th, 1934 she died to a aplastic anemia, which is often caused by too much exposure to radiation. She was buried beside Pierre, but in 1995 they were both moved to the Pantheon in Paris where France buries its greatest citizens.

Advancements in Science
After reading reports of Wilhelm Roentgen's discovery of X-rays and a report by Henri Becquerel of similar "rays" emitted from uranium ore Curie stopped working on her study of magnetic properties. Using instruments created by Pierre she was able to detect faint electrical currents in the air after an object had been soaked in uranium rays. These results led Curie and Pierre to test all known chemical ores to find if there were any other ores emitting Becquerel rays. Together they discovered that chalcolite and pitchblende show more radioactive properties than pure uranium. She began working late nights, having to break down the two ores and even devising new methods for extracting what she needed from the ore. After various amounts of testing was done on the ore the Curies discovered that one containing bismuth and another containing mostly barium were strongly radioactive. This led them to the conclusion that there was a previously undiscovered element that they called polonium, and before the end of the year had discovered a second element named radium. They released their findings in 1902, and in 1903 Marie Curie became to the first woman in Europe to earn a doctorate degree in physics. In November of 1903 Curie, Pierre, and Henri Becquerel were named winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics for contributions to the understanding of atomic structure. After the death of her husband, Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for not only discovering the elements radium and polonium, but also the the techniques she had developed to isolate radium to study it.

During World War 1 Curie worked to develop small, mobile X-ray units that could help diagnose injuries near the battlefront.-- She toured Paris to generate donations for the war effort along with gathering supplies for the mobile X-rays. In 1914 the machines were ready and she went to the front lines with daughter Irene age 17 to work at casualty stations. She began X-raying wounded soldiers to discover shrapnel, broken bones, and many other alements. Similar devices are still used today so that doctors may examine moving images of the body such as the motion of your heart or the flow of blood.

Points of Interest
The groundbreaking work done by Marie Curie and Pierre Curie was done out of a shack described as a "Cross between a stable and a potato shed."

Marie Curie may have never been formally recognized for her first Nobel Prize if not for a sympathetic committee member who wrote Pierre telling him they weren't going to recognize her because she was a woman; who then wrote the committee insisting that she was part of the discovery.

Currie refused to cash in on her discovery even after being approached to patent it. She openly shared her secrets and how to obtain it with fellow researchers even though they could barely afford to live at the time. After the "Radium Boom" a single gram of radium could cost $100,000 meaning she herself could not afford the very thing she had discovered.