Maria Salomea Skłodowska Curie
(1867-1934) was born in 1867 in Warsaw, in the Kingdom
of Poland (which was a part of the actual Poland). She became a French citizen
when she married Pierre Curie. She was a chemist and physicist who discovered Polonium
and Radium, two chemical elements now present in the periodic table. She was a
pioneer in radioactivity research, winning the Nobel Prize twice, the first
time in 1903 in Physics, the second time in 1911 in Chemistry. She was the
first female professor at the University of Paris, and also the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Paris Panthéon (in 1995). She died from aplastic anemia due to long-term exposure to
radiation.
I think that the work she and her husband did together in order to advance
Science and the world is obviously worthy of everyone’s admiration. She was a
great person; her research still brings hope to cancer victims or of other
diseases of the same order, and the Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw are
still major medical research centers today. The sacrifices she made pushed the
limits of current knowledge. She had great willpower and dignity and
was full of life. Her impressive inquiring mind is still admired around the
World.
She is a great European figure because she was both Polish and French
and she contributed to the progress of humanity.
