How old is Marie Curie?

Marie Curie, known internationally as Madame Curie, remains one of the most influential scientists in history and a pioneering figure in chemistry and physics. She was born in 1864 in Warsaw as Maria Salomea Skłodowska into a family of educators, with her father working as a school principal. She was very talented in the sciences and went to Paris in the late 1880s to pursue higher education, enrolling at the University of Paris where she also tutored and began her early research.

Curie discovered two new chemical elements, radium and polonium, the latter named after her homeland. She married her colleague Pierre Curie in 1895, whose work also involved radioactivity and magnetism. Marie, Pierre and Henri Becquerel received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 for their pioneering work on radioactivity. In 1911 she was awarded a second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry, making her the only person to be honored twice in two different scientific disciplines.

Curie continued her research on radiation throughout her career, and contributed to the development of radiological treatments, and helped to implement X-ray services in European hospitals. Later, she founded the Curie Institutions, still one of the world’s foremost medical research centers. Marie Curie died in France at the age of 66 from health problems caused by years of exposure to radiation.

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